Sheryl Sandberg - Lean In for Graduates

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2013, 2014 by Lean In Foundation

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies. Originally published in hardcover in the United States, in different form, by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, in 2013.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014002390

ISBN 978-0-385-35367-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-385-35386-1 (eBook)

Published March 12, 2013
Expanded Edition for Graduates Published April 8, 2014

v3.1_r1

To my brother, David,
and my sister, Michelle,
for a lifetime of love and laughter

Dear Graduate,

Congratulations! You made it!

Its time to celebrate all the hard work that led to this joyful occasion. The road to graduation is a long, steep climb, so take a moment at the summit to be proud of your accomplishments. Whether you know exactly where youre heading or feel a bit lost, everyone has this in common: youre all in for big surprises.

At my college graduation, I never would have predicted that Id wind up working in technology. I had given up being a serious math student in ninth grade when I attended a math competition, noticed that there were no other girls, and decided that math was for boys (yep, pretty much the opposite of leaning in). Also, I graduated in June 1991two months before the birth of the World Wide Web. Its shocking, but I made it through college with zero internet. No cell phones with cameras either, which given that I wore leg warmers and headbands is a blessing.

Theres no question that the world moves faster today. This means that grabbing opportunities is more important than ever. And I dont have to tell you that you are entering a struggling economy. So along with all the excitement, most of you will also feel some uncertainty and fear.

Graduating is one of lifes trickier transitions. School offers clear structure and expectations, while the real world is harder to navigate. Your community is about to scatter. Not all the skills youve acquired will transfer. As you start your adult life, you will wonder if youre making the right choices. You may also wish you had more choices.

The embarrassing truth is that I left college more concerned about my personal life than my professional life. My parents married young and repeatedly warned me that the good ones got snatched up in college. I believed them and even taped a poster to my dorm room wall of a frog sitting in the middle of a frilly four-poster bed, with a caption that read, You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. I had fun with a few frogs and, in retrospect, am amazed that anyone was willing to kiss me under that ridiculous poster. But I graduated princelessand frogless for that matterwhich left me worried about my future.

Like you, I entered the workforce during a recession. Even my friends who had jobs were nervous. I was nervous too. It took me a long time to find my way into an industry I love. It took me a longer time to find the right partner. It took me even longer to find my voice.

When I graduated, I believed that the feminists who came before me had done the hard work of demanding equality and now it was ours for the taking. In my early jobs, my peers were a balanced mix of men and women. But with each passing year, there were fewer and fewer women in the room until I was often the only one. Slowlyand sadlyit dawned on me that the promise of equality is not the same as achieving equality.

While we have far more opportunity than our mothers and grandmothers, there are still biases that work against us. It can be painful to acknowledge that our experience as individuals is inescapably linked to our gender. We long for a true meritocracy, where we are judged on our abilities alone. But the world has a way of attaching the word female to our achievements: female surgeon, female director, female marathoner, female senator.

Very few people, women or men, sail through their professional lives without hurdles and setbacks. But women face additional challenges, including blatant and subtle discrimination, sexual harassment, and a lack of sensible public and workforce policies. Women of color face even greater barriers. I say this not to discourage you, but to prepare you. Until weand othersare aware of these biases, we cannot change them. While this book doesnt have all the answers, it does explore many of the issues that I wish Id understood better when I graduated.

As you start your career, you should be aware that men are often promoted based on potential, while women are promoted on past performance. I have asked audiences around the world to raise their hands if theyve been told they were too aggressive at work. Time and again, a small fraction of men raise their hands, while a great majority of women shoot a hand into the air and sometimes two.

You should also be aware of the internal barriers that we often impose on ourselves. Too many women sit on the side of the room when they should be sitting at the table. Too many women lower their voices when they should be speaking up.

This is not our fault. We internalize messages that say its wrong for us to be outspoken, aggressive, and as powerful asor even more powerful thanmen. In response, we alter our actions. A study by two Princeton researchers asked college students to compete in a video game in which players dropped bombs on opponents. When the students believed they were being monitored, the men dropped more bombs than the women. When the students believed no one was watching, the women dropped significantly more bombs than the men.

We hold ourselves back not just out of fear of seeming too aggressive but also by underestimating our abilities. Ask a woman to explain why shes successful and shell credit luck, hard work, and help from others. Ask a man the same question and hes likely to explain, or at least think, Cmon, Im awesome!

I know how hard it can be to believe in yourself. To this day, I struggle to feel confident. A few months after I finished writing Lean Inan entire book about how women should own their successI was at a meeting to kick off a project with the senior Facebook team. For years, my colleague Jay Parikh and I had pushed for this project, but no one agreed with us. Then, suddenly, we had a breakthrough. I was thrilled and started the meeting by telling everyone how grateful I was for their support and how I had worried for years that I was wrong about the need for this initiative. Jay looked up, paused, and said, I knew Sheryl and I were right and you would all come around eventually. Really? His belief that we were right was not shaken by years of everyone disagreeing with us?

Later that night, I was Facebook messaging with Jay, and I asked him if I could tell this story on my book tour. He said yes. I asked if I could use his name when telling the story. He said of course. Hes a great guy, so I told him I would make sure he did not come across as arrogant. He typed back, Im not worried about that. Again, really?

It would be so nice to feel that level of confidence. And while its never a good idea to be boastful, believing in your own self-worth is essential to achieving your full potential. As you begin your career, you will probably find yourself working next to a man who has Jays deep and deserved faith in himself. If you take the chair on the side of the room, he will take the seat at the table because he knows hes awesome. So please remember that you deserve a seat at that same table and that you are awesome too.