After reading Lean In
One day I happened to find a book “Lean In”
from the library, I found that I was extremely inspired and enlightened by it.
The author is Sheryl Sandberg, who is now the COO of
Facebook. Before joining in Facebook, she was the Vice President of Google.
Undoubtedly, she is a very charming and brilliant successful lady, who has been
working with the world’s top 2 social media companies. She is admired by lots
of professional women for her success.
Sandberg
has a very successful career plus a perfect family –a nice and successful
husband and two lovely children. In addition, she is very healthy and energetic
even under the fast paced and high pressure work environment. She also has full
support from her family. She’s very lucky to have all of those elements
together.
I
found myself echoed a lot with her stories and I totally agreed with her on
lots of opinions. I am listing here some points, which I have found very
meaningful .
1.
Self-doubt
In
the book, Sandberg mentioned that lots of women have self-doubt. She said, “I should have understood that this kind of self-doubt was more
common for females”.
This
is also very true of me. Although I have made lots of decisions by myself in my
work and life, I would doubt if I had made a right decision or not thereafter. In
my career’s early years as a Sales Assistant, I would feel more comfortable and
confident after I had gotten feedbacks from my peers or supervisors before I
made a proposal. I cared about what others thought about my idea in the first
place. Although lots of the time I was told that I had made a good suggestion,
I still could not feel very confident to speak it out.
2.
Women and men are not
equal
Sandberg
also talked about the female and male’s position in the society. Although nowadays
women have more freedom than before, women and men are still treated with different
expectations.
As
an immigrant, I have lots of immigrant friends as well as native Canadians.
Lots of women immigrated and became a homestay mother as they are expected to
take care of the children and do housework. They take the responsibility to be
a family driver, cooker, caregiver and housewife. They run between school ,grocery
store and home everyday. Their “work” usually starts from 7:00am or earlier and
finishes around 9:00pm until their child falls to sleep. Lots of mothers believe
that a full time mother and a housewife is much busier than a full time employee,
which is quite true. Lots of time, work
can be scheduled and arranged, but children are hard to be managed after school,
they are too creative to be arranged or scheduled.
So
stay-at-home mothers are regarded as a normal phenomenon to the society, but
stay-at-home fathers are regarded as not that usual. The social standard is
that a woman can quit work and stay at home to take care of their children –which
is their proper choice - but a man cannot. In retrospect, if a woman pursues her
career and lets the husband take care of their child , she will be labeled as breaking the social harmony and
could even be regarded as “cruel” or “not doing the right thing” for not taking
care of her children and family.
On
the other hand, I have seem lots of excellent ladies stay single after 30’s. They
have big jobs , nice educational background, excellent taste and they look
good. But being single over 30s makes them feel they had handled their personal
life unsuccessfully because they are not “successfully” getting married. When
dating men, they will be questioned why they are single in their 30’s. But men
could have a great excuse if they stay single after 30s –have spent too much
time on their job .By labeling themselves as workaholics, they will even become
more charming since it represents that they have mission and goal in their career.
But if women declare that they have spent too much time working so they have missed
dating guys ,they will be judged that they have put their priorities in the
wrong order.
3.
How to show
confidence
Sandberg
also shared a lot on career. How to be confident even in fact you are very
nervous? Smile and keep smiling is one of the best ways to feel confident and
show confidence to others. Besides confidence, people will find that a smiling
face is also a very charming and pleasant one. Nobody likes cold face. One day
I went to a bank and wanted to withdraw some money from my checking account. I
felt extremely uncomfortable when I asked and repeated a question and the
teller had no facial expression and did not answer. I felt that I was not
welcomed or she was trying to ignore me.
Smiling
is very influential. Smiling will make people around you feel pleasant. “Keep
smiling” is what I have been told by my mentor again and again, I feel she is
absolutely right since “keep smiling’ will make me and people around me feel
pleasant, confident and energetic. In fact, smiling benefits the smiling person
because the act of smiling triggers a response in your brain so you feel
better.
4.
Taking initiatives
pays off
Another
point Sandberg makes is “taking initiative pays off”. Lots of people work in
their job’s functional mode. This is fine but it will limit them in a narrow
and functional area and they will lose the chance to view their work from a wider
perspective. The people who have a broader view of the company or even the
industry will have a bigger picture of the whole operation and they usually will
be clearer on their career progression. As a result, they will have a better
chance to grow.
I
was awarded as the Best Administrative Assistant of the Country in 2004 in my
early career. Why did I win this award? My manager described me as : “She always takes initiatives which are out
of her work scope and she tries to help the sales team to have a better understanding
of the whole industry by working on market research and market intelligence.”
Lots of administrative assistants work on the tasks they are assigned . I would
like to explore to know more about the market as well as help sales team to
have more ideas about what is going on in the market since they usually worked
only in their assigned territory.
5.
When you want to
change things, you can’t please everyone. If you do please
everyone, you aren’t making enough progress.
It
is true that sometimes you can not please everyone. Each person has a different
agenda and personal goal so it’s hard to cater to each individual’s goal.
The
policy makers should firstly consider the corporate goals before working on a
new policy instead of trying to please every employee. When a company needs to restructure
in order to meet the business needs, they need to hire or lay off employees.
Then the employees who are laid off usually will not feel happy about the
decision. But in the long run, company has to make some strategic decisions to grow
the market or remain profitable.
6. One of the favorite quotes
comes from author Alice Walker, who observed, “the most common way people give
up their power is by thinking they don’t have any”.
Lots of people just do not know what their
potential is. I was a dependent woman in my 20’s . I only enjoyed working but I
was an idiot in my daily life. I had thought that I could never cook a nice
meal for my family, as I did not have the talent. I had tried to learn cooking
but I soon felt exhausted and frustrated then I gave it up after 1 month’s try.
Having a live-in nanny at home, who did the
entire housework and cooking, plus lots of support from my parents, I thought I
can live a peaceful life forever although I do not know how to cook. However,
after my family immigrated to Canada I suddenly lost all my extended support. My
nanny could not come with me and my parents failed to get their visas to Canada–
I had to learn how to cook from zero and do housework in order to feed my
family and myself.
After 3 years’ staying in Canada, I have become
a nice and innovative cook. Some of my female friends even learn from me and
copy the recipe that I created. One day I heard my friend tells my son how
lucky he is to have a mother who is talented at cooking. This compliment is a
great fortune to me since I never thought that I could prepare a nice meal for
my family before.
7. “Excel and you will get a
mentor.” The relationship is more important than the label.
A mentor is very important. I had a great
mentor –who is one of the top 100 female managers in Canada- from the Top 100
Mentoring Program. I was matched with my mentor by the program. Although the
mentorship is supposed to last for only 1 year, I am so lucky that the
mentorship became a lifetime one after 1 year.
Every week I talk with my mentor for almost
1 hour. My mentor and I really enjoyed the mentorship .I get lots of support
and encouragement from her and I thought it’s one of my biggest fortunes to
have such an excellent supportive mentor in my life.
8. Last but not least “…leadership
as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical and
performance-oriented) no longer holds. Instead ,true leadership stems from
individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed. They
believe leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.”
Even
the best leaders are not supermen or superwomen. Everybody has something
lacking or limited. Good leaders can hire talents to work for them to make up
something they are lacking. No one is perfect, even a leader.
A
leader also makes mistakes but the way they respond to a mistake counts.
Performance is the end result of a process. A good leader not only cares about
the result they also respect the steps, that is how a good team can grow and
learn together.
