Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In": A Guide to Women Achieving Professional Success and Leadership Roles

Emma H: I absolutely love this book and have since recommended it to a lot of my female friends, career women and homemakers alike! Very insightful! Give it a read!

United Kingdom on Sep 22, 2023

Anirban Das: 📖
In this book, Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, discusses the various challenges faced by women, trying to balance between their career and family, through various examples from her own life.
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I came to know about this book through one of my closest friends and one of the strongest women I have seen. It is primarily focused on workplace challenges faced by women and puts forth very practical arguments and ways to overcome them. Working in a corporate environment with a number of female colleagues, I could relate to the views presented by Ms. Sandberg. Moreover, the book also serves as a career development guide for anyone irrespective of gender. This book is a must read for not only women but also men, in order to empathize with their female counterparts.
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I would love to share some of my favorite quotes from this book.

✒️"Done is better than perfect." (A quote used often by my friend whenever I tend to overthink before making a decision)
✒️"Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder."
✒️"There is no perfect fit when you're looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather...

India on Sep 30, 2022

Georgiana89: This is one of those books that I've heard so much about I almost felt as though I'd already read it. But the idea that women need to stop holding themselves back really resonates with me, so I decided to actually read the original.

Two things need to be pointed out. Firstly, while the central argument is indeed "speak up in meetings, go for promotions, ask for raises" etc etc, it's more nuanced than lots of commentators seem to suggest, and far from blaming women for their own lack of advancement is fully aware of the unconscious bias that both men and women can show in the workplace, and suggests ways in which women may have to handle negotiations and applications differently to men to not fall foul of managers' assumptions.

Secondly, as most people know, the author is the COO of Facebook and previously held senior roles at both Google and the US Treasury. She also had kids. She makes a token effort to point out how the arguments of this book also apply to women who don't want kids/stay at home mothers/women working in more menial roles, but fundamentally, this is aimed at at focussed on women who want to get to the top of professional organisations and probably...

United Kingdom on Feb 28, 2015

P. Jones: I was expecting (and was very well prepared) to hate this book. Books by high profile and usually egotistical business leaders based on their volcano-like career path and single view of the world usually make me slightly nauseas just looking at the book jacket photo and bio. As a fat white bloke and Nice Guy Mysoginist (thanks for that one Sheryl!) bathed in the scientific fact and the diversity consultant rhetoric of the ‘gender agenda’ I wondered what new evidence led ideas and perspectives a busy COO had to bring to the table. Usually COOs talk the talk but don’t invest their time and reputation in diversity issues unless there is some self promotion.
I hoped that was not Sheryl’s ‘thing’.
Just how I came to have ‘Lean in’ in my holiday suitcase I am not sure, but a respected client had mentioned it as having been instrumental in developing their women in leadership programme and I had bought it as a ‘skimmer’ book for one of my many train journeys. In the rush to pack and wanting some light relief from the neuroscience books already packed I placed it at the bottom of the reading list knowing that by the time it reached the top some other distraction...

United Kingdom on Aug 26, 2013

Sarah Beth Aubrey: We're educated, we're ambitious, and we're dropouts.

Lean In is peppered with solid references, some so interesting I actually read the footnotes in detail and looked up some of the sources. She comments: "The pipeline that supplies the educated workforce is chock-full of women at the entry level, but by the time that same pipeline is filling leadership positions, it is overwhelmingly stocked with men." Ms. Sandberg could have made her book bleak, but that wasn't her intent. Rather, she's seeking to motivate women at all career levels to aim for their best. She says: "This book makes the case for leaning in, for being ambitious in any pursuit...I do not believe that there is one definition of success and happiness." Great point, I thought, and one that set me to thinking about the concept of lean in. What does that mean?

I am a corporate dropout having left employment on November 10, 2004. I started my own business in the fall of 2003. I aimed to grow the company quickly, to leave my job, and I did. Nine years later I've sold that original company, founded two new ones, expanded and added new divisions to my businesses. I've been offered various jobs over the years,...

United States on Jun 10, 2013

turnip: I read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg (SS) last weekend. I found it accessible, compulsive reading and surprisingly radical. I would recommend it to both women and men as it's full of enlightening and useful insights as well as constructive advice.

A lot of what SS says chimed with me. I don't believe we have perfect equality yet, but I certainly believe that I've had opportunities that weren't available to my mother or her generation, let alone to women in less developed parts of the world. I am thankful to earlier generations of feminists for their work and for being born in the UK.
I was also brought up with the expectation that I would work and support myself; that my parents would support me through my education, but then the rest was up to me. Finding a rich husband wasn't encouraged...nor discouraged for that matter. I am grateful to them for letting me discover my own path.

I do agree there are subtle differences in how girls are brought up and how we are treated in the workplace. "Benevolent sexism" Sheryl calls it. Girls are encouraged to be good and nice and not assert themselves too much, especially around boys. Women in powerful positions are judged far...

United Kingdom on Apr 15, 2013

S. M. Grigsby: I had heard the buzz about Sheryl Sandberg's Lead In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead that many of you may have heard as well. Written by an elitist with a double Harvard degree who was mentored by Larry Summers (gasp!) and is worth hundreds of millions in stock from Google and Facebook (oh no!), she couldn't possibly have anything to say to women in less fortunate positions. It was a vanity book designed to elevate Facebook (really?). I have to admit that it has been a long time since I remember a book being so roundly condemned by so many who hadn't even read it. The fact that a book authored by a woman about women was raising such a stink intrigued me. If I hadn't planned to read it before, I certainly looked forward to reading it now.

I should be used to pundits being wrong.

Honestly, there were some points in this book that almost had me wishing I were thirty years younger and still working. It takes a lot to do that. I am happy with my life (except for the grief part) and I don't generally envy the lot of today's working women.

Lean In is not so much a feminist manifesto, as it is a hands-on guide to how a woman can think about and alter her chances for...

United States on Mar 18, 2013