Sheryl Sandberg Quotes

We need to start talking about child-rearing in the workplace.

Staying quiet and fitting in may have been all the first generations of women who entered corporate America could do; in some cases, it might still be the safest path. But this strategy is not paying off for women as a group. Instead, we need to speak out, identify the barriers that are holding women back, and find solutions.

Maybe someday shedding tears in the workplace will no longer be viewed as embarrassing or weak, but as a simple display of authentic emotion. And maybe the compassion and sensitivity that have historically held some women back will make them more natural leaders in the future. In the meantime, we can all hasten this change by committing ourselves to both seek - and speak - our truth.

No wonder women don't negotiate as often as men. It's like trying to cross a minefield backward in high heels.

It takes a near act of rebellion for even a four-year-old to break away from society's expectations.

I would love to meet J.K. Rowling and tell her how much I admire her writing and am amazed by her imagination. I read every 'Harry Potter' book as it came out and looked forward to each new one. I am rereading them now with my kids and enjoying them every bit as much. She made me look at jelly beans in a whole new way.

It may not be as dramatic or funny to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers -

Colleagues and the media are also quick to credit external factors for a woman's achievements.

My generation fought so hard to give all of you choices. We believe in choices. But choosing to leave the workforce was not the choice we thought so many of you would make."2 So

I could challenge the notion that I was constantly headed for failure.

I really don't have any plan to leave Facebook. I put it so many times on the record, and I just don't get what to do to say it as clear as possible: I'm staying in Facebook; I really love my job.

Looking back, it made no sense for my college friends and me to distance ourselves from the hard-won achievements of earlier feminists. We should have cheered their efforts. Instead, we lowered our voices, thinking the battle was over, and with this reticence we hurt ourselves.

Parental behavioral factors - including fathers who are responsive and positive, mothers who favor "self-directed child behavior," and parents with emotional intimacy in their marriages - influence a child's development two to three times more than any form of child care.

It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It's also a very clear path to happiness.

Women are also more reluctant to apply for promotions even when deserved, often believing that good job performance will naturally lead to rewards.8

Less than six months after I started at Facebook, Mark and I sat down for my first formal review. One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that when you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress. Mark was right.

When I left Google to join Facebook, as a percentage of my team, fewer women tried to follow me. As they had been all along, the men were more interested in new and, as we say in tech, higher beta opportunities - where the risks were great but the potential rewards even greater.

[T]he real issue was not that I felt like a fraud, but that I could feel something deeply and profoundly and be completely wrong.

Conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles giving strong and powerful voice to their needs and concerns.

When a girl tries to lead, she is often labeled bossy. Boys are seldom called bossy because a boy taking the role of a boss does not surprise or offend.

Increasingly, prominent thinkers in the field of leadership studies like Marcus Buckingham are challenging traditional notions of leadership. Their research suggests that presenting 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.4 They believe leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection. This shift is good news for women, who often feel obliged to suppress their emotions in the workplace in an attempt to come across as more stereotypically male. And it's also good news for men, who may be doing the exact same thing. I

grounded hope" - the understanding that if you take action you can make things better.

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

Decades of social science studies have confirmed what the Heidi/Howard case study so blatantly demonstrates: we evaluate people based on stereotypes (gender, race, nationality, and age, among others). Our stereotype of men holds that they are providers, decisive, and driven. Our stereotype of women holds that they are caregivers, sensitive, and communal. Because we characterize men and women in opposition to each other, professional achievement and all the traits associated with it get placed in the male column.

But instead of blaming women for not negotiating more, we need to recognize that women often have good cause to be reluctant to advocate for their own interests because doing so can easily backfire.

Hard work and results should be recognized by others, but when they aren't, advocating for oneself becomes necessary. As discussed earlier, this must be done with great care. But it must be done.

We know when we use the full talents of our population we're more productive. And we know that when people really feel like they can have flexible lives, they're better employees.

We also all know people who could do so much more if only they believed in themselves. Like so many things, a lack of confidence can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't know how to convince anyone to believe deep down that she is the best person for the job, not even myself.

We should let ourselves react emotionally and feel whatever anger or sadness being criticized evokes for us. And then we should quickly move on.

If more women are in leadership roles, we'll stop assuming they shouldn't be.

Most people assume that women are responsible for households and child care. Most couples operate that way - not all. That fundamental assumption holds women back.

Over the years, I have repeated Eric's advice to countless people, encouraging them to reduce their career spreadsheets to one column: potential for growth. Of course, not everyone has the opportunity or the desire to work in an industry like high tech. But within any field, there are jobs that have more potential for growth than others. Those in more established industries can look for the rocket ships within their companies - divisions or teams that are expanding. And in careers like teaching or medicine, the corollary is to seek out positions where there is high demand for those skills. For example, in my brother's field of pediatric neurosurgery, there are some cities with too many physicians, while others have too few. My brother has always elected to work where his expertise would be in demand so he can have the greatest impact. Just

Instead of pondering the question "Can we have it all?," we should be asking the more practical question "Can we do it all?" And again, the answer is no.

I believe if we had half our companies and half our countries run by women, and half our homes run by men, things would be better. We know our companies would be more productive. If you use the full talents of the population, you're more productive. We know our homes would be happier.

Professor Gruenfeld was able to explain the price women pay for success: "Our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership qualities and women with nurturing qualities and put women in a double blind," she said. "We believe not only that women are nurturing, but that they *should* be nurturing above all else. When a woman does anything that signals she might not be nice first and foremost, it creates a negative impression and makes us uncomfortable.

Your life's course will not be determined by doing the things that you are certain you can do. Those are the easy things. It will be determined by whether you try the things that are hard.

believing in your own self-worth is essential to achieving your full potential.

The researchers speculated that men in traditional marriages are not overtly hostile toward women but instead are "benevolent sexists" - holding positive yet outdated views about women.10 (Another term I have heard is "nice guy misogynists.")

People assume Wall Street is a certain culture and tech is a certain culture. But if you look at the (gender) numbers at the top of (those) industries, they don't vary very much. I think in finance, women hold 19 percent of the top jobs, and women are 21 percent of the leaders in nonprofits.

If you ask men why they did a good job, they'll say, 'I'm awesome. Obviously. Why are you even asking?' If you ask women why they did a good job, what they'll say is someone helped them, they got lucky, they worked really hard.

Hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. We internalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives - the messages that say it's wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men.

Personal connections lead to assignments and promotions, so it needs to be okay for men and women to spend informal time together the same way men can. A senior man and a junior man at a bar is seen as mentoring. A senior man and a junior woman at a bar can also be mentoring ... but is looks like dating.

HAVING IT ALL." Perhaps the greatest trap ever set for women was the coining of this phrase.

We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers - or even happy professionals and competent mothers.

My hope, of course, is that we won't have to play by these archaic rules forever and that eventually we can all just be ourselves.

Ask a man to explain his success and he will typically credit his own innate qualities and skills. Ask a woman the same question and she will attribute her success to external factors, insisting she did well because she "worked really hard," or "got lucky," or "had help from others." Men and women also differ when it comes to explaining failure. When a man fails, he points to factors like "didn't study enough" or "not interested in the subject matter." When a woman fails, she is more likely to believe it is due to an inherent lack of ability.8 And in situations where a man and a woman each receive negative feedback, the woman's self-confidence and self-esteem drop to a much greater degree.9 The internalization of failure and the insecurity it breeds hurt future performance, so this pattern has serious long-term consequences.10

When you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress.

Effective communication starts with the understanding that there is my point of view (my truth) and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak the truth are very silencing of others. When we recognize that we can see things only from our own perspective, we can share our views in a nonthreatening way.

In addition, there are huge benefits to communal effort in and of itself. By definition, all organizations consist of people working together. Focusing on the team leads to better results for the simple reason that well-functioning groups are stronger than individuals. Teams that work together well outperform those that don't. And success feels better when it's shared with others. So perhaps one positive result of having more women at the top is that our leaders will have been trained to care more about the well-being of others. My hope, of course, is that we won't have to play by these archaic rules forever and that eventually we can all just be ourselves. We

The ability to listen is as important as the ability to speak.

One of the conflicts inherent in having choice is that we all make different ones. There is always an opportunity cost, and I don't know any woman who feels comfortable with all her decisions. As a result, we inadvertently hold that discomfort against those who remind us of the path not taken. Guilt and insecurity make us second-guess ourselves and, in turn, resent one another.'

All of us
men and women alike
have to understand and acknowledge how stereotypes and biases cloud our beliefs and perpetuate the status quo.

If you do please everyone, you are not making enough progress.

Go to a playground: Little girls get called 'bossy' all the time, a word that's almost never used for boys. And that leads directly to the problems women face in the workforce. When a man does a good job, everyone says, 'That's great.' When a woman does that same thing, she'll get feedback that says things like, 'Your results are good, but your peers just don't like you as much' or 'maybe you were a little aggressive.'

Success, for me, is that if my son chooses to be a stay-at-home parent, he is cheered on for that decision. And if my daughter chooses to work outside the home and is successful, she's cheered on and supported.

It's pretty exciting to take real people living in the real world, their opinions, and have people have to react to that. As opposed to their perceptions of what people are thinking, which are often very different.

Social media has created a historical shift from the historically powerful to the historically powerless. Now everyone has a voice.

When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less. This truth is both shocking and unsurprising: shocking because no one would ever admit to stereotyping on the basis of gender and unsurprising because clearly we do.

Women will continue to sacrifice being liked for being successful.

Shutting down discussion is self-defeating and impedes progress. We need to talk and listen and debate and refute and instruct and learn and evolve.

Build your skills not your resume.

It's easy to dislike the few senior women out there. What if women were half the positions in power? It would be harder to dislike all of them.

Feeling confident - or pretending that you feel confident - is necessary to reach for opportunities. It's a cliché, but opportunities are rarely offered; they're seized".

Pages on Facebook are allowed to be anonymous. That is really important. People start revolutions; we need anonymity.

When woman work outside the home and share breadwinning duties, couples are more likely to stay together. In fact, the risk of divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework.

The more women help one another, the more we help ourselves. Acting like a coalition truly does produce results.
Any coalition of support must also include men, many of whom care about gender inequality as much as women do.

Another one of my favorite posters at Facebook declares in big red letters, "Done is better than perfect." I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.

The laws of economics and many studies of diversity tell us that if we tapped the entire pool of human resources and talent, our collective performance would improve.

Self-compassion isn't talked about as much as it should be, maybe because it's often confused with its troublesome cousins, self-pity and self-indulgence. Psychologist Kristin Neff describes self-compassion as offering the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to a friend. It allows us t respond to our own errors with conern and understanding rather than criticism and shame.

Both men and women react negatively when women negotiate on their own behalf. A man can just negotiate: "I have a better offer. That's not enough to make my family's ends meet." No one feels bad about it. But when a woman does that, there's a backlash.

The promise of equality is not the same as true equality.

The social web can't exist until you are your real self online. I have to be me. You have to be you. Once we are online as ourselves, connected to each other and our other friends, then you can have the evolution of what becomes the social web.

We have a problem with women in leadership across the board. This leadership gap - this problem of not enough women in leadership - is running really deep and it's in every industry. My answer is we have to understand the stereotype assumptions that hold women back.

Often without even realizing it, the woman stops reaching for new opportunities. If any are presented to her, she is likely to decline or offer the kind of hesitant "yes" that gets the project assigned to someone else. The problem is that even if she were to get pregnant immediately, she still has nine months before she has to care for an actual child. And since women usually start this mental preparation well before trying to conceive, several years often pass between the thought and conception, let alone birth. In the case of my Facebook questioner, it might even be a decade. By

Writing this book is not just me encouraging others to lean in. This is me leaning in. Writing this book is what I would do if I weren't afraid.

But the upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.

Don't make decisions too far in advance, particularly ones you're not even conscious you're making.

Don't be afraid to ask the 'dumb' question, everyone else will be relieved you had the guts to ask!

Connections that the women made were not extended to him.28 Time and

You need to feel that you're making a difference.

post-traumatic growth could take five different forms: finding personal strength, gaining appreciation, forming deeper relationships, discovering more meaning in life, and seeing new possibilities.

I learned that effective communication starts with the understanding that there is MY point of view, (my truth), and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak THE truth are very silencing of others. When we realize and recognize that we can see things only from our own perspective, we can share our views in a nonthreatening way. Statements of opinion are always more constructive in the first person "I" form. The ability to listen is as important as the ability to speak. Miscommunication is always a two way street.

Our culture needs to find a robust image of female success that is first, not male, and second, not a white woman on the phone, holding a crying baby,

Grief," she writes, is "a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly." - Sandberg sharing Anna Quindlen's take on how society conceals grief

Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

Employed mothers and fathers both struggle with multiple responsibilities, but mothers also have to endure the rude questions and accusatory looks that remind us that we're shortchanging both our jobs and our children.

talk that TED later named "Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders"). Very

I almost hate to say this, but I am the happiest I have ever been in my life," she told me. "Sometimes it takes going through something so awful to realize the beauty that is out there in this world." Brain

I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning. These past thirty days, I have spent many of my moments lost in that void. And I know that many future moments will be consumed by the vast emptiness as well. But when I can, I want to choose life and meaning.

I spent most of my career, including my time at McKinsey, never acknowledging that I was a woman. And, you know, fast forward - I'm 43 now - fitting in is not helping us.

Cancer is another forbidden or "whisper" topic. I read about a writer named Emily McDowell who said the worst part of being diagnosed with lymphoma wasn't feeling sick from chemo or losing her hair. "It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn't know what to say, or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it." In response, Emily created "empathy cards." I love them all but these two are my favorites, making me want to laugh and cry simultaneously.

At Dave's funeral, I said that if on the day I walked down the aisle with him, someone had told me that we would have only eleven years together, I would still have walked down that aisle. Eleven years of being Dave's wife and ten years of being a parent with him is perhaps more luck and more happiness than I could ever have imagined. I am grateful for every minute we had.

Talking can transform minds, which can transform behaviors, which can transform institutions.

We plant the seeds of resilience in the ways we process negative events. After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that three P's can stunt recovery: (1) personalization - the belief that we are at fault; (2) pervasiveness - the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life; and (3) permanence - the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever. The three P's play like the flip side of the pop song "Everything Is Awesome" - "everything is awful." The loop in your head repeats, "It's my fault this is awful. My whole life is awful. And it's always going to be awful." Hundreds

Typically, my eighteen-month plan sets goals on two fronts. First and most important, I set targets for what my team can accomplish. Employees who concentrate on results and impact are the most valuable - like

Communication works best when we combine appropriateness with authenticity, finding that sweet spot where opinions are not brutally honest but delicately honest.

If we can succeed in adding more female voices at the highest levels, we will expand opportunities and extend fairer treatment to all.

A traumatic experience is a seismic event that shakes our belief in a just world, robbing us of the sense that life is controllable, predictable, and meaningful.

Anyone who brings up gender in the workplace is wading into deep and muddy waters. The subject itself presents a paradox, forcing us to acknowledge differences while trying to achieve the goal of being treated the same.

If we want a world with greater equality, we need to acknowledge that women are less likely to keep their hands up. We need institutions and individuals to notice and correct for this behavior by encouraging, promoting, and championing more women. And women have to learn to keep their hands up, because when they lower them, even managers with the best intentions might not notice.