I liked Lean in a lot, so I don’t know why I feel the need to start off with a disclaimer addressing any negative parts about it.
Nonetheless, I do feel like I want to say that Lean In isn’t necessarily gospel. I wouldn’t argue with some of the points brought up in this article about it. I also would be absolutely mortified if I were someone planning on having children, and someone asked me about those plans during a job interview.
From the stories Sheryl Sandberg relays in the book, it sounds like she only ever brought that up with the best of intentions – not to disqualify women from jobs, but to help them choose to take those jobs, even if they were planning on having a kid in the somewhat near future.
But still, those laws are in place for a reason. And it would make me wildly uncomfortable to have people asking such inappropriate questions in a job interview.
So, enough with the opener on the non-perfect stuff, and let’s get to the good stuff!
For the most part, I was not afraid of power growing up. I might elaborate on that at some point, because there certainly were some things here and there where I wished I would’ve pushed harder and not been so worried about what people thought.
But for the most part, I went hard after things I wanted. I kept a list of goals of what I wanted to achieve. When it came to most of those things, I was intensely focused, and didn’t care what was in my way – I only cared about how I’d catapult over any obstacles. (For instance, I didn’t care if the person I beat for first chair saxophone was an older boy. Why on earth would that possibly matter?)
I don’t know if this is because I have a wonderful father who more often than not was encouraging me to be strong and always fight for myself (and never made me feel like I had any limits or gender stereotypes I had to follow).
Or maybe it’s because I had some wonderfully strong female teachers who were great role models – or excellent male band directors who didn’t care if you were male or female as long as you could play.
But whatever the reason, I’ve never felt that there was a glass ceiling in school or later in life. (Granted, statistically there is a real glass ceiling (well, a real metaphorical one)… But I never felt this sort of self-imposed one of feeling like I should be more demure and/or accept anything less than what I wanted.)
That was a lot of talking to try to get to this simple idea: Even for someone like me who often leaned in far enough that I was practically planking, the book still had some lessons.
For one thing, it made me think about how supportive I am of other women. I don’t know if you find this to be true as well, but when I was younger, it was the super cool thing to do for women not to be friends with other women.
And I was totally duped by that whole thing. “Oh yeah, I’m super cool. One of the guys. Who are my girl friends? Pft. Who has friends who are girls?”
But really, that was stupid! Who doesn’t have friends who are girls? When we perpetuate stereotypes that keep us down – we’re too dramatic, we’re not worthy of time and friendship, etc. – all we are doing is hurting ourselves. And so much great stuff can be gained from friendships with women!