I started out writing about how the child has not let me write for the past two weeks and how frustrated that was making me, but then I realized what a poor use that was of the very precious time I am being given at this very moment at 4:30 in the AM to scrape a few words off my tongue...
And what I really want to talk about is Sheryl Sandberg. Or at least the buzz phrases and concepts that have been swirling about her for the past couple of months.
To be clear, I don't want to be Sheryl Sandberg. She occupies a kind of space in the business world in which I've been able to partially participate but bear fairly full witness to over the years - a high powered and aggressively driven kind of space where people, still mostly male, endeavor to move and shake things while wearing expensive suits and coordinating projects and "managing" people and creating deadlines (some of them legitimate) and power lunching and posturing and maneuvering and constantly seeking ways to be more productive, more efficient, more effective and sometimes doing really great things that benefit humanity in the process, sometimes not...
But if you handed me Sandberg's job and salary on a platter along with a chip that held the knowledge to do that job effectively that I could implant in the back of my neck at will, I'd probably go to facebook to see if anyone would be willing to trade me that platter for an all expense paid three month visit to certain parts of Europe (France and Spain mostly) for me and my family.
(Well, actually, if I really wanted to get the job done, I'd post it on G+, but I digress...)
Because my goals are very different from hers in so many ways. For one, she knows what hers are. She's the kind of gal who's got a very impressive bucket list and actually checks things off on it. I can tell by her hairdo. Me, I'm still wondering if I even need a bucket to contain my list once I've actually made it this time around. I'm thinking a shot glass will probably do.
For two, she likes leaning in to a testosterone dominated environment to balance it out with her brand of estrogen. Me, I'm happy to cheer for her on the sidelines because I have walked into enough meetings attended mostly by very serious East Coast corporate types in suits and ties that at some point start literally smelling of dudes sweating to outdo their competition, make more money, and WORLD DOMINATION MUAHAHAHAHAAA and I am powerless not to be knocked into a dead nap by the scent of all that manbition.
I was given many opportunities to lean in, albeit in a different industry and at a lower level, by the very type of progressive male mentor Sandberg says we need so many more of (Roger, you are dearly missed), and I learned over the course of a decade that I really didn't want to and that that wasn't the sphere of influence I was meant to influence.
But I also learned over the course of that decade that there are lots of women who really could have benefited those meetings and by extension the men in those meetings and of course their organizations at large if they had been presented with the same opportunities to lean in and make their contributions freely rather than to have to spend their energy and resources pushing and clawing just to have a chance to sit at the table. Women who by their nature were simply more efficient, more productive, more effective, more nurturing, more encouraging, more supporting, and more inspiring without having to read books about Chinese military tactics and disappearing cheese.
And while I have wondered in the past if Roger squandered that mentorship on me, I'm more inclined to think today that the sphere I choose to influence going forward will benefit from all I learned in that decade - about business, about how men and women function in business, about human nature at large, and about myself. I might also dare to think that the people who crossed my career path in that decade also benefited from my unique energy, thought process, and communication and work styles that I didn't have to suppress my true self or struggle to be able to express.
Not all of us women should be, or even desire to be, in Sandberg's position. And not everything she has to share with us applies to our chosen career paths, whether those paths be at home or office, salaried or not. But her message of balance and equality - in the home, in the work place, in the world at large - is one we can all benefit from leaning into a lot more.
shinae
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