{"id":10669,"date":"2017-10-01T13:23:24","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T17:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whatwillittake.com\/?p=10669"},"modified":"2018-12-03T11:35:14","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T16:35:14","slug":"interview-sheryl-sandberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatwillittake.com\/interviews\/interview-sheryl-sandberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Sheryl Sandberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

This interview is an excerpt from What Will It Take to Make a Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership & Power<\/a> by Marianne Schnall. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Marianne Schnall: Why do you think it is that we\u2019ve not had a woman president so far?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Sheryl Sandberg:<\/b> I have a great story for you. There\u2019s a song that has all the names of the U.S. presidents, and so my kids were learning the names of all the presidents, and my daughter, at four, looked at me and her first question was, \u201cMommy, why are they all boys<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n

I think women in leadership suffer from stereotyping, and when people expect a stereotype and are reminded of a stereotype, that actually makes the stereotype stronger. It\u2019s called stereotype threat, and it\u2019s why when women check off \u201cMiss\u201d or girls check off \u201cFemale\u201d before taking a math test, the research shows they actually do worse. What has happened is that there aren\u2019t women in leadership roles, therefore people don\u2019t expect there to be women in leadership roles, therefore, there aren\u2019t women in leadership roles.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u201cI think we need to expect and encourage our girls and women to lead and contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

MS: What can we do to change that?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SS:<\/b> It starts young. Girls are discouraged from leading at an early age. The word \u201cbossy\u201d is largely applied to girls, not boys. I think we need to expect and encourage our girls and women to lead and contribute.<\/p>\n

And I think we are so focused on supporting what we call \u201cchoice\u201d that we don\u2019t mean real choice. When we say choice, we mean women<\/i> get to choose to work or have families. We don\u2019t mean men<\/i> choose to work or have families. Real choice would mean that people were choosing based on their interests and personal passions, not based on their gender.<\/p>\n

MS: There is also the impact of how we treat women leaders. For example, some of the sexist commentary when Hillary was running, or some of the comments that are always made about women leaders like Nancy Pelosi. When women are in positions of power, or seen as confident or ambitious, they\u2019re often portrayed as unlikable.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SS: <\/b>They are un-liked. As a woman gets more successful, she is less liked by people of both genders, and as a man gets more successful, he does not take a likability hit.<\/p>\n

MS: Where can we fix some of these problems?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SS:<\/b> It\u2019s the classic chicken-and-egg problem: we need more women leaders to show more women they can lead, and we need to show more women they can lead to get more women leaders. I think the first thing we need to do is decide that the status quo is not okay. When I say women have been 15 percent or 16 percent of the leadership in corporate America for ten years and it hasn\u2019t moved, people are astonished: \u201cReally? It hasn\u2019t moved in ten years? We\u2019ve stopped making progress?\u201d<\/p>\n

So the first thing is acknowledging there is a problem and deciding we want it to get better. In our society, we don\u2019t talk about gender, at all. I don\u2019t understand how you fix a problem if you can\u2019t acknowledge you have one.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAs a woman gets more successful, she is less liked by people of both genders, and as a man gets more successful, he does not take a likability hit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

MS: One of the things in particular that I think affects the political sphere\u2014in terms of the dearth of women running for office\u2014is the fact that it\u2019s such a hostile, mud-slinging experience where candidates are subjected to so much criticism. Do you think that\u2019s part of the reason that sometimes women are deterred from entering politics?<\/b><\/p>\n

SS:<\/b> Yes, but also because women are less liked by running. It is all self-reinforcing, all of which we can change. I really believe we can change it. I think the dialogue on whether or not women can do it\u2014can we have it all\u2014is incredibly harmful. We need to recognize that we can\u2019t do it all, that we face trade-offs every single minute of the day. We have to stop beating ourselves up for not doing everything perfectly.<\/p>\n

MS: How do you see the influence of gender roles? Some of this is not just specific to women, but it involves men changing their gender roles as well.<\/b><\/p>\n

SS: <\/b>I think that is a problem. We are stuck in our gender-specific roles and so it\u2019s just reinforcing. In my book, Lean In, <\/i>I wrote a lot about being identified as Facebook\u2019s female COO, and I actually did a Google search for \u201cFacebook\u2019s male CEO\u201d and there are no results, zero. I don\u2019t wake up in the morning and say, \u201cWhat am I going to do today as Facebook\u2019s female<\/i> COO?\u201d But that is how I\u2019m viewed by the world.<\/p>\n

I wrote at the end of my book, it\u2019s one of my favorite lines in the whole book, \u201cOne day there won\u2019t be \u2018female.\u2019\u201d The word \u201cfemale,\u201d when inserted in front of something, is always with a note of surprise. Female COO, female pilot, female surgeon\u2014as if the gender implies surprise, which it does. I am a female leader. One day there won\u2019t be female leaders. There will just be leaders. I personally think it\u2019s a numbers game. I basically think the system is broken and there are all kinds of institutional barriers, but if we can get enough women into jobs like yours and jobs like mine, that changes.<\/p>\n

MS: Why do you think it\u2019s important that we make equality a priority, and what would women bring to the table that you think Washington and the world needs most now?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SS:<\/b> There\u2019s been a lot written about what the world would be like with more women [leaders]. My view is that if all the players play, that creates more competition, and more records get broken. I just think we would perform better as a society. Plus, I want to live in a more equal world.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe cannot have equality in the office until we have equality in the home.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

MS: You have worked in Washington as the chief of staff for the United States Treasury Department. What was that experience like, being a woman working in Washington?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SS: <\/b>I was only thirty at the time I worked in Washington. At the time, the more senior people were men and the more junior people were women, but that was supposedly going to change as my generation progressed. And that, for me, has been the biggest disappointment: that it hasn\u2019t changed nearly as much as I hoped it would.<\/p>\n

MS: Are you seeing progress? Certainly in this last election, it did seem like everybody was talking about women, and women did break some records in terms of representation. Do you think that something has happened and there\u2019s a shift?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SS: <\/b>I think there has to be a shift, because you can\u2019t win elections just with Caucasian men anymore. You have to have minorities and women. The numbers just don\u2019t work anymore. So I think there will be a shift. But the women have to run in order to get elected. And right now, they are less inclined to do so.<\/p>\n

MS: What are some of the most concrete and constructive changes that we can do as a culture, or a society, to improve things for women to become leaders in the political and corporate spheres?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SS: <\/b>The concrete things are men need to do more childcare and housework. We need to get to equality in the home. We cannot have equality in the office until we have equality in the home. It can\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

MS: In terms of the type of leader that you are at Facebook, what have you learned being a manager of men and women? What ingredients do you try to instill in your own leadership in terms of managing your employees?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SS:<\/b> I try to teach people about the likability penalty women pay for success, so when they hear, \u201cOh, this woman\u2019s doing a good job, but she\u2019s just not well liked by her peers,\u201d they have enough sense to question that and ask why. I talk to people about the value of talking about gender, because what\u2019s happening is women are not navigating through their careers or learning the ways they can stay in and lean in, and we have to change that. I think both male and female managers need to be able to talk to female employees about this. It\u2019s not easy. These are complicated things for people in companies to do, saying, \u201cAre you thinking about having a child? We should talk about it.\u201d A lot of the legal advice everyone gets is to never mention it. Well, never mentioning it is not going to solve a problem. So I talk to people about being very explicit about it.<\/p>\n

MS: There are also policies that corporations and Washington could implement that could make it more family friendly\u2014whether it\u2019s maternity leave, parental leave, or some other policy.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

SS: <\/b>I think all of those policies are really important. I think equal maternity and paternity leave are hugely important. How are we going to teach men to be equals if the average woman takes three months and the average man takes two weeks? People forget that there\u2019s a huge gap in our coverage.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About Sheryl Sandberg<\/b><\/p>\n

Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer at Facebook. She oversees the firm\u2019s business operations including sales, marketing, business development, legal, human resources, public policy and communications. Prior to Facebook, Sheryl was vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google, where she built and managed online sales for advertising and publishing and operations for consumer products worldwide. She was also instrumental in launching Google.org, Google\u2019s philanthropic arm. Sheryl previously served as chief of staff for the U.S. Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, and began her career as an economist with the World Bank. She serves on the boards of Facebook, The Walt Disney Company, Women for Women International, V-Day, ONE, and chairs the board of Lean In<\/a>. She is the author of two New York Times <\/i>#1 Best Sellers: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead <\/i>and Option B<\/a>: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Facebook COO\u00a0talks about the specific obstacles women leaders face and how to overcome them\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":637,"featured_media":10670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[581],"tags":[],"coauthors":[589],"yoast_head":"\nInterview with Sheryl Sandberg - What Will It Take<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook COO,\u00a0talks about the specific obstacles women leaders face and how to overcome them. \u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/whatwillittake.com\/interviews\/interview-sheryl-sandberg\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Interview with Sheryl Sandberg - What Will It Take\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook COO,\u00a0talks about the specific obstacles women leaders face and how to overcome them. \u00a0\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/whatwillittake.com\/interviews\/interview-sheryl-sandberg\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"What Will It Take\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-10-01T17:23:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-12-03T16:35:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/whatwillittake.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/1017349_10152995790850177_570805883_n.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"960\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Angela Joshi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ConsciousCoMag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Angela Joshi\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/whatwillittake.com\/interviews\/interview-sheryl-sandberg\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/whatwillittake.com\/interviews\/interview-sheryl-sandberg\/\",\"name\":\"Interview with Sheryl Sandberg - 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