Lean In ─ Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Thirty years after women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States, men still hold the vast majority of leadership positions in government and industry. This means that women’s voices are still not heard equally in the decisions that most affect our lives. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg examines why women’s progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, explains the root causes, and offers compelling, commonsense solutions that can empower women to achieve their full potential.

Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and is ranked on Fortune’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2010, she gave an electrifying TEDTalk in which she described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which became a phenomenon and has been viewed more than two million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto.

In Lean In, Sandberg digs deeper into these issues, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to cut through the layers of ambiguity and bias surrounding the lives and choices of working women. She recounts her own decisions, mistakes, and daily struggles to make the right choices for herself, her career, and her family. She provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career, urging women to set boundaries and to abandon the myth of “having it all.” She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women in the workplace and at home.

Written with both humor and wisdom, Sandberg’s book is an inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth. Lean In is destined to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can.

Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer at Facebook. Prior to Facebook, she was vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google and chief of staff at the U.S. Treasury Department. Sheryl lives in Northern California with her husband and their two children.

“Honest and brave . . . The new manifesto for women in the workplace.”
—Oprah Winfrey
 
 “Lean In is an inauguration more than a last word, and an occasion for celebration . . . Many, many women, young and old, elite and otherwise, will find it prescriptive, refreshing, and perhaps even revolutionary.”
—Anna Holmes, The New Yorker
 
“A landmark manifesto . . . Fifty years after The Feminine Mystique . . . Sandberg addresses 21st-century issues that never entered Betty Friedan’s wildest dreams . . . Lean In will be an influential book. It will open the eyes of women who grew up thinking that feminism was ancient history, who recoil at the word but walk heedlessly through the doors it opened. And it will encourage those women to persevere in their professional lives.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
 
 “Lean In poses a set of ambitious challenges to women: to create the lives we want, to be leaders in our work, to be partners in our homes, and to be champions of other women. Sheryl provides pragmatic advice on how women in the twenty-first century can meet these challenges. I hope women—and men—of my generation will read this book to help us build the lives we want to lead and the world we want to live in.”
—Chelsea Clinton
 
“I approached it wearing two hats—one as CEO [and] the other as the parent of a nine-year-old daughter. In both capacities, I feel that Lean In is a must read.”
—Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO, in Fortune
 
“Inspirational . . . Sandberg offers concrete suggestions on how to make our work and home life more satisfying and successful.”
—Kare Anderson, Forbes
 
“What Sandberg offers is a view that shows 20-somethings that choices and tradeoffs surely exist, but that the ‘old normal’ of blunting ambition so that you can fit in one category or another does not have to be the way it is. And that each of us has a say in what comes next. And that includes men.”
—Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, The Atlantic
 
“Sheryl Sandberg has done a tremendous service with this work. It offers a vital and sharp message, for women and men. We need great leaders in key seats spread throughout all sectors of society, and we simply cannot afford to lose 50 percent of the smartest, most capable people from competing for those seats. Provocative, practical, and inspired!”
—Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
 
“Lively, entertaining, urgent, and yes, even courageous . . . Lean In is both a radical read and incredibly accessible . . . While it’s obvious that women have much to gain from reading Sandberg’s book, so do men—perhaps even more so . . . Lean In is the beginning of an important and long-overdue conversation in the United States—but it will only be a national conversation, and one that endures, if men do their part and lean in, too.”
—Michael Cohen, The Guardian
 
 “Grade: A . . . a rallying cry to working women . . . Lean In is the most cogent piece of writing I’ve encountered that speaks to the internal and institutional forces that can trip up an ambitious woman, whether she has a baby on board or not . . . The wisdom she shares here is a gift that all women (and all partners who support them, in the workplace or at home) should give themselves.”
—Meeta Agrawal, Entertainment Weekly
 
 “If you loved Sheryl Sandberg’s incredible TEDTalk on why we have too few women leaders, or simply believe as I do that we need equality in the boardroom, then this book is for you. As Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg has firsthand experience of why having more women in leadership roles is good for business as well as society. Lean In is essential reading for anyone interested in righting the injustice of this inequality.”
—Sir Richard Branson, chairman, the Virgin Group
 
“Sandberg’s message matters deeply: it has a shot at bringing about a cultural change that would improve the lives of all women.”
—Judith Warner, TIME
 
“A muscular manifesto on the gender inequities of the professional world . . . Sandberg is making a disruptive, crucial observation that puts her very much in line with Friedan: All is not just in the gendered world, and we should be talking urgently about how to make it better.”
—Rebecca Traister, Los Angeles Times
 
“No one who reads this book will ever doubt that Sandberg herself has the will to lead, not to mention the requisite commitment, intelligence, and ferocious work ethic . . . Sandberg is not just tough, however. She also comes across as compassionate, funny, honest, and likable . . . Most important, she is willing to draw the curtain aside on her own insecurities . . . Lean In is full of gems, slogans that ambitious women would do well to pin up on their wall . . . I nodded in recognition at so much of what Sandberg recounts, page after page.”
—Anne-Marie Slaughter, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
 
“Pivotal . . . It’s probably not an overstatement to say Sandberg is embarking on the most ambitious mission to reboot feminism and reframe discussions of gender since the launch of Ms. magazine in 1971. The thing is, she’s in a pretty good position to pull it off.”
—Belinda Luscombe, TIME
 
“Important . . . This is a great moment for all of us—women and men—to acknowledge that the current male-dominated model of success isn’t working for women, and it’s not working for men, either . . . The world needs women to redefine success beyond money and power. We need a third metric, based on our well-being, our health, our ability to unplug and recharge and renew ourselves, and to find joy in both our job and the rest of our life.”
—Arianna Huffington, Forbes
 
“I’ll bet most [women] will be thrilled by Lean In. I suspect at least a few men will read this book and think, Oh no, they’re starting to catch on.”
—Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair
 
“A lucidly written, well-argued, and unabashedly feminist take on women and work, replete with examples from the author’s life.”
—Julia Klein, USA Today
 
 “Having read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, I can testify that it addresses internalized oppression, opposes the external barriers that create it, and urges women to support each other to fight both. It argues not only for women’s equality in the workplace, but men’s equality in home-care and child-rearing. Even its critics are making a deep if inadvertent point: Only in women is success viewed as a barrier to giving advice.”
—Gloria Steinem
 
“Lean In has plenty for feminists and all women to applaud—and learn from . . . I’m glad Sandberg is speaking out. I’m glad she’s using her platform to help give women the tools to succeed, and to encourage all of us to go out and get what we want. The real strength of Lean In is in its Rosie the Riveter 2.0 message: ‘You can do it! Here’s how.’ . . . A crucial call to action.”
—Jill Filipovic, The Guardian
 
“A call to live fearlessly . . . Lean In is a memoir, a self-help book, a career management guide, and a feminist manifesto . . . Let’s hope this is a book that is read as much as talked about.”
—Marion Winik, Newsday
 
“Equality is a project everybody must work on together. For too long, achieving equality has been seen as women’s burden . . . By knowing this story, men will become more sophisticated thinkers and actors when it comes to gender . . . Lean In contains a whole lot for men to think seriously about . . . Men just need to read it.”
—Patrick Thibodeau, CIO Magazine
 
 “Unapologetic . . . Sandberg is using her power and influence to try and improve the worl...