This echoes the way society penalises male leaders for revealing emotional weakness. Both men and women are hindered by gender norms. For women, it could do more harm than good.
In a culture that does not value such attributes among women, contravening expected patterns carries risks. A fixation on fixing women — without proof it pays off — steers resources away from anti-discrimination initiatives that could actually make a difference. In any case there is very little evidence confidence makes good workers. Overconfident workers can be liabilities. Read more: Gap or trap? Confidence backlash is the real problem for women.
Workplaces would be served better by basing their hiring and promotion decisions on competency and capability rather than confidence and charisma.
Festival of Social Science — Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. About three months into forming our group, we learned that three of the seven women in our group had asked for raises , all inspired by the book or our meetings. Additionally, we had an eye-opening discussion where we noticed how much we all downplayed our own achievements in describing our accomplishments at work. While our group had some racial diversity and job industry diversity, we were all well-educated, white-collar New York City professionals, and none of us were mothers.
I now believe that Lean In promoted a completely unrealistic portrait of what working motherhood is like. I took her advice seriously in when I was offered a higher-profile, higher-paying, more demanding job where there would be no other parents on my team, even though I was trying to get pregnant at the time. Being a trailblazer is what leaning in is all about, right? In the Sheryl Sandberg playbook, I had nothing to worry about. But not only did my Lean In devotion not prepare me for the challenges I faced in the coming years as a new mom, its rose-colored doctrine also supplied me with plenty of damaging illusions.
My son was born in July with some serious but treatable health problems. His illness filled my earliest moments of motherhood with trauma and anxiety. But I was still back at my desk when my too-short maternity leave was up, because I was terrified that my colleagues would judge me as not committed to my job if I tried to take more time to be with my baby.
I went on to lose that job shortly after returning from leave. This turn of events shattered my self-confidence and led me to question my whole identity as a competent professional.
In my darker moments, I was convinced everyone had this working mom thing figured out but me, that I was just personally a failure. I was no longer leaning into negotiations for plum positions of leadership. I felt like I was just scraping by for professional survival. In the coming years, I started to turn my journalistic attention toward working mothers. For women who have children during the prime childbearing years of 25 to 35, their earnings never recover, and their salaries often drop precipitously after having a kid.
I believe telling mothers to raise their hands and try harder in the open sea of hostility we face in the workplace is like handing a rubber ducky to someone hit by a tsunami. I think it also inadvertently encourages us to internalize our own discrimination, leading us to blame ourselves for getting passed over for raises, eased out of jobs, not getting called for job interviews, and being denied promotions.
I now believe the greatest lie of Lean In is its underlying message that most companies and bosses are ultimately benevolent, that hard work is rewarded, that if women shed the straitjacket of self-doubt, a meritocratic world awaits us.
My own life, and my research and reporting, along with interacting with hundreds of mothers in the past two years, has convinced me this is untrue. Improve this question. Yoichi Oishi. The scare quotes make me think this is a new term, invented by Sheryl Sandberg to describe this particular behavior. I provided a definition of that expression in this question: english. Actually, now that I think of it, this is very natural to use for heavy physical labor, to try extra hard, putting extra weight to psh something very heavy, put your weight behind it.
The title is an easy metaphor for 'dont just let things happen, try harder'. Frank H. Show 4 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. I don't understand how "lean in" ever came to be used to describe the pursuit of promotion at work. To me, the phrase has certainly got a meaning - most typically, to lean in through a doorway or window to see something while remaining on the outside. Moreover, to lean is a passive, drooping stance with little or no implication of the energy and activity needed to get ahead at work.
I note that many people ask what the phrase means.
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