Great Throughts Treasury

"A 2011 McKinsey report noted that men are promoted based on potential, while women are promoted based on past accomplishments."

"We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests."

"A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes."

"After several rounds of interviews with Google?s founders, they offered me a job. My bank account was diminishing quickly, so it was time to get back to paid employment, and fast. In typical?and yes, annoying?MBA fashion, I made a spreadsheet and listed my various opportunities in the rows and my selection criteria in the columns. I compared the roles, the level of responsibility, and so on. My heart wanted to join Google in its mission to provide the world with access to information, but in the spreadsheet game, the Google job fared the worst by far. I went back to Eric and explained my dilemma. The other companies were recruiting me for real jobs with teams to run and goals to hit. At Google, I would be the first business unit general manager, which sounded great except for the glaring fact that Google had no business units and therefore nothing to actually manage. Not only was the role lower in level than my other options, but it was entirely unclear what the job was in the first place. Eric responded with perhaps the best piece of career advice that I have ever heard. He covered my spreadsheet with his hand and told me not to be an idiot (also a great piece of advice). Then he explained that only one criterion mattered when picking a job?fast growth. When"

"And in situations where a man and a woman each receive negative feedback, the woman's self-confidence and self-esteem drop to a much greater degree. The internalization of failure and the insecurity it breeds hurt future performance, so this pattern has serious long-term consequences."

"Another one of my favorite posters at Facebook declares in big red letters, Done is better than perfect. I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst."

"Anyone lucky enough to have options should keep them open. Don't enter the workforce already looking for the exit. Don't put on the breaks. Accelerate. Keep a foot on the gas pedal until a decision must be made. That's the only way to ensure that when that day comes, there will be a real decision to make."

"An internal report at Hewlett-Packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements. This difference has a huge ripple effect. Women need to shift from thinking 'I'm not ready to do that' to thinking 'I want to do that-- and I'll learn by doing it."

"A feminist is someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes."

"Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments come at a cost.17"

"As a Facebook summer intern once told me, In my school?s computer science department, there are more Daves than girls."

"As an associate at McKinsey & Company, my first assignment was on a team that consisted of a male senior engagement manager (SEM) and two other male associates, Abe Wu and Derek Holley. When the SEM wanted to talk to Abe or Derek, he would walk over to their desks. When he wanted to talk to me, he would sit at his desk and shout, Sandberg, get over here! with the tone one might use to call a child or, even worse, a dog. It made me cringe every time. I never said anything, but one day Abe and Derek started calling each other Sandberg in that same loud voice. The self-absorbed SEM never seemed to notice. They kept it up. When having too many Sandbergs got confusing, they decided we needed to differentiate. Abe started calling himself Asian Sandberg, Derek dubbed himself good-looking Sandberg, and I became Sandberg Sandberg. My colleagues turned an awful situation into one where I felt protected. They stood up for me and made me laugh. They were the best mentors I could have had."

"Anyone who brings up gender in the workplace is wading into deep and muddy waters. The subject itself presents a paradox, forcing us to acknowledge differences while trying to achieve the goal of being treated the same."

"As former secretary of state Madeleine Albright once said, ?There?s a special place in hell for women who don?t help other women.?"

"As Sharon Poczter, professor of economics at Cornell, explains, ?The antiquated rhetoric of ?having it all? disregards the basis of every economic relationship: the idea of trade-offs.? All of us are dealing with the constrained optimization that is life, attempting to maximize our utility based on parameters like career, kids, relationships, etc., doing our best to allocate the resource of time. Due to the scarcity of this resource, therefore, none of us can ?have it all,? and those who claim to are most likely lying."

"As women get more powerful, they get less likable. I see women holding themselves back because of this, but if we start talking about the success-likability penalty women face, then we can do something about it."

"At a small dinner with other business executives, the guest of honor spoke the entire time without taking a breath. This meant that the only way to ask a question or make an observation was to interrupt. Three or four men jumped in, and the guest politely answered their questions before resuming his lecture. At one point, I tried to add something to the conversation and he barked, Let me finish! You people are not good at listening! Eventually, a few more men interjected and he allowed it. Then the only other female executive at the dinner decided to speak up--and he did it again! He chastised her for interrupting. After the meal, one of the male CEOs pulled me aside to say that he had noticed that only the women had been silenced. He told me he empathized, because as a Hispanic, he has been treated like this many times."

"At best, people are open to scrutinizing themselves and considering their blind spots; at worst, they become defensive and angry."

"As women must be more empowered at work, men must be more empowered at home. I have seen so many women inadvertently discourage their husbands from doing their share by being too controlling or critical. Social scientists call this maternal gatekeeping which is a fancy term for Ohmigod, that's not the way you do it! Just move aside and let me... Anyone who wants her mate to be a true partner must treat him as an equal--and equally capable partner. And if that's note reason enough, bear in mind that a study found that wives who engage in gatekeeping behaviors do five more hours of family work per week than wives who take a more collaborative approach. Another common and counterproductive dynamic occurs when women assign or suggest takes to their partners. She is delegating, and that's a step in the right direction. But sharing responsibility should mean sharing responsibility. Each partner needs to be in charge of specific activities or it becomes too easy for one to feel like he's doing a favor instead of doing his part."

"At last, someone was articulating exactly how I felt. Every time I was called on in class, I was sure that I was about to embarrass myself. Every time I took a test, I was sure that it had gone badly. And every time I didn't embarrass myself?or even excelled?I believed that I had fooled everyone yet again. One day soon, the jig would be up."

"Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential."

"Decades of social science studies have confirmed what the Heidi/Howard case study so blatantly demonstrates: we evaluate people based on stereotypes (gender, race, nationality, and age, among others). Our stereotype of men holds that they are providers, decisive, and driven. Our stereotype of women holds that they are caregivers, sensitive, and communal. Because we characterize men and women in opposition to each other, professional achievement and all the traits associated with it get placed in the male column."

"But I really believe that when you give people authentic identity, which is what Facebook does, and you can be your real self and connect with real people online, things will change."

"At Facebook, we try to be a strengths-based organization, which means we try to make jobs fit around people rather than make people fit around jobs. We focus on what people's natural strengths are and spend our management time trying to find ways for them to use those strengths every day."

"But the upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance."

"But knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to make them better. When the suffragettes marched in the streets, they envisioned a century later, men and women would be truly equal. A century later, we are still squinting, trying to bring that vision into focus."

"But instead of blaming women for not negotiating more, we need to recognize that women often have good cause to be reluctant to advocate for their own interests because doing so can easily backfire."

"Career progression often depends upon taking risks and advocating for oneself?traits that girls are discouraged from exhibiting. This may explain why girls? academic gains have not yet translated into significantly higher numbers of women in top jobs."

"Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder. As Lori describes it, ladders are limiting?people can move up or down, on or off. Jungle gyms offer more creative exploration. There?s only one way to get to the top of a ladder, but there are many ways to get to the top of a jungle gym. The jungle gym model benefits everyone,"

"Communication works best when we combine appropriateness with authenticity, finding that sweet spot where opinions are not brutally honest but delicately honest."

"Conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles giving strong and powerful voice to their needs and concerns."

"Eric Schmidt explained that only one criterion that mattered when picking a job- fat growth. When companies grow quickly, there are more things to do than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing, there is less to do and too many people to not be doing them. Politics and stagnation set in, and everyone falters, He told me, If you're offered a seat on a rocket sip, you don't ask what seat. You just get on."

"Endless data show that diverse teams make better decisions. We are building products that people with very diverse backgrounds use, and I think we all want our company makeup to reflect the makeup of the people who use our products. That's not true of any industry really, and we have a long way to go."

"Every job will demand some sacrifice. The key is to avoid unnecessary sacrifice."

"Done is better than perfect."

"Every social movement struggles with dissension within its ranks, in part because advocates are passionate and unlikely to agree on every position and solution."

"Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter."

"Every company I know is looking for more women at the table. Every board is looking for more women at the table. There's a reason why men want to understand the challenges women face, address them, because then they're going to be better hirers, attracters and retainers of women."

"Everyone knows that marriage is the biggest personal decision you make, but it's the biggest career decision you can make... Partner with the right person, because you cannot have a full career and a full life at home with the children if you are also doing all the housework and childcare."

"Effective communication starts with the understanding that there is my point of view (my truth) and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak the truth are very silencing of others. When we recognize that we can see things only from our own perspective, we can share our views in a nonthreatening way."

"Every woman I know, particularly the senior ones, has been called too aggressive at work. We know in gender blind studies that men are more aggressive in their offices than women. We know that. Yet we're busy telling all the women that they're too aggressive. That's the issue."

"For any of us in this room today, let's start out by admitting we're lucky. We don't live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited."

"Feeling confident - or pretending that you feel confident - is necessary to reach for opportunities. It's a clich‚, but opportunities are rarely offered; they're seized."

"Feminism wasn't supposed to make us feel guilty, or prod us into constant competition over who is raising children better, organizing more cooperative marriages, or getting less sleep. It was supposed to make us free -to give us not only choices but the ability to make these choices without constantly feeling that we'd somehow gotten it wrong."

"For any of us in this room today, let?s start out by admitting we?re lucky. We don?t live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited. YES! We have been saying this for years ourselves. It?s so important to take a step back from time to time and appreciate the fact that we have so many options that were never possibilities for generations before us."

"First, women must come across as being nice, concerned about others, and appropriately female. When women take a more instrumental approach (This is what I want and deserve), people react far more negatively. There is a saying, Think globally, act locally. When negotiating, Think personally, act communally."

"Fortune does favor the bold and you'll never know what you're capable of if you don't try."

"From an early age, girls get the message that they will likely have to choose between succeeding at work and being a good wife and mother. By the time they are in college, women are already thinking about the trade-offs. In a survey of Princeton?s class of 2006, 62% of women said they anticipated work/family conflict, compared with 33% of men?and of the men who expected a conflict, 46% expected that their wives would step away from their career track. These expectations yield predictable results: among professional women who take time off for family, only 40% return to work full time."

"For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst."

"Girls are increasingly outperforming boys in the classroom, earning about 57 percent of the undergraduate and 60 percent of the master?s degrees in the United States."