LEAN IN

A CLOSER LOOK AT A CONTROVERSIAL MUST-READ

In her controversial best-seller Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Facebook Chief Operations Officer Sheryl Sandberg suggests that many women react to the substantial challenges they face on their career paths by choosing to be self-limiting. When faced with pivotal turning points that could affect their ability to achieve the highest levels of leadership, a large percentage of women step back rather than take Sandberg’s suggestion to lean in.

Sandberg’s decision to focus on women’s internal struggles has drawn criticism that she does little to offer solutions for the institutional problems that present the most apparent barriers to the goal of creating more female leaders. A closer look at Lean In reveals that Sandberg is fully aware of the barriers women continue to face on the path to power. She simply prefers to attack them by helping women achieve leadership positions. This would enable women to have a more substantial stake in the decision-making processes that shape (and will ultimately smash) the current obstructions.

The Personal and the Professional

The self-help process provided by Lean In is contained in a series of chapters that interweave advice for a better career with relevant research and personal anecdotes from the author. Sandberg’s stories are likely the material that is doing the most to fuel the book’s fire as a topic of conversation.

Some tales, such as the story about Sandberg asking a private equity fund’s senior partner for directions to the women’s restroom, combine a pinch of humor with a strong dose of reality about the state of gender equality in the 21st century. Other incidents, such as Sandberg’s discovery that her daughter had lice while the pair were guests on the private plane owned by eBay, unintentionally provide more talking points about the growing concern over economic inequality in the United States.

Solid Advice for Everyone

Despite the protests, many of the core messages in Lean In have genuine merit for workers of both genders. She recommends that people have a short-term plan for career and personal advancement (Sandberg prefers an 18-month plan). She also addresses the importance of stretching one’s abilities by taking assignments that, while not directly labeled as a promotion, offer better opportunities to expand one’s skills.

Sandberg also deftly provides guidance from expert sources. One of the book’s best takeaways for readers is the advice Sandberg received from current Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. While Sandberg debated the merits of working for the nascent tech giant, Schmidt pointedly told her that the only deciding factor for choosing where to work is whether or not the company would rapidly expand. “When companies grow quickly,” Sandberg writes, “there are more things to do than there are people to do them.” Schmidt summarized the philosophy by saying, “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don’t ask what seat. You just get on.”

The problem, in Sandberg’s opinion, is that too many women either choose to get off the rocket just as its countdown nears launch or, worse yet, never get on at all. She spends a good portion of the book attempting to resolve the tug-of-war between career and family that she feels stops many future female leaders in their tracks. While her opinions in this area are left for readers to debate, there is enough good content in Lean In to make it a worthwhile read for men and women alike.

     

We have another two-webinar week coming to Soundview. Next week we will be hosting James Cusumano, author of Balance, and Stephen Shapiro, author of Best Practices Are Stupid. While these two topics are not related to one another, they are both important to every executive.

Balance: The Business-Life Connection by James Cusumano

In this Soundview Live webinar, Balance: Eight Steps for Success in Any Business, James Cusumano will provide a proven template for creating a successful business, and simultaneously, long-term balance and fulfillment in your personal life. Drawing from his just-released book Balance: The Business-Life Connection, the author brings three decades of diverse experience in technology and entertainment, which include Rock Star, Corporate Executive, Entrepreneur, Filmmaker, and Holistic Hotelier. He will show how to identify and unleash the power of life purpose and passion leading to long-term personal and professional fulfillment.

Best Practices Are Stupid by Stephen Shapiro

In This Soundview Live webinar, Why Best Practices Are Stupid, Stephen Shapiro will offer forty counterintuitive yet proven strategies for boosting innovation and making it a repeatable, sustainable, and profitable process at the heart of your company’s culture. Shapiro will show that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack.

You’re invited to attend one or both of these important events. Each webinar will be entertaining in its own way, as Cusumano explains his unusual career path and Shapiro debunks business’s sacred best practices.

If you’re not a current Soundview subscriber, now is the time to join. Both events are free for subscribers, and it only takes three events to cover the full cost of a subscription. Check out the options and join us.

     

Conflict is often viewed as one of the biggest roadblocks to achieving a shared goal. There are many instances in which it can bog down or completely derail a project from reaching completion. However, consultant Lina M. Echeverria, author of Idea Agent: Leadership that Liberates Creativity and Accelerates Innovation, argues that there is a hidden benefit to conflict: it can help your team achieve creative breakthroughs.

In a recent Soundview Author Insight interview, Echeverria addressed the concerns leaders have about conflict:

Conflict is one of the things that scares most leaders because it doesn’t feel good.  We have always been conditioned from early childhood not to fight.  Be good.  Be nice.  And it is not about encouraging fighting; it is about encouraging dialogue.  It is about encouraging the ability to disagree, to give other viewpoints and engage in a dialogue.  But as I say, it really feels in the pit of your stomach like, “Ugh, I don’t want to be here.”  So, what it takes first is a lot of courage once you have come to the realization that that conflict is an essential part of the creative process.

It is an essential part because people that are creative, that have a really good idea that others have not seen, are driven by this vision.  And this vision can be very, very powerful and they’re not going to stop because of any barriers until they achieve the mission.

So, when those viewpoints come from a different angle, you could have a lot of passion, each [person] pulling in a different direction or let’s say, pushing towards the center and trying to make [his or her idea] happen.  So, what is needed is to bring them to the team.  Have them understand that theirs is not the only way and that they need to learn to respect others while at the same time, helping them understand how their behavior can impact the dynamics of the team and can push others down.

Soundview subscribers can login to their online library to hear the complete interview with Echeverria. The Soundview Executive Book Summary of Idea Agent is available for download now.

     

We searched our archives for this book review on a topic that is just as relevant today as when the book was written in 2007. You can also watch our webinar with Patrick Lencioni to gain more insight into this topic.

SEEING THE SIGNS

Great pay. Interesting work. A fancy title and an assistant. These are the elements that make for a truly great job, right? One where the person lucky enough to have it is happy, content and eager to go into work each day. Meanwhile, those people unlucky enough to be stuck in low-paying, less glamorous jobs, like waitresses, garbage men and editorial assistants, are bound to be miserable and plagued by those “Sunday Blues,” even on a Wednesday.

Not so, according to Patrick Lencioni, author of The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (And Their Employees). Fascinated with why people stay in demoralizing, unfulfilling positions since watching his father trudge off to his own miserable job day after day, Lencioni has paid close attention to the work world, continually refining his theories about job satisfaction.

At first, he too fell for the misconception that well-paying, interesting work is all that is necessary for job satisfaction. He even changed his own career based on this theory. But then, Lencioni says, “… I met more and more people with supposedly great jobs who, like me, dreaded going to work… The theory crumbled completely when I came across other people with less obviously attractive jobs who seemed to find fulfillment in their work… And so it became apparent to me that there must be more to job fulfillment than I had thought.”

In The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Lencioni explores the overlooked, and actually simple and obvious, causes of job misery in the hope that addressing these causes will not only minimize high turnover rates affecting many businesses, but, more importantly, end the suffering that job misery causes for many.

Once Upon a Time…

The author frames his theories as a fable, telling the story of Brian Bailey, a man who “love[s] being a manager.” Bailey, a recently retired CEO, begins the tale thinking that he and his wife will be moving to Lake Tahoe to enjoy a life of leisure; but only weeks into his retirement, his managerial instincts are challenged by a less-than-stellar experience ordering takeout from a neighborhood pizzeria. Bailey wonders why the pizzeria’s employees seem so miserable, particularly in comparison to their counterparts at other area restaurants, and soon seizes the opportunity to become the pizzeria’s weekend manager in order to investigate the cause of the staff’s misery and how to alleviate it. The reader journeys with Bailey as he works to increase the staff’s job fulfillment, discovering along the way a no-nonsense method for transforming a miserable job into a great one.

Defeating Immeasurability, Anonymity and Irrelevance

Lencioni’s fable utilizes the microcosm of the pizzeria, with its small staff and stakes, to illustrate the three elements that can make any job miserable: immeasurability, anonymity and irrelevance. In order to experience true job fulfillment, employees must be able to measure their progress and level of contribution in a way that does not depend on the whims or subjective views of their managers. According to Lencioni, they must also feel “understood and appreciated for their unique qualities by someone in a position of authority… People who see themselves as invisible, generic or anonymous cannot love their jobs, no matter what they are doing.”

Finally, employees must have a clear idea that their work matters, that it has relevance for others. Lencioni provides vivid, relatable examples of each of these misery-causing factors in his depiction of the pizzeria’s employees and their situation when Brian Bailey enters their lives.

The story of how Bailey then turns this miserable situation around provides a blueprint for any organization — regardless of size or industry — to increase job fulfillment for its staff. The reader watches Bailey develop his theory of job fulfillment and combat feelings of immeasurability, anonymity and irrelevance among his staff. Lencioni presents his readers with a simple, straightforward cure that depends upon effective, empathetic management, and offers hope for everyone affected by job misery. Ultimately, Lencioni’s business-fiction format keeps his work from being relegated to the dry, academic realm of the textbook, but still provides readers with valuable theories.

     

Next week we will be hosting two excellent Soundview Live webinars around the topic of communication and influence. This topic has become critical with changes in the business environment, including a new digital generation entering the workforce, the advent of social media, more people tele-commuting, and companies becoming more culturally and ethnically diverse.

May 13^th: How to Hold REAL Conversations with John Stoker

In this Soundview Live webinar, How to Hold REAL Conversations, John Stoker offers clear explanations of the theoretical aspects of conversation along with practical application of real skills that will help you to connect with others in a deep and meaningful way.

What You’ll Learn:

• The four conversation skills that make for effective communication.
• The eight principles for conducting REAL conversations.
• The effectiveness model of conversation involving Respect, Results and Relationship.

May 15^th: The New Science of Leading Change with David Maxfield

In this Soundview Live webinar, The New Science of Leading Change, you’ll be the first to hear from author David Maxfield about the new research, case studies, and content featured in the latest edition of Influencer. David will teach influence strategies for achieving  profoundly better results by changing bad and entrenched human habits. And he will examine, in detail, why people do what they do and what it takes as a leader to help them act differently.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to use three keys of influence to become a true leader.
• How to identify a handful of high-leverage behaviors that lead to rapid and profound change.
• How to apply strategies for changing both thoughts and actions.
• How to marshall six sources of influence to make change inevitable.

Please consider joining us for one or both of these important webinars. As always Soundview subscribers attend free of charge. You can fill a conference room with colleagues on one registration, and submit questions to the authors throughout the presentations.