one day i woke up to an email urging me to read the sheryl sandberg profile in the new yorker “so we can talk about it.”
in the course of my reading the profile, two other friends sent similar emails, and when i walked over to a colleague’s desk, i saw that she, too, was making her way down the arduous (9 new yorker pages worth) read.
at the end of a long work day, i had already “shared” it with my friends in my “social circle,” the world that sheryl sandberg, the object of ken auletta’s observatory affection, knows only too well.
what struck me the most about auletta’s account of sandberg were two things:
the first, how articles like these are still read, marveled at, gasped over, shared through out, and most of all, relevant. it irks me that after all those years and speeches and luncheons later, we are still shocked to find that a.) men dominate silicon valley; b.) men dominate the financial district; and c.) men likely dominate the in-betweens as well. we are still laden with genuine dismay to learn that women have it bad. and it’s not just the men folks’ fault.
yes, we’ve heard that there’s no female solidarity in the work force, that women are reticent to help other women out yadiyadiyadah, but what’s the use in talking about it, if there is nothing to be done about it?
why is it, as sandberg astutely points out, competence and likability inversely correlated for women when this is not the case for men?
the second, so much of this profile spoke to me, but the one part that really stung me the most was when she describes that female affliction: the imposter syndrome (in which powerful women are convinced they only got they are today because of dumb luck, hard work, or good timing):
Sandberg graduated first in the economics department. At her Phi Beta Kappa induction, there were separate ceremonies for men and women. At hers, a woman gave a speech called “Feeling Like a Fraud.” During the talk, Sandberg looked around the room and saw people nodding. “I thought it was the best speech I’d ever heard,” she recalls. “I felt like that my whole life.” At every stage of her time in school, Sandberg thought, I really fooled them. There was “zero chance,” she concluded, that the men in the other room felt the same.
reading this, what came to my mind were the countless – truly innumerable – email exchanges, phone conversations, skye chats, and red wine sessions i have had over the years with girl friends of mine on just this fact. how after self-diagnosing myself with imposter syndrome, i have come to hold as true the diametrically opposing belief that yes, i do suffer from this disease, and no, all that i have not on merit. i am pretty sure any minute now, the world will find out that i am a fraud. (really, any minute now) it is cognitive dissonance at its best/worst.
why are women hesitant to give themselves the credit they deserve? i am not sure, but i confess: it does bring some relief to know that sandberg and the rest of us are more or less in this together. she describes how she happened to have gotten into harvard, where she happened to have taken a course which was taught by larry summers who happened to have gone to the treasury and happened to have taken her with him from where she happened to have joined a company which turned out to be google. right.
it is true what a wiser person once said. it is terribly easy to read a polished resume and marvel at the drive, the foresight, the care to have a plan. but what is not written in between the lines are countless nights meandering the valley of uncertainty, double, sometimes triple guessing oneself. the nights spent tossing and turning over life’s great decisions. these lowlights are never chronicled in public profiles and we will never know what happened in their private realms of defeat.
back in toronto, my sharing of the sandberg profile inspired a flesh-and-blood get together. during the ensuing sushi dinner we agonized over more school, jobs might turn out to be careers, jobs that may not, moving for love, staying for learning, and growing up to be real persons.
that night, i came home to re-read the last few paragraphs of the article so that i could ask myself the question: what would you do if you weren’t afraid?
She described a poster on the wall at Facebook: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” She said that it echoed something the writer Anna Quindlen once said, which was that “she majored in unafraid” at Barnard. Sandberg went on, “Don’t let your fears overwhelm your desire. Let the barriers you face—and there will be barriers—be external, not internal. Fortune does favor the bold. I promise that you will never know what you’re capable of unless you try. You’re going to walk off this stage today and you’re going to start your adult life. Start out by aiming high. . . . Go home tonight and ask yourselves, What would I do if I weren’t afraid? And then go do it! Congratulations.”
(can’t get enough? see her vogue profile here. i know some are convinced this is just a ploy to divert attention from the google+ launch, but for once, can we pretend otherwise?)
wait, you haven’t answered the question. what would you do if you weren’t afraid? go home tonight and ask yourself that question. if you’re already home, guess what? you can do it right now. set aside three minutes to let your mind wander. the answer will matter to you. and if not, it will at least help you define what might.
