According to Dan Bowling, “We have a guest blogger this week at “Psychology at Work.” She is a recent honors graduate from Duke University and is preparing to move to Manhattan to start a new life and career. I asked her whether Sheryl Sandburg’s well-received book Lean In offers anything useful to a woman just entering the workplace, and here are her thoughts. By the way, she is my daughter.”
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[Here is a brief excerpt.]
In the generation of Twitter, where new information is delivered in 140 characters rather than essays or journal articles, the idea of reading an entire book such as Sheryl Sandburg’s Lean In to learn how to succeed seems archaic. Instead, the road to success for many young women, including myself, consists of adding a pin to our “Dream Job” Pinterest board titled “How to Dress for Success,” which is composed of a few photographs of women in pant suits and a one-sentence caption explaining why wearing black to an interview is better than wearing canary yellow. I admit I have found myself forwarding my friends the Buzzfeed article, “The 10 Most Awesome Cover Letters on the Internet,” which includes a candidate with “cat-like reflexes” who “once killed a hawk with a ninja star.” I, of course, counted the time I spent reading this particular article as productive job searching, though I’m not sure if my cover letter reflected my efforts.
These days, people in their early 20s are impatient. It’s the truth. We want to get all the answers with the least amount of effort, and when it comes to our future, we want to pin a “Guide to Getting Ahead” to our “how to” board and have all of our problems be solved. While this book – the ultimate “how-to” – seems like a fantasy, I have to say that Sandburg, the woman who helped build the foundation of our technology-driven generation through her time at Google and Facebook, got pretty darn close.
I have never considered myself a feminist. In fact, although many women my age reap the benefits of the courageous feminists who came before us, most of us shy away from the title, fearing the radical connotation that it implies. Thus, I tread softly when beginning Lean In, which Sandburg dubbed a “sort of feminist manifesto.” I anticipated being affronted by a woman accusing corrupt businesses and misogynistic men of intentionally holding women back. Instead, I found a humble, relatable and successful businesswoman and mother who addresses the issue of gender equality in a way that does not cast blame, but provides well-articulated advice in an easy-to-read format.
While Sandburg addresses the social norms and institutional setbacks that must be overcome to reach true gender equality, she chooses to use her book to approach the problem from the inside, explaining that women cannot just be placed on the same playing field as men, but that we must put ourselves there.
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Daniel S. Bowling III is an expert on the science of well-being and work and conducts empirical research on this topic through the University of Pennsylvania. Formerly, he was a partner in a major law firm and later, the global head of human resources at Coca-Cola Enterprises, where he directed all HR activities for more than 80,000 employees worldwide. He currently holds faculty positions at both Duke Law School and UPenn. He also leads a consulting firm, Positive Workplace Solutions, that works with some of the largest institutions in the country showing that well-being enhances not just life satisfaction but productivity and performance, and writes and speaks extensively on these topics. He can be reached at his firm.