Lean In By Sheryl Sandberg

[amazon_link id=”0753541645″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]As a woman who currently feels that she’s failing at life, when a friend suggested that I read ‘Lean In’ by Sheryl Sandberg, I thought. ‘Sure why not!’

In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Business – draws on her own experience of working in some of the world’s most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.

For those not in the know, Sheryl is the Chief operating officer of Facebook and the first woman to be on the board for the company, before she joined the social media giant, she had previously worked at Google as the vice president of global online sales and operations.

In her motivational and inspirational book ‘Lean in’ which derives from Sheryl’s TED talk, Sheryl speaks frankly and honestly about working in such a male dominated industry and how with the change of attitudes and behaviours, the industry could become more gender equal but that is only if women lean in.

With her wealth of experience of working for two of the worlds technological giants, Sheryl entertains the reader with not only her wisdom but also her wit, as she regales tales of casual everyday sexism, equal pay as well as candid tales of companies that had no idea how to deal with women in the workplace.

She reflects on stories of how her life changed when she became a mother and how people reacted to her news, instead of a time of excitement, people wondered how she would cope whereas her husband was congratulated!

Sheryl also talks of her interaction with Mark Zuckerberg, which I thought the film ‘The Social Network’ painted quite a bad picture of him whereas Sheryl’s engagement’s with him were insightful and interesting and far from the controlling character that the film portrayed.

For the most part, this book inspires women to speak up for themselves and show support for their fellow sisters. As the founder of ‘Lean In’ Sheryl encourages women not to sit on the sidelines of the meetings but to engage and lean in. To prove your value and worth to the company and not to settle and addresses ways to overcome obstacles to develop our careers.

Throughout the book, Sheryl has used many examples of incidents she has experienced in the workplace for being a woman and many of them, a lot of women could emphasise with.

A frank and motivational book from start to finish, ‘Lean In’ proves that with a lot of hard work, self belief and determination that we can all achieve our in end goals in life, but if we let our gender define us, then we’re not only letting ourselves down but also our sisters.

You can buy [amazon_link id=”0753541645″ target=”_blank” ]Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead from Amazon [/amazon_link] and is available to buy from good bookshops.