Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, on Using Your Voice For Good

Speaker 0:00 [upbeat music] [audience applauding]

Sheryl Sandberg 0:14 I am really excited to be here, so thank you all for having me.

Speaker 0:17 Well, we're thrilled to have you. Thank you so much for being here, Sheryl. So there's a lot to talk about today, your new book, Option B, um, but where I'd really love to start is with the early part of your career. So you left the Treasury in 2001, and you were contemplating various different opportunities here in Silicon Valley, one of which was to join Google as its first business unit manager. Um, and Eric Schmidt is a lecturer here. He was also a View From The Top guest recently. Did he really tell you to, "Don't be stupid, just get on the rocket ship"?

Sheryl Sandberg 0:50 Yeah, he did.

Speaker 0:51 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 0:51 I, um... I mean, it's an interesting day to be here, because today, uh, Mark Zuckerberg, my boss, is giving the Harvard commencement, where he and I both went, but I graduated [laughs] .

Speaker 1:01 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 1:02 Just saying. Only one of us finished. Um, but he gets, he gets his degree, he gets his degree today. But I was working on my post, and I, I'm gonna do a post after his graduation, uh, speech finishes in an hour or so. And, you know, what I said is that when I graduated from college, Mark Zuckerberg was in elementary school.

Speaker 1:20 [laughs]

Speaker 1:21 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 1:22 And the lesson you draw from that, and I really mean this so deeply, is, like, you know, two career thoughts. One is do not try to draw a straight line, and the second is find, find the rocket ship that matters to you. Hi, Dad. Sorry. [laughs]

Speaker 1:35 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 1:37 On the first, and you know what really matters here is if you try to plan out your career, anyone who thinks you know exactly what you're gonna do for the next 30 years, here's what I promise, or 40 years. It's gonna be boring, and you're gonna miss all the good stuff, because all the good stuff hasn't been invented yet. The thing that's really gonna change the world, you don't yet know what it was. And so if I had mapped out my career, you know, Mark was in elementary school, and there was no internet.

Speaker 2:03 Right.

Speaker 2:04 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 2:04 There was no internet when I graduated from college. And so I tell people, you wanna have a really long-run dream, and you wanna have a short-run plan. And that short-run plan, and it's important, it's not about what you accomplish, especially in the early days. It's about what you help other people accomplish and about what you learn. You invest in yourself, you invest in, in the success of your teams, of other people, and, and that, and that works. And the second is the rocket ship lesson. So I was at the Treasury. I didn't really ever think I'd live in California, but from the point of view of the US Treasury, all the exciting stuff was happening out here in these companies that didn't exist. And so I wanted to work in Silicon Valley. Um, but it was actually hard. It was 2000, 2000, 2001. Lots of people said, "I would never hire anyone like you," to my face. There was a huge bust. The tech, first tech bubble had just burst, and so it was actually hard to get a job. And when I finally got one at Google, it felt like the wrong job. I had a spreadsheet. Some of you have those. It had my criteria for my jobs. And the problem with the Google job is other than loving the company, it met none of the criteria. I was a business unit general manager, but, you know, I'm not that dumb. There were no business units.

Speaker 3:15 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 3:15 So that d- job title didn't mean anything. It was also a couple levels lower than other job offers I had elsewhere. And Eric, did, he put his hand on my little spreadsheet when I showed him my criteria and how Google met none of it except that I loved the company, and said, "You love the mission. This is a rocket ship. When you get offered a seat on the rocket ship, you don't ask what seat." And this is one of the most common career mistakes I see people make all the time. All of someone coming out of government, or someone who's in legal, or someone who's in marketing, and they wanna change careers. They wanna move from marketing to sales. Well, it's not hard. Maybe it's not a good example. From legal to marketing-

Speaker 3:54 Mm-hmm

Sheryl Sandberg 3:55 ... or from politics or industries. And then you'll say, "Okay, we're willing to take a chance on you. You'll start here." And they're like, "But that's three levels lower, or two years behind." And I'm looking at them. I'm like, "If you're gonna work for the next 40 years, why do you care?"

Speaker 4:08 Right.

Sheryl Sandberg 4:08 Get yourself. And the job I took at Google and the job I took at Facebook were more junior than every other job offer I had.

Speaker 4:16 Right.

Sheryl Sandberg 4:17 But they turned out to be much bigger opportunities.

Speaker 4:20 And so when you're facing that decision of, of joining Mark when he was, I think, 23 at the time, younger than most of us in the room, um, what advice could you offer to us, those of us who find ourselves in a non-founding leadership position, about respecting the founder's culture while also making your own impact?

Sheryl Sandberg 4:39 So there are a lot of founder-driven companies out here. There are o- elsewhere, but I think it's broader than that. I think the lesson is about how do you build the relationships at work that are gonna last.

Speaker 4:49 Mm-hmm.

Sheryl Sandberg 4:50 And it turns out it's in- immensely similar to building relationships at home. You know what matters, for relationships in, in your friendship. What matters is that you care about the other people. You have aligned goals, right? When you've had friends, think about friendships in your life. We've all had this, where you've had friends that you kinda wanted the same things, and you stayed good friends for a long time, or a boyfriend or girlfriend. And sometimes that doesn't work, but if you want the same things, and then you're willing to care about the person and really know the person, uh, you can make it work. Probably the best advice I got from this was from Dave, my husband, when I was interviewing with Mark. Mark and I actually had a lot of stuff we ha- We, it's not that we didn't agree. It's that we couldn't figure it out. What was gonna be Facebook's business model? You know, what were we gonna do on these things? And what Dave said to me is he said, "Don't even bother sorting out the substance before you take the job, because all you'll have done is sorted out today's substance."

Speaker 5:45 Mm-hmm.

Sheryl Sandberg 5:46 "And it'll all change. What you need to sort out before you take the job is the process. Can you and Mark disagree on something and work it out? Can you convince him of something he didn't believe, and does he convince you an awful lot?" ... of things he believes, because a lot of the stuff's gonna go his way.

Speaker 6:04 Right.

Sheryl Sandberg 6:04 Pay attention to the process. And we spent a couple months really spending a lot of time together, and in that time I learned a lot, and he convinced me of lots of things I hadn't thought of before. And there were one or two times when I convinced him, and I watched him accept my poi- point of view. And then on the way in, w- I didn't ask him for anything except a commitment to the process of our relationship.

Speaker 6:25 Right.

Sheryl Sandberg 6:26 So all I asked for was we'd sit together, we would always have meetings. So we agreed we'd have the first meeting of the week and the last meeting of the week just the two of us.

Speaker 6:34 Mm-hmm.

Sheryl Sandberg 6:34 And we would... And I asked him, he would always give me feedback once a week, and he jumped in and said, "As long as you give me feedback once a week." And that was when I took the job, was when he said that. So paying attention to the process by which you're gonna work with someone on the way into a job, along with values alignment, alignment of what the purpose of the company is, I think is the most important thing you can do.

Speaker 6:58 And he's really grown into a friend. It sounds like he and his wife Priscilla were incredible to you, um, following Dave's passing. Can you, can you share a little bit more about how that friendship has evolved over the years?

Sheryl Sandberg 7:11 Yeah. People used to write about us that we were, uh, like the Silicon Valley odd couple.

Speaker 7:16 [laughs]

Speaker 7:17 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 7:17 You know? And, and maybe in some ways we were, but we're not now. I mean, he is one of my absolutely closest friends in the world, and so is Priscilla. You know, Mark's an incredible person, and not just the brilliance we see in Facebook, but if you have a chance to watch his commencement speech today, watch it, because it has a very clear vision of what a global and connected world is. That is a vision that he really has that I think would be very good for the world, and, um, is feeling like it needs more support than it has right now. And he's putting that out there into the world in a very brave and a very bold way, and I'm proud of him for doing that. Um, as a friend, y- you know, when Dave died, Mark, he didn't just help me, um, but he really helped build my self-confidence back up. And it was one of the most surprising things about losing Dave was that, you know, I wrote Lean In. I've thought about self-confidence an awful lot.

Speaker 8:20 Right.

Sheryl Sandberg 8:20 And I spent years running around. You know, we have 32,000 Lean In Circles in 150 countries. Like, I've spent years giving other people, other women advice on how to build their self-confidence. And in giving that advice, I really thought I understood my own and had built my own up. I was pretty open in the book in areas where I didn't have enough. But when Dave died, I didn't think I was capable of anything. I could barely go to work and not cry. I was parenting on my own, two grieving children. And what happened before Dave died is that when someone was having a problem at work, and people have real hardship that they're going through, and then they come to work, I would think my job was to take the pressure off them. "I'm so sorry this is happening. Do you not wanna be here?" But what I figured out is that when I came back to work and people said to me, those kind of things, I said to them, "Oh, don't worry. You know, of course you can't concentrate with all you're going through," that really undermined my-

Speaker 9:13 Right

Sheryl Sandberg 9:13 ... self-confidence 'cause it made me feel like, "Oh, my God, that's exactly right." What Mark did was, "Take as much time as you want," and companies need better policies. I'm very proud of Facebook's. You know, "Take as much time as you want," but he also did, "But you made a really good point today."

Speaker 9:30 Mm-hmm.

Sheryl Sandberg 9:31 And so what I learned is now when people are facing hardship at work, I will both give them time off, but I will say, "But here's the project if you want it. We still believe in you." And that's true not just with death. It's true of people who have been diagnosed with an illness. I've talked to so many people who are working through cancer. And, you know, they'll talk about, "I have chemo brain. No one thinks I can do anything." So if every time you interact with them, you say, "Oh, don't worry," that's helpful, but throw in a couple of good things they did, as long as they're true and legitimate, and that's even more helpful.

Speaker 10:04 Right. And so, um, let's, let's take a step back. So, um, you're on vacation with Dave and friends. Um, the unimaginable, as you say, happens, and you fly home to tell your two young children that their father was gone. The morning of his funeral, you decided to start writing a journal, and, and that turned into a, uh, a very, uh, famous and widely seen Facebook post. Why did you decide to share your very personal story so publicly?

Sheryl Sandberg 10:38 I mean, I never thought I would. I, um, after Dave died, it wasn't just the grief which was so overwhelming. It was really this pretty deep sense of isolation. You know, before Dave died, when I dropped my kids off at school, they go to a local public school here in Menlo Park, everyone would chitchat. I'd go to work, and everyone would chitchat. But after Dave died, I was walking around, I felt like a ghost. You know, everywhere I went was just kind of silence.

Speaker 11:02 Mm-hmm.

Sheryl Sandberg 11:02 And that's because people were so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they didn't say anything at all. And so I'd been keeping this journal, and when the Jewish period of mourning, which is Sheloshim, 30 days, was coming to a close, I thought about, like, writing what I would say if I were just honest. And I wrote the post, and then I went to bed the night before thinking, "There's zero chance I'm posting this. It's way too honest." And then I woke up the next day, and it really was so bad, I thought to myself, "Can't get worse. Might get better," and I hit post. And it helped. I mean, it didn't take the grief away and it didn't bring Dave back, but it took away the isolation, because people started talking to me again. A friend of mine at work said she'd been driving by my house every month, every day actually, for a month, and had never come in, so she started coming in. Strangers started talking to strangers. And what I realized through this process of my own grief, but also talking to other people, is that all of these challenges usher these huge elephants into the room, right? You wanna silence a room? Say you have cancer. You will completely silence any room you are in. Your dad just went to prison. You just lost your job. Any of these things, you lost a child, your child is sick, your husband di- I mean, just any of these things, you can even feel a quiet in the room when I say it, up here. And so that means that we don't help each other when we need each other the most. And one of the reasons I wrote Option B, and I'm glad that out of desperation I did share publicly, is I wanna try to kick those elephants out of those rooms, because they're not helping anyone get through it. And it doesn't mean any- everyone wants to talk about things all the time. They

Sheryl Sandberg 12:32 don't. But looking at someone and saying, "I know you're suffering. I know this is hard, and I'm here. When you wanna talk, when you wanna cry, or when you wanna just be, I am here," we could have an awful lot more of those conversations than we do. The other thing I learned through this is that one of the ways we offer help, and I did this all the time, was we say, "Is there anything I can do?" When we offer to help, that's actually the most common thing we do, right? That's what I used to do. The problem is when you're on the other side of that, it kinda shifts the burden to the person who's be- needs the help to come up with something, and most of the time you have no idea what to say. I mean, what runs through my mind every time is, "Can you make Father's Day go away so I don't have to live through it?" Like, not gonna happen. So there's a really nice story in my book about, uh, Dan and Esther Levy. They're community members of our community here, and they had a child who died very tragically. They were in the hospital for many months, and a friend of, of his showed up at the hospital and texted from the hospital lobby and said, "I'm in the ho- I'm in the lobby for a hug for the next hour whether you want it or not." And so a friend of mine read this in my book, Option B, and a friend of hers who, and this is an important part of the story, she's not a very close friend, she's just a friend, went into the hospital with her daughter. And so she said what she would've done is exactly nothing, because when a f- friend goes to the hospital, you don't show up. That's totally imposing. But she read my book, so she went to the toy store and she bought a big stuffed giraffe. She went to the lobby of the hospital and said, "I'm here with a toy. I could just leave it downstairs, but in case you're free." And the woman immediately texted back and said, "Please come upstairs." And she gave the four-year-old who has leukemia the toy, and she was unwrapping it, and the mother's standing behind her crying the whole time, saying, "Thank you for showing up." And in the hour she was there, no one else did. You don't have to be someone's best friend from the first grade, and you don't have to be a personal friend. You can be a work friend to show up, and we can do a lot more to show up for each other, to feel each other's pain, acknowledge, kick elephants out of the room, and be there for one another. And it'll make us stronger as friends, as family, as a community, and as colleagues wherever we work.

Speaker 14:41 One of the interesting things of, that you write about in, in Option B is that children are naturally more resilient than adults are. What have you learned from your own children about how to bounce back after adversity?

Sheryl Sandberg 14:55 Yeah. Children are sometimes [laughs] just, just to, to be clear, 'cause it's very-

Speaker 14:59 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 14:59 ... it's very important to understand. Children can be more resilient than adults, but children also need a lot of support. So children need to build resilience. They need to build a resilience for trauma like mine have faced. They need to build resilience for a lot of the things we don't provide. I mean, we have a problem in this country where, you know, we have 37% of single moms living in poverty, 40% if you're Black or Latina, and the poverty line is low. So many, many more people are facing real challenges of putting food on the table. And so these children are not getting a good education. They're not getting the support they need from our government. They're not getting the support they need from communities. And so those children need more than resilience. They need actual support and actual education and actual healthcare, and we need to provide that. And then there's the everyday challenges, and children need resilience for that, too. And so there are very specific things we can do to build resilience in our children, and one of them, and probably the most important, is something psychologists call mattering. Tell kids they matter. "Your opinion matters to me."

Speaker 16:02 Mm-hmm.

Sheryl Sandberg 16:03 "What you do matters to me. I want your advice, your... I care about your opinion and I want you to know mine." Treat them like the people they are. Another thing I think is really important in building resilience, and we wrote about it in the book, but I see it a lot in the workplace, is don't do too much for your kids. And for you guys, please don't let your parents do things for you. If your parent is about to email a friend to get you a job, don't let that happen.

Speaker 16:28 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 16:29 People do not wanna hire people whose parents apply for them. I'm s- dead serious. I get three of these a week.

Speaker 16:34 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 16:35 I am dead serious. Do not let your parents do stuff for you. You are communicating to your future employer that you can't do it yourself. It is a generational thing that did not exist in my generation, but it is a big deal that's going on in the workforce. I promise if I get two resumes from someone directly and from someone's parent, I'm always gonna hire the first. We have to let our kids, and you guys have to let yourselves, do things on their own, because that is how you build resilience.

Speaker 17:09 You grew up in a family of very strong women. What from your upbringing prepared you for this level of success that you've achieved?

Sheryl Sandberg 17:21 Um, working on things that matter. My parents were very nonprofit focused and very focused on doing, um, the right thing for the right reason. And I think hard work. I mean, all the, all the stuff out there on grit and determination and working on things that are challenging is all true, and something that's just super important for... There's no substitute for, for hard work. And I think one thing that I see generationally that's happened, and I think we can do a better, better job on this, is we need to remind kids that they're not just doing for them, they're contributing, and we need to remind people of that in the workplace. The best hiring story ever is, that I ever had experience, is in Lean In, is Lori Goler. She called me when I went to Facebook- And she called and said the following. She said, "I think I wanna come work with you at Facebook." She was at eBay in marketing. "So I thought I'd call you and tell you all the things I like to do and all the things I'm good at. But I figure everyone's doing that. So instead, I'm gonna call you and say, 'What's your biggest problem, and how can I solve it?'" So, you know, Lean In sold millions of copies. Millions of people have hopefully read at least part of the book, right, at that story. But I don't see that many people coming into the workplace asking what they can do for the company.

Speaker 18:37 Mm-hmm.

Sheryl Sandberg 18:39 Ask what you can do. I promise you will get mentors, you will get sponsors, you will get results, you will get promotions, you will get opportunities by contributing. If it is about you, it won't happen, because organizations are not about you. Organizations are about org- the organization and their mission. And when you serve that mission, and when you work hard towards the betterment of the people around you, and I think I learned that at home, that's where real success comes from. But you can't fake it. You can't be like, "I'm gonna pretend to care about everyone else and our mission to get myself ahead." That won't work. You actually have to care. So you have to go work someplace with people you can care about and with a mission you can care about.

Speaker 19:22 You, you published Lean In in 2013. Um, and as you said, it's gone on to sell millions of copies. In it, you wrote a chapter called Make Your Partner a Real Partner. Um, and you share an anecdote about how Dave taught you how to diaper your son.

Sheryl Sandberg 19:36 Mm.

Speaker 19:36 And also, that 26 of the 28 women who've served as Fortune's 500 CEOs, um, were married. And so, do you still view it as essential or, or really important to, to women's success that they have a partner?

Sheryl Sandberg 19:53 I mean, it was definitely a chapter I regretted once Dave died. You know, I wrote about different forms of family structure in Lean In. Um, but I wrote a whole chapter called Make Your Partner a Real Partner, and then when I didn't have one, I thought about how hard that would be to read, just like the father-daughter dance is just brutal for the kids who don't have a father, and I wish they could just call it something else. Katie Couric, her, um, her husband died as well, so at her private school in New York, she tried to get them to change it, and they told her it was tradition.

Speaker 20:22 Mm.

Sheryl Sandberg 20:22 And she spoke back on a whole bunch of other things that were also tradition, like slavery, that are long gone.

Speaker 20:26 [laughs]

Speaker 20:28 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 20:28 But she was like, "Just 'cause something's traditional does not mean it's a good-

Speaker 20:31 Right

Sheryl Sandberg 20:31 ... [laughs] it's a good idea, right?" And so, not to compare the two, let's be clear. One is far worse than the other.

Speaker 20:38 Mm.

Sheryl Sandberg 20:38 But just because we've done something the wrong way doesn't mean we, we should continue to do it. Um, I don't have a partner. I can no longer say that. I don't, I never said in Lean In you had to have one, and I was clear about that. Um, I did say you should pick the right one.

Speaker 20:54 Right.

Sheryl Sandberg 20:55 That if you are gonna have a partner, if you are gonna have a same-sex partner, same-sex partners share chores more evenly, so it's actually less of an issue on average. It's always an issue for any two people in the world to work out. But if you are gonna have a partner and you are a woman, and that partner is gonna be a man, picking someone who supports your career is a really big deal. And it does make me pretty sad. The data on your generation is, your attitudes are not that much better than mine, the data in my generation. They're getting better a little bit, right? The basic... Deb, Deb is the expert. They're getting better a little bit.

Speaker 21:27 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 21:27 But we don't, we don't take surveys and find out that, you know, 98% of the men who are graduating from college and business school this year think their wives should have the same career they have. That's not what it says. It should say that. It doesn't say that. So you might as well know that about the dating pool, and [laughs]

Speaker 21:45 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 21:46 And find the ones who are answering the question the right way.

Speaker 21:49 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 21:50 I'm serious. [laughs] I'm dead serious on this.

Speaker 21:53 And you do advocate in the book that your friends date all different types of, of men, right?

Sheryl Sandberg 21:57 Date whoever you want. Don't marry them.

Speaker 21:58 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 22:01 The ones who quietly... If you are a woman and you are an ambitious woman, and I hope you are, because men have run the world for a long time, and it's not going that well.

Speaker 22:09 [laughs]

Speaker 22:10 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 22:11 So I hope every woman in here is ambitious, and I hope every man is here is ambitious for the women in his life. But if you are a woman, and if you are ambitious, and if you want a leadership role, which I hope you all are, you know, don't marry the guy who, when they fill out the survey and no one's there, says, "My career is more important." Because you know what? His career is gonna be more important. There's a lot of societal pressure which still exists, which is reinforcing that. And while we work to change it in society, because we owe you that, you can change it in your own home by picking the right home in the first place.

Speaker 22:43 Many of the stories that you share in Lean In are about men who've championed your career, from Secretary Summers to Mark and Dave. What role have women played?

Sheryl Sandberg 22:53 Well, I've never worked for a woman, and most women have never worked for a woman, because, especially the more senior you get, because we still have basically 5% of the Fortune 500 CEO jobs or their equivalent everywhere in the world. And so the first thing we could do is change that by all of you. Um, but women have played a, a really important, important career. And I think it's worth really understanding how important it is for women to support each other, and also getting rid of what I think is largely a myth now, that women don't support each other. I also think when we look for support, looking to our peers is much more important than people talk about and get credit. There's endless classes, and seminars, and breakout sessions at every conference on finding a mentor, and that's important. And mentorships and sponsorship's important, and you g- you have to go about it the right way. Um, but peers can be just as important and just as effective. Lean In Circles were founded with the idea that our peers could mentor us based on a lot of research, and there are now almost 33,000 in 150 countries. We grow by almost 100 a week. And we find that the people in them do take on more challenges, are, are, you know, able to fulfill their dreams at a higher level. And they believe their circles are helping them. So when you look for that support, women playing that role in your career, Lean In Circle or some structure where you are relying on people explicitly can be really helpful, and it doesn't have to be people above you. It can be your peers. They can be incredibly effective.

Speaker 24:26 You offered some interesting advice backstage that having a, a personal board of directors or branding yourself is horrible advice.

Sheryl Sandberg 24:34 Yeah. These-

Speaker 24:34 So I would love to hear a little more about that.

Sheryl Sandberg 24:36 Yeah. These are two really bad pieces of advice. I don't know if you're giving them here, so if anyone's giving them here, I apologize in advance. But-

Speaker 24:41 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 24:43 I wrote in Lean In, "Don't ask someone to be your mentor. Don't walk up to someone and say, 'Will you be my mentor?'" Here's why. That doesn't work. Because a mentorship is a real relationship. It is a relationship where someone invests in you and you invest back in them. And I've mentored lots of people over many, many decades, not one of which started with, "Will you be my mentor?"

Speaker 25:03 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 25:04 The way it started was, you know, I learn from someone and they learn from me. I mean, I would say Deb Grunfeld, who's here, she's been my mentor in learning all the data on women. She w- I sat next to her at a dinner. She was the first person who t- we have never had this conversation. We're having it publicly.

Speaker 25:19 [laughs]

Speaker 25:19 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 25:19 She was the-

Speaker 25:20 That's the best possible way, right?

Sheryl Sandberg 25:21 She was the first person, Deb was the first person who told me that, um, likability and success for women were negatively correlated. I felt like the lights went on. I understood something. I followed up. I then gave a TED Talk on it. I'm only doing one side of this, but I think what happened is she taught me something. I paid her back by investing in those ideas. She really cared that people know those ideas. She now serves on the Lean In board, and she mentors me in that way, and hopefully I've given back in lots of ways, and it's a real relationship. It started with substance.

Speaker 25:54 Mm-hmm.

Sheryl Sandberg 25:55 The real relationships start with substance. Being on someone's personal board of directors, what you're saying is, "Hi, it's all about me, and I'm gonna come to you for your advice." Pe- people don't have boards of directors. Companies do.

Speaker 26:07 [laughs]

Speaker 26:09 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 26:09 People have relationships, and those relationships go both ways. I promise, if you are Lori Goler and you solve the problem of the senior people around you, they will mentor you all day. They'll probably never call it that, but they will do it. And if you ask for a lot of help but you don't give back, it won't be real and you will not get the support, uh, that you're looking for. So asking someone to be on your personal board of directors is just way worse than solving a problem for them. For them. Which you have the opportunity to do, even as the most junior person in an organization. Oh, and the personal branding. Yeah, I feel strongly about this.

Speaker 26:48 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 26:49 People don't have brands. Colgate has a brand.

Speaker 26:52 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 26:53 You know, this water has a brand.

Speaker 26:55 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 26:56 And I think it's really important, because they're, branding is a very specific thing. I do a lot of work on branding. I think about how Facebook's brand evolves. I think about, I'm in the advertising business, so I work with companies all over the world on their brand. And when you are selling a product, you are trying to package it and explain it. I'm gonna walk by on a shelf and I'm gonna decide what toothpaste, and that's a decision. It's a decision that's important to me. I s- use toothpaste many times a day, and it's a very important decision for the companies. And how that, how that value proposition is packaged, explained clearly and simply, is how I'm gonna make that decision, along with price and convenience of where it's sold. That's what products need to be. They need to be packaged cleanly, neatly, concretely. People aren't like that. If you are trying to package yourself, you're almost certainly false. And by the way, to be fair to people who do give this advice, I don't think that's what they mean.

Speaker 27:56 Mm.

Sheryl Sandberg 27:56 I think they are giving more nuanced and careful advice. I just think in its interpretation, it's having a negative effect, because we are messy. You know, who am I? I am the COO of Facebook, a company I deeply believe in. I am the founder of Lean In and Option B. I'm an author. I'm a mom. I'm a widow. At some level, I'm still deeply heartbroken. I am a friend and I am a sister, and there are people in my life I'm not in touch with anymore. Like, I am a lot of very messy, complicated things, and if I put myself out there or even with a friend, sit, and I am not honest about all of those things, I am not real. And I don't think people should try to package themselves up, because it's not real. So Scotty McCullan is here. He's been one of the most important people in my life. I took his class when I was in business school. I think some of you are fortunate enough to be, you're taking his class right now.

Speaker 28:53 I am.

Sheryl Sandberg 28:53 And that's what your class is about. It is about who we are as people. And nowhere in there would you ever give anyone advice to simplify or package or put one face out to the world, because that is exactly the opposite of what we need from each other and from ourselves.

Speaker 29:10 In Lean In, you write about how it's a fallacy to, that you can have it all. That, that people don't have it all, it's a question of can you do it all, and the answer is often no. But in your case, it does seem like from the outsider's perspective, you, you do it all. And so f- from your own point of view, what are you, what have you given up or what choices have you made to do all that you have, founding Lean In and Option B and, and, and leading one of the biggest tech companies in the world?

Sheryl Sandberg 29:40 Well, the most important thing I do is I hire really well. I have amazing teams. As one person, you couldn't do what Facebook does. We have 16,000 unbelievable people, and I have an unbelievable boss and leader and partner in Mark. And, you know, my foundation, you know, Option B launched, I don't know, a month ago, and we have 350,000 people in the community, and the community is really helping people. It's helping me. That's because my foundation team rocks. And so [laughs] it's never about one person. I could never do all this, but if I have a great team and great working relationships with people, together we can do an awful lot. The having it all concept is so problematic, um- You know, you are all a little young, so I'll try to do the younger thing, this, like... But for, for the men who are older, and... So let me do this. For men in the room, has anyone ever questioned should you work? You sure you wanna work?

Speaker 30:33 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 30:36 Okay. For women-

Speaker 30:37 We're also at a business school, so it might be biased.

Speaker 30:39 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 30:40 But again, this may or may not work 'cause of age, but I promise it'll work with the older women here. For women who are here, has anyone ever said, "Should you be working?" And so what you guys can't see is, keep your hands up. Every woman in this room who's above 40 has her hand up. No, I'm serious. There is no woman in this, there's no, you cannot, no matter what you do, you can have my career, yours, any career. You cannot get to the age of 40 as a woman in the United States without someone asking you if you should work. Okay. 70% of mothers are in the workplace. Most women have to work. We never ask men how they have it all.

Speaker 31:17 Right.

Sheryl Sandberg 31:17 I get asked that by reporters all the time. I always say the same thing. "I won't answer that question, 'cause you don't ask men."

Speaker 31:23 Right.

Sheryl Sandberg 31:25 They say, "Oh, yes, I always ask men." I'm like, "Great. Show me the article where you've asked a man." "Oh, well, I don't write it into the article."

Speaker 31:30 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 31:31 "But I always ask them."

Speaker 31:32 It's not newsworthy.

Sheryl Sandberg 31:33 Right. I stopped answering that question. I just said, "Show me the interview where you asked a man that question." There is no, "How do you do it all," to a man. No one asks that. Because what we're saying is that you can't have a career and you can't have a family. And this is so important, I think, at the age a lot, most of you are, which is we tell women they can't do it all, and they leave before they leave. They leave before they leave. That we, I am watching woman after woman after woman lean back because they're gonna have kids one day. I've given a lot of talks at a lot of companies, and I'll say to roomfuls of people like this, "Stand up if you wanna be CEO of your company." And you know, some of the men will stand up, very few of the women. And if you ask why, a lot of the women will say, "Well, I wanna have a family." And then I say, "Okay, who's had a meeting with the CEO?" And they raise their hand, and I say, "Keep your hand up if the meeting was set on your schedule." Turns out that meeting was set on the CEO's schedule. People miss that as you get more senior-

Speaker 32:38 Mm-hmm

Sheryl Sandberg 32:38 ... you often have more control, not less. Now, not all the time, and there's always exceptions, but what's really happening is that men are being told to keep their foot on the gas pedal. Women are subtly, subtly often leaning back. And then fast-forward 10 years in the workplace, they're both working full time. The woman is just making less, less senior, and has less control over her schedule for those kids. And so even if you're not 100% sure you're gonna stay in, even if you've been told over and over again you can't do it all, either by watching women like me be interviewed and asked that question, or because people have said it directly to you, just stay in until you leave, because that gives you the optimal choices, and then you can decide. And I've never said everyone should stay in the workforce. I really want people to follow their own dreams, and for a lot of people, working in the home is the most gratifying thing they can do. I just want women to make that from a place of strength. I want them to have the best job they can possibly have and then make that. I want them to have partners who are doing their share in the home, and then make those decisions.

Speaker 33:44 In Lean In, you write and encourage the readers to make decisions as if you were unafraid. What is one thing that you're afraid of that you've yet to do?

Sheryl Sandberg 33:56 Well, I just did Option B, so I feel like that counts for right now.

Speaker 33:59 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 33:59 I'm in the middle of doing it.

Speaker 34:00 So am I. [laughs]

Speaker 34:01 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 34:02 But I wrote a book on my husband's death, and, uh, and what it's like, and what is grief and what is resilience and what is trying to rebuild. And so that's actually a pretty scary thing. So I don't think I have my next thing yet. But I know why I did it. I did it because I want something good to come out. I mean, John was right. Dave was beloved, and beloved in this community. Um, at his funeral, and I know some of you in the front row were there with me, our friend Xander asked the crowd, "Raise your hand if Dave Goldberg changed your life." And so, I mean, a sea of hands went up. It was extraordinary. And I know if Dave were still alive, he'd be doing so much good for so many people. And so if from his death we can do Option B, and we can help other people recover, I feel that it honors the life he led. And so it is still hard and still scary sometimes to talk about it, but I feel like I'm trying to do some good. My favorite story in the book, the book is, um, my story, a lot of really good research, and a lot of stories of other people who have faced resilience, and some pretty important stuff on resilience for companies and careers, in case you're interested. Um, my favorite story is a guy named Joe Kasper, and he, he lost his son, but he was a doctor, so he dealt with other people's life and death all the time, but then his son died. So now along with being a doctor, he counsels other bereaved parents, and he says that he feels that it extends his son's legacy and even his son's life by doing good in his son's name. And I think the reason I did what I was not, was afraid to do, which is be this open about it, was because I think it extends Dave Goldberg's legacy. And I do think that there's a lesson in there in that. When you ask guys the question all the time, "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" The point is not do stupid things you're afraid of.

Speaker 35:51 [laughs]

Speaker 35:51 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 35:52 Like, you know, my sister jumped out of an airplane once. I was terrified and angry. I'm like, "That just seems stupid to me." Sorry for all you airplane jumpers.

Speaker 36:03 [laughs]

Speaker 36:03 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 36:03 I mean, some people have to do it, 'cause they're serving in the military.

Speaker 36:06 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 36:06 But, like, do you have to jump out of a plane today? I don't know. Maybe it's your dream and you wanna do it. But what I don't mean is, what would you do if you weren't afraid, and go do it. You take risks for a reward. So you do something challenging and hard, like write this book, because I'm trying to make something good come from tragedy. You take the hard job because the company has meaning. You take the hard role because you believe you can make the team better. You know, ask yourself what you would do if you weren't afraid, but ask yourself why, and there needs to be a really good why for most of this.

Speaker 36:41 So many of us are graduating next month. As you think back on your own graduation from, from Harvard Business School, what's something that you know just in your gut that you're capable of today that you wish that you knew then?

Sheryl Sandberg 36:56 Living through tragedy. I mean, I never would have thought. I gave the Harvard Business School commencement speech, uh, 20 thir- 2014 maybe. I don't remember. Like three years ago. Further back. 2012? And the day I gave it, the day before, uh, one of the members of that class died. He drowned suddenly, and the whole class was in mourning. I wore the pin. We all did. And, and I sat there giving this speech thinking, "Oh my God, there's a woman in this audience whose husband drowned last night." I think she was there. And I would have never in a million years thought that that, I would be that, that person. And I just met her. She's in Houston now, and she's incredible. And, um, she's going back to her... Yeah, it's the 50-year reunion, so it was 2012. She's going, I think this week or next, to her husband's class five-year reunion, which I think is incredibly brave. I'm proud of her.

Speaker 37:54 Thank you so much. We'll open it up to the audience for a few questions. Reminder, if you have a question, please, um, please stand and state your name when they bring you the mic.

Speaker 38:05 Hi, Sheryl. My name is Shammy. I'm a first year MBA student at the GSB. Especially here at The View From The Top, when we hear business leaders speak, they often speak about what makes them successful, but you're different in that you choose to inspire people about speaking about overcoming loss and overcoming your doubts. How did you choose to become this kind of a leader?

Sheryl Sandberg 38:32 It's funny. I don't know if I chose to become this kind of leader or that I thought there were things that weren't being said that needed to be said. So I graduated from busin- from undergrad in '91, from business school in 1995, and I looked above me and it was all men, and I looked alongside me and there were all these great women. And I just thought that by the time I got where I was, it would be half, and it just wasn't. And so there were two thing, bunch of things I wanted to say that I thought people weren't saying. One was that men still run the world, and that's not okay. Like, put a stake in the ground that it's not okay. When I got on that TED stage and I said, "Men still run the world," everyone gasped as if that was a surprise.

Speaker 39:12 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 39:13 And to this day, I can go into rooms and say, "Men still run the world," and people are like, "Yes, they do. What a shocker."

Speaker 39:19 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 39:19 You're like, "Guys, w- you have 95% of the top jobs. Like, this isn't that hard, right?" But the answer is why. Like, what are the cultural things that are holding us back? Ready? Men in the audience, men only, raise your hand if anyone ever called you bossy. There's always a few.

Speaker 39:36 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 39:38 There's always one or two. Women in the audience, raise your hand if anyone ever called you bossy. I really... I want everyone to turn around and look at that. Put your hands back up. So next time you see a little girl called bossy, and it will be this weekend if you look for it, you walk right up to the people that called her bossy, probably her parents, and you say, "That little girl is not bossy. That little girl has executive leadership skills."

Speaker 40:02 [laughs]

Speaker 40:05 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 40:12 I want you to wait. Ready? I'm gonna try that the other way. That little boy has executive leadership skills. I have done that exactly that way and gotten a huge laugh out of every audience in every country I've ever done that in, but here's the bad news. That's bias, and if you don't think you have it, I just proved you do. Because the reason we laugh is that it's funny that a little girl has executive leadership skills, 'cause it goes against our expectations and type. So in case you sit here at the Stanford Business School thinking that other people have the biases that hold women back, it's you, too. I laughed. You laughed. It's me and it's you. We all have the stereotype that is keeping women from leading, and you just got through two years at Stanford and it didn't change. No, let's be honest. That's what I wanted to say, and then I wanted to say there's a whole bunch of stuff women are also doing to hold themselves back. So I don't think I chose to be any kind of leader. I chose to say those three things. We need more women in leadership, the culture is holding us back, and there are things we can do. And again, I think if you're looking for what kind of leader you're gonna be, you are too inwardly focused. Focus on what you wanna say, because it matters, or what you wanna build or what you wanna make or who you wanna serve, and that's how you become the kind of leader you are. If that makes sense.

Speaker 41:54 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 41:56 I'm Paul. I'm a second-year student, and I'm not trying to ask you if you're gonna run for president.

Speaker 42:00 [laughs]

Speaker 42:01 Um, which means that I am asking you that.

Sheryl Sandberg 42:03 [laughs]

Speaker 42:05 But let's just frame it as career advice. So you worked in the Clinton administration, and you're obviously very interested in public service and the public sector. And for those of us who are interested in both government and private sector work, how do you think about the pros and cons? And going forward in your career, how do you think about blending those?

Speaker 42:22 [laughs]

Speaker 42:24 [laughs]

Speaker 42:26 That's a business school question.

Sheryl Sandberg 42:27 That's a good, that's a good question.

Speaker 42:28 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 42:29 Um, so for me- For my answer is I really love my job at Facebook, and it gives me what I wanna do. And then, no, but I do have, I have a loud voice on, on, an increasingly loud voice on public policy. You know, I know what a whole bunch, what I think a whole bunch of policies were, and I'm increasingly using that voice. And I think I have the ability to, to have that voice, and it's one I'm, I'm using loudly. Um, going in and out, look, there's two paths in the US government. There's civil servants, where you really go in and you move up the ladder, and there's going in and out. I think being open to doing that, thinking about running for office, all of that stuff really makes sense, and I think we need the country's best and brightest to do this. I also think we'd be well-served by having more people who were in business in office. I think about some of the things I thought at the US Treasury that really changed once I had to make payroll, and that was the Treasury, which is the finance department. And so I do think having more business leaders like all of you running for office and serving in government is really important. Bob Rubin, who was the chairman of Goldman Sachs and then the Secretary of the Treasury, um, made that point for a very long time, and I think it's a good one. So I'm glad to hear you ask that question, and I hope a lot of you are open to that, because you can do a lot of good. [laughs]

Speaker 43:47 [laughs]

Speaker 43:50 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 43:51 I... A serious answer to the question is I feel like I'm doing, I'm trying to do all the good I can, and there's always different ways to do it. Um, but I really believe in what Facebook's doing. I really do. I believe that we need global companies. I believe that we need global voice. I believe there are four billion people who aren't connected to data that we can help connect. But it's because I believe that, that I stay.

Speaker 44:19 As... My name is Christoph Meyer. I'm a second year here. Um, as COO of Facebook, you led the company through tremendous growth. There's another rocket ship that's facing a few problems right now that I hear is also looking for a C- CEO. What would you do if you were, uh, the new COO of Uber?

Speaker 44:35 [laughs]

Speaker 44:41 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 44:41 [laughs] I mean, it's a really hard question to answer from the outside.

Speaker 44:46 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 44:47 It's a really hard question to answer from the outside. I don't understand their business deeply enough, I mean, at all, at all, to answer. But here's what I would do. I would take that job if I had the relationship with Travis that could really make an impact, and I felt there was a real desire to address the issues that needed to be addressed. And it's not just the COO job. I mean, it really is, as you take every role you're gonna take, and you guys... I mean, I'm so honored and excited to be here as your, I guess your last speaker before you graduate, because how exciting. You've studied at one of the best institutions. You have these tremendous classmates around you. You're asking all of these amazing questions. Like, go out and make a difference, and you're gonna do that by finding things you really care about and building relationships with the people around you that make you care. I stay at Facebook, to this question that does get asked with some frequency, right, it's been nine and a half years, because I'm doing something I care about with my best friend. That's a pretty special thing to do. So whoever takes that job, if someone takes that job, they have to believe in what Uber's doing, and they have to believe in their relationship with Travis. And then they have to build a team around them, and it's the exact same thing for your jobs. Whatever you're about to go do, if you haven't figured it out or you are figuring out, do something you care about with people you believe, and focus on what you contribute. That's it. And be willing to move around. I wrote in Lean In that careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder. Careers are a jungle gym. I moved sideways. I didn't always move up. If I had insisted on moving up, I never would've taken the number two job at Facebook. I could have been C- everything else they were talking to me about, I would've been CEO. If I took another job now, I would run the company. But I'd rather be number two at Facebook, if that's even a concept, right, I mean, we have a team, it's not just me and Mark, than be number one on something I don't believe in. I think the number two and the number one is the wrong way to think about it. It's the relationship, the purpose, the mission, and what you can contribute. Same thing. Your job decision is the same as whoever's gonna go be COO of Uber.

Speaker 46:52 We have time for one final question.

Speaker 46:56 Hi, my name is Justin. I'm a first-year MBA student. And kind of following onto that, you mentioned how you navigated these different career decisions. Uh, and so with getting to these rocket ships, uh, and like, what really made those companies and teams that you've joined stand out?

Sheryl Sandberg 47:12 Well, I've only done it twice, right? I did, I did, uh, Google and Facebook. With Google, I really believed in the mission of making the world's information, giving the world information, and I could see how much easier it was. I mean, when Google started, you know, I used to go to the library. Like, go to the library.

Speaker 47:31 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 47:32 Literally. I grew up with Encyclopedia Britannica in my dad's little study. Like, it was just spellbounding how you could just get information on your computer. I really believe there was an unmet need. And with Facebook, I felt like it turned the lights on on who people were. You know, before Facebook, they, that, you probably won't remember this, there was a famous cartoon of a dog sitting in front of the computer, and it said, "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog."

Speaker 47:56 [laughs]

Sheryl Sandberg 47:56 I mean, Facebook was the first time there was real identity on the internet. So everything I believe about being authentic and who you are was gonna be- come true because of this company run by this 23-year-old. It was pretty amazing. And so it was really that I thought they were making these, these needs. The other thing I'll say is it's not... Along with passion, I do think it's really worth investing in your own skills and trying the things you're not as good at. Try the things that matter. Take a sales job. I think too few people out of business will take sales jobs. I sell all day. I sell ads for Facebook. I do BD deals where I sell. I feel every time I'm recruiting someone, I'm selling. When I'm trying to convince people, we all do that. Take those jobs where you're really rolling your hands up. I have a poster in my office, uh, that I got from Howard Schultz, I served on his board, of two dirty hands, and it says, "The future is, belongs to those of us still willing to get our hands dirty," and it's in my conference room. Do something you care about and get your hands dirty doing it. You'll be able to do anything, I promise.

Speaker 49:05 Sheryl, thank you so much for being here.

Sheryl Sandberg 49:06 I wanna say good luck. [audience applauds] Thank you. [upbeat music]