Sheryl Sandberg keeps on giving. Journalistically, that is. Last week, here on Postcards, we riffed on the New York Times profile of Sandberg, whose ambition for young women in business seems to match her ambition for Facebook, where she is COO. That is: Just do it...take over the world.
On Saturday, CNN.com ran a story titled "How to have more Sheryl Sandbergs." The key? "Peer influence," posed the authors, Courtney E. Martin and Katie Orenstein.
The authors explained what results when too few peers go for it, career-wise: "In many cases, the impulse to do something out of the norm of our peer group, like write an opinion piece or ask for a promotion, has simply never occurred to us. If it does, we don't act on it. Our girlfriends aren't doing it. Our female colleagues aren't doing it. Why should we?"
In other words, we need more Sheryl Sandbergs to create more Sheryl Sandbergs.
Today, when only 18 women lead Fortune 500 companies, we need more role models. Graca Foster was just designated the first female CEO of a major oil company: Brazil-based Petrobras, No. 34 on Fortune's Global 500. Great, but progress toward equality at the top remains slow.
As we look for new models and peers, coincidentally, I had a recent visit from the woman who sparked the creation of Fortune Most Powerful Women. In 1996, Charlotte Beers, who was then CEO of ad giant Ogilvy & Mather (WPP), appeared on Fortune's cover for a story that I wrote called "Women Sex & Power." Now 76 and still irrepressible, Beers has a new book called "I'd Rather Be in Charge," and she stopped by to compare notes on women and power.
Why too few women are taking charge today, as she sees the situation: There is no blueprint for women leaders to follow.
"When asked to show their leadership capacity, women miss the cues because they don't know what leadership is supposed to look like," Beers told me.
While women are generally viewed as more emotional than men, it is the men, Beers says, who tend to display emotion more openly in the office. And to their advantage: "Men can express exactly how they feel and make it memorable and persuasive," she says.
As for getting promoted at work, men are much more adept: "Men know their bravery threshold, how resilient they are, and whether they can bluff their way through," Beers contends. Men's success largely relates to playing sports in their youth--which girls would be wise to do more of too.
Women at work, bound to a narrower band of socially acceptable behavior, often question--or even worse, turn down--promotions. This is what Sandberg, 42, warns against in her classic Fortune essay, "Don't Leave Before You Leave." Instead of reacting to a promotion opportunity with a timid "Are you sure?," Beers favorite line: "What makes you think I can do this?"
Good advice. The ad maven from the Mad Men era got me wondering: How many women will we see at the top decades from now, when Sandberg delivers her memoirs?
Credit: maryannerussell.com
Sunday brought another glowing profile of Sheryl Sandberg. The Facebook COO, who is No. 12 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women list, is on a PR roll. Though being called "the Justin Bieber of tech" in the New York Times comes close, I think, to jumping the shark image-wise.
The Times article honed in on Sandberg's third "job" besides playing backup to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and wife and mother MORE
Patricia Sellers - Feb 6, 2012 12:25 PM ET
Who is Facebook's highest-paid executive? Sheryl Sandberg.
The Facebook COO received a base salary of just $300,000 last year, but Sandberg's total comp turned out to be $30.8 million, according to Facebook's pre-IPO filings. Meanwhile, her boss, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, got $500,000 in salary and some $1.5 million in total comp. (Don't feel too sorry for Zuckerberg. The 27-year-old boss owns more than a quarter of the company he co-founded--a stake MORE
Patricia Sellers - Feb 2, 2012 11:53 AM ET
Clara Shih is an early achiever. At age five, she arrived in the U.S., from Hong Kong, with her parents. With no access to bilingual education, she was initially placed in special classes for kids with speech impediments and advanced so rapidly that she scored a 1420 on her SATs -- in eighth grade. She started her company, Hearsay Social, at age 27, made Fortune's list of Most Powerful Women MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jan 11, 2012 10:22 AM ET
Yesterday's Postcard asking if corporate women will ever be as powerful as corporate men prompted lots of discussion and a bit of inspiration.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg chimed in again, advising me to take credit and own my power. (Um, didn't I first chide Sandberg to own her power, according to Ken Auletta's New Yorker profile?)
Hilary Rosen, also quoted in yesterday's Postcard, pinged me to say that years ago when she MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 28, 2011 10:32 AM ET
Over Christmas weekend, Sheryl Sandberg emailed me, sounding a bit distressed.
Referring to a big story about Fortune's Most Powerful Women in Sunday's Washington Post (WPO), the Facebook COO asked if I'd been misquoted in saying that I believe women will never have 50% of the top jobs in corporate America. "Don't depress me!" Sandberg wrote.
Sorry, Sheryl, the Post quoted me correctly.
I do, in fact, believe that women won't ever—ever!--reach parity MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 27, 2011 9:48 AM ET
This past summer, when Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg emailed me about Clara Shih, we at Fortune knew to keep a lookout.
"I think she is awesome," Sandberg wrote in her email.
Sure enough, Starbucks (SBUX) yesterday named 29-year-old Shih, a social-media entrepreneur, to replace Sandberg on its board of directors.
A 29-year-old on the Starbucks board?!
Starbucks is bulking up on social-media expertise at a time when boards of most Fortune 500 companies desperately MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 15, 2011 1:20 PM ET
Somaly Mam is a hero. Nick Kristof said so in his op-ed column in the New York Times this past weekend. Kristof raided a brothel in Northern Cambodia with this amazing woman who has become the guiding light in fighting forced prostitution around the world.
After escaping a similar brothel, where she was raped and tortured on a daily basis for years, Somaly Mam found her purpose. She devoted her life MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 15, 2011 10:00 AM ET
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has become the go-to adviser for aspiring young women in business. Her view, which she expressed in an on-stage interview with me at the recent Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit: "Women don't take enough risks. Men are just 'foot on the gas pedal,'" she said, adding, "We're not going to close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap."
Indeed, Sandberg's own career path--from the U.S. MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 28, 2011 10:04 AM ET
There is no shortage of female entrepreneurs. But where are the women who think really, really big?
FORTUNE -- Ever wonder why there 's no female Mark Zuckerberg? It is, after all, the era of the social web. Women use social-networking sites more than men do. Women stay on social sites longer. Women provide the bulk of the revenue at Zuckerberg's Facebook and gaming company Zynga, and most other fast-growing startups in the consumer Internet MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 4, 2011 1:31 PM ET
For the latest on the most influential women in business, philanthropy, government, and the arts, like us on Facebook. 
In a funny and candid interview, Google VP Marissa Mayer explains how she got to the top. Watch
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns shares how she once accepted a job with Dell but ended up staying with Xerox. Watch
Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). Since its launch in 1998, Pattie has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women" cover package.
A specialist at dissecting larger-than-life personalities, she has also profiled former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack, and countless CEOs.
Pattie co-chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big brand companies.
In Pattie's blog, Postcards, she provides insight into the lives of super-achievers through commentary, career advice, and Guest Posts by CEOs and other leaders.
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Fortune Most Powerful Women
Sheryl Sandberg:
Gina Bianchini
