Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Meta Speaks Up On Women In The Workplace | Express AWE

Sheryl Sandberg, very warm welcome to the Indian Express Group. There couldn't have been a better opening of the inaugural Express FICCI Flow Awards for Women Entrepreneurship than you. So thank you so much for making the time and being here. I'll just get right to it. I want to start specifically with your book Lean In. You know, it's been almost eight years since you wrote it. George Floyd happened, Me Too happened, COVID happened. If you were to write Lean In all over again today, how much of the book or the central thesis would you change? Let me start by saying thank you for having me. It is precisely organizations like yours and leaders like you having meetings like this that make a difference. So let's start there by saying this is what's going right. You know, Express Awards for Women Entrepreneurs, you're recognizing women who are blazing trails for their community. And you're doing it with all of the heft of the Indian Express behind it. So I'm just grateful to be here. So I wrote Lean In in 2015. And you know, when I wrote the book, I was a tech exec. I didn't really know if anyone would read it. And the first version of the book was all research. I thought it was fabulous. There was like, you know, five pages on a matrilineal tribe and how characteristics we normally ascribe to women or ascribe to men. There were six pages on a video game study that showed that if you do an experiment with college students playing video games, if the women think they're watched, they shoot fewer targets than the men. But if they think they're not watched, they shoot more. Anyway, I thought it was fantastic. My husband, Dave, at the time and my editor and my book agent, they read it. I read the first one. They were like, this book sucks. No one is going to read it. So what I did, they said, you have to put your story into it. So I did because I wanted people to read it. But I think by virtue of having my story, it read too much as if it was women like me, white women from California in tech. Now, in all the international editions, I had a local female business leader write a forward. And I think that made a difference. But if I had to write it again, I would have put so many more stories in. But the good news is that my foundation did that. So by the time the book was coming out, I realized I wished I had made it broader because people might actually read this thing. And then they did. And so I launched my foundation. And right on the website was hundreds of stories from women from all countries and races and backgrounds and ages and industries. And we started to lean in circles. And our goal was to have 1,000 women in circles. And what we ended up with right now today, we have over 58,000. Sorry, we wanted 1,000 circles. We have over 58,000 circles all over the world, including circles thriving in India. That's wonderful. I think, you know, specifically, you know, if I can get to the pandemic, I think that has been, you know, that has really been a setback for women in the workplace. I think one of your own surveys showed that 25% of women are considering downshifting or leaving work due to just burnout. So if you can spend a minute specifically on the impact the pandemic has had on the lean in, I mean, just on women in the workplace. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, COVID is a health crisis. It's an economic crisis, and it's a gender equality crisis. Now, before COVID, women all over the world, women in the United States, women in India, were working a double shift. Those who are working outside their homes work outside their homes, and then they come home, and they do the great majority of the housework and the childcare. That's a double shift. Well, then COVID happened. And now we're at a double, double shift, which is elderly parents to take care of, illness, kids home from school, kids who have to quarantine because they get an exposure, even though now schools are open in many parts of the world, not everywhere. And so we are seeing women, and my foundation was one of the first to survey, to say, we're going to drop out of the workforce, and they are. Women's workforce participation in the United States is reaching levels we haven't seen, low levels, not high levels, reaching depths that we haven't seen in decades. And that means we are going to wipe out, you know, decades of progress. You know, you asked me, you asked me what I would, what's different about when I wrote the book. Well, I'll tell you what's not different anywhere in the world is women are still not getting close to our share of leadership roles. It's five to 7% of the top CEO roles at the top countries in the world, like the U.S. That has not changed, and COVID is not helping. So, you know, I know, you know, we're talking in 2021, and it's almost funny to ask this, but I really think it's, it's important that I ask you, can you offer a reminder to, to all of us, you know, to the HR manager, to the employer, you know, of a 8 million to 12 million U.S. dollar turnover company, you know, small organizations who are really struggling, you know, and they're really trying to cut costs and just kind of make, make business feasible. Can you just remind all of us, you know, the importance of insisting on diversity and having women well represented in their organizations? Absolutely. I mean, we've said for a long time that we should have diversity, people in leadership of different backgrounds, different genders, females, women, people of different races, because it's the right thing to do. And it is. But the message I would take to businesses is it's also the smart thing to do. Here's what we know. Teams that are more diverse perform better. They outperform their peers at every level. And from an individual point of view, if you're, let's say a man in this case, a man entering the workforce, and you're the CEO, you're going to do better if your teams do better. But what people miss is that's true for everyone. If you are the most entry-level employee, and you can work better with half the population, if you add race into that, it's usually more than half the population, you're going to outperform. So it's in the company's interest, but it's in your individual interest to hire, to promote, to have a diverse management team. Whenever people think about India, and whenever I travel abroad, people always talk about our demographic dividend and just how young our population is. So Shail, I want to share with you that, you know, all statistics tend to show that there have never been as many women in college in India as there are today. And there are certain subjects where there are more women than men, you know, in college as well. So what advice would you give these women who, you know, they're graduating out of college, out of an Indian college, they step out of college and they see a glass ceiling, what is the advice you'd give them? Okay. The most important advice I have for women in college in India, but everywhere in the And I'm going to explain what I mean. I'm going to ask you a question. When you were choosing to go into your fields, did anyone ever say to you, you shouldn't become a journalist, you shouldn't go to the Indian Express because don't you want kids? Anyone ever say that to you? Of course not. You're a man. Do you know how many people have said to me at different stages, not anymore since I'm 52, but at different stages, are you sure you want to do that? When men enter the workforce, we tell them to go for it. When women enter the workforce, we say, you can't have it all. And not, has anyone ever said to you, you can't have it all? Of course not. Because what have it all means is a job and a family. But most women do actually have to work and they have jobs and families. And so telling women they can't do something they're going to have to do is cruel and leads to the situation we're in. When I say to lean in, go into the workforce striving for the top. And then at any point, if you want to have kids, if you want to take a step back, if you can afford to, great, I fully support that. But don't go in holding back because you know what's going to happen? You're competing with some guy, you're starting here together, he's not holding back, you're holding back. Fast forward 10 years when you have a family or however many years it is, you're working for him. He's higher paid. He's making the decisions on when you meet. He's working for you. You can afford childcare and stay in the workforce. You just give yourself options. Lean in has never meant stay in the workforce and go for the top for everyone. It just means don't hold yourself back and then make decisions from a position of strength. So you can have it all. Go for it and then give yourself more flexibility. So my wife had a book club and I called one of her friends in the book club who read your book when it came out. The one question that came to me from my wife's book club that was very interesting was the question of privilege. She lives in India, in Mumbai as well, but she said, I can lean in and I can go to the workplace because I have the privilege of being able to hire some other woman who doesn't have that privilege to take care of my child while I am in the workplace. So the idea that there is a certain financial privilege which gives an upper hand to leaning in. How would you respond to that? I mean, what happens to a lot of women is they hold back and they wind up working the same hours for less pay, less responsibility, less impact, and less flexibility. I say to people, do you want to be CEO? A lot of men say yes. Most women say no. Well, why don't you want to be CEO? Because I want to have a family. And then I say, okay, if you have a meeting with your CEO, whose schedule sets that meeting? I have probably more flexibility than I would have if I were more junior. Mark has the most flexibility. Guess whose calendar sets mine? Mark's. Guess whose calendar? And that doesn't mean that he's not considerate of my calendar. He is. And I'm very considerate, I hope, of the people who work for me. But as you get more senior, you get paid more. You have more control. You can have more impact. And so the idea that you don't want to go for it in order to have flexibility, I think is exactly the wrong idea. Right, right, right, right. Sher, when you joined Facebook, you were considered the most powerful woman in tech, arguably the most powerful woman in business. Ten years later, you're still the most powerful woman in tech and still the most powerful woman in business. Is there a glass ceiling that Silicon Valley has which is tough to break? I mean, look, in the highest countries like the United States, women have 7% of the top jobs. Women are 50% of the population, and women are getting more than 50% of the college degrees almost everywhere in the world. So there's only two choices. Either men are vastly more talented than women, or there's systematic bias, discrimination, barriers that women face, a la a glass ceiling. I think it's the latter. I think it's hard to argue, right? So I don't think it's controversial or even worth arguing whether there's not challenges faced by women not faced by men. There are, full stop. Now, yes, there's a glass ceiling. But the thing that my foundation, Lean In, we've really focused on is even before we get to that glass ceiling, there's a broken rung, and it is that first promotion to manager. So men are promoted and hired based on their potential. Women have to prove it. Now, that means that where do women fall out? That first promotion to manager. Why? Because you can't prove you're a manager until you do it. So if you're going to promote someone based on potential, you'll promote a man. So more men than women are getting promoted to manager. So the inequity starts a few years out of college. But once it's uneven, it continues to be uneven. And so, yes, there's too much of a glass ceiling, but there's also a broken rung, and it is that first broken rung to manager that we need to fix. And again, hats off to you for having this conversation with so many people. You know, the fact, the kind of public scrutiny that Meta is going through, it's unprecedented all over the world. You know, I don't know any corporate that has kind of seen this kind of glare. And the controversies, you know, around Facebook's role of misinformation, hate speech, hostility to women and marginalized groups. First question is, you know, how do you see all this scrutiny playing out? And the second question is, do you think your position and your personal credibility, you know, I mean, both men and women idolize you, especially in Silicon Valley. You know, your personal credibility as this rare woman leader in big tech, does that help Meta emerge stronger from all this public scrutiny? I don't know if my personal credibility helps, but I'll tell you what I do know, is that we have a responsibility to get things right. Mark has a responsibility, I have a responsibility. And I sit here today knowing how much we've invested to make sure the good happens on our platform and not the bad. If you go back five years ago, I would say there were a lot of things that really caught us by surprise. You know, Cambridge Analytica, Russian interference in the election, hate speech on the platform. We were not prepared as we should have been, but that's five years old. I sit here today, we are the leaders. We invest the most, we are the best at these things. Now, it's still never perfect. There are over 3 billion people on this platform, which means you're going to have all the good of humanity and all the bad, but our job, and I show up every day and I should be held responsible for it, is to maximize that good and minimize that bad. And what we see all over the world is people, and so many people in India, using Facebook to share, to connect. During COVID, it's never been more important than being able to make that connection when you can't be with people in person. And small businesses, small businesses have had to make a digital shift. When things shut down, they had to reach their customers online. We offer all of those tools for free, and I think we're the largest platform for small businesses all over the world. And so, our goal, and I do it every day, and I should be held to doing it every day, is to let that good happen and minimize the bad. Superb. Okay, I'm going to do this rapid-fire thing. I've given some time to it. Your biggest inspiration? My mom. I have to ask why? Yeah, because she's the most giving person I know. She's my inspiration as a mother. And as a businesswoman, my grandmother. My grandmother, who grew up in a time where if she had been born 50 years later, she would have run the world. But she wasn't really allowed to work. Her family was very poor. She was pulled out of school when she was a young child to clean homes and make money for the family. A teacher went to her parents and said, you got to get that girl back into school. And she got all the way through college. And then she didn't technically work, but when my grandfather's business was failing, she stepped in and saved it. That one thing you have learned from India, or from women in India specifically? Oh my God, I've spent so much time in India. I started my career in India working at the World Bank. I then opened up Google's offices in India, opened up Facebook's offices in India. So, I certainly don't know it the way you do and your audience does. But I do feel like I've worked there more and spent more time there than certainly most Americans. And I am so inspired by the people of India, but I'm also deeply inspired by the women. I mentioned before, we have over 58,000 lean-in circles in 189 countries. We have almost 2,000 lean-in circles in India. And I have just heard so many stories. I'll share just one. There's a woman named Spurti. She's a network leader with Lingyin Bangalore. And in her community during COVID, so many women were resigning. And so, she led an initiative to bring these women back to work. And this is what's incredible. She reached out to the husbands of these women and their family members to connect them to other people, to show them how important it was to help out so their wives, their daughters, their sisters could return back to work. And almost all the women who left the workplace in her circles are now back in. That is inspiring. Sher, my son is two years old. At what age would you advise my wife and I give him his own smartphone? Oh my God, not at two. I mean, look, to get on our services at 13. Yeah. I think there are some very safe products out there, you know, where you can let kids start learning how to use technology. I tried to teach my kids to code when they were super young, five, six, seven. Programs like Scratch that are really easy, that I would certainly do. The next big innovation out of the Facebook campus that you are most excited about? The metaverse. I mean, it's just a whole new level of a whole new world that we are going to be able to communicate, share, connect, transact in a way we've never done before. Sheryl, if you were in task to rebuild the internet ground up, what's the one thing you'd change about it? I would have built in the safety precautions that we built later or earlier. Okay. I mean, if I could wave a magic wand, I would get rid of every bad thing that happens on the internet and every good thing. I don't know if that's possible. If you were in task to rebuild meta ground up today, what's the one thing you'd change about it? I think I would have helped us grow internationally more quickly. I think we're still playing catch up. If you were to write Lean In again today, in a short answer, what's the one thing you'd change about the book? I would put more stories in. When I wrote my second book, Option B, my first book, Lean In, was really two-thirds the data, a third my story. So it didn't have enough of a flavor, which we then tried to address with the second edition and the foundation. But Option B was a third the data, a third my story, and a third so many other stories from all over the world. And I think that worked better. People don't remember data, they remember the stories. You need the stories of diverse voices. If you were to write that book 15 years later again, is there one thing you wouldn't change? Oh, a lot of things. The core message that we will be a better world if women get more leadership roles. I mean, look, countries run by women in the early stages did better in the pandemic and had lower death rates. If you ever needed proof that women should run more countries and companies, there it is. Not that we needed that, but we have it. One of your life's deepest regrets? My husband died of what is a preventable disease, which is cardiovascular disease. If I knew then what I know now, if he had been on a statin for a decade, he'd probably be alive today. I mean, nothing else comes close to that regret. Cheryl, do you have a Finsta account? I do not. But I know many people that do. Cheryl, destiny or free will? Free will. Work from home or work from office? Combo. Turns out to be great to do some of both. My last question, Cheryl, education or experience? If you had to pick one, what's more important? I want to say both, but I'll go with education. Before I say bye, if I can just ask you to just make one kind of comment to the winners of the Sticky Flow Awards for Women Entrepreneurs. Okay. To every single one of you, congratulations, because you are leading and building and producing and creating change. And to everyone who didn't win the award but still competed for it, congratulations to you too, all the work you're doing. And Anant, congratulations to you for hosting this and caring so much. Thank you so much, Cheryl. Thank you for your time. Thank you.