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Careers, Workplace and Religion
Bravery vs. Ambition: A Reflection on Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” from Rebekah Lyons

Bravery vs. Ambition: A Reflection on Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” from Rebekah Lyons

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 at 2:45 pm by Bob Robinson

Bravery vs. Ambition: A Reflection on Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” from Rebekah Lyons 2013-04-05T14:45:15-04:00 Bob Robinson

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lean-in-bordered Sheryl Sandberg is making headlines because she is challenging long-held beliefs about women and leadership. Her book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead is #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.

(Below, see Sandberg’s TED talk, in which she outlines what she ended up writing in the book.)

Rebekah Lyons has written a great piece at Q Ideas in which she gives an appreciative critique of the book. Lyons writes,

“Sandberg hooked me with her statement, ‘We [women] hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in.’ Agreed.”

Sandberg’s premise is that this starts at a very early age. What do we think of girls who take tell others what they should or should not be doing? We call them “bossy.” What do we think of boys who do the same? We call them “leaders.” What do you think? What is nature and what is nurture? In other words, are females more or less meant to be bold in their leadership?

In the book, Sandberg writes,

“The world has not evolved nearly as much as I believed it would. All but one of my male classmates work in professional settings. . . . In comparison to their male counterparts, highly trained women are scaling back and dropping out of the workforce in high numbers. In turn, these diverging percentages teach institutions and mentors to invest more in men, who are statistically more likely to stay.”

In other words, since women are expected to place family first, they make bad choices about their careers and fall behind their male counterparts. For instance,

“A law associate might decide not to shoot for partner because someday she hopes to have a family. A teacher might pass on leading curriculum development for her school. A sales representative might take a smaller territory or not apply for a management role. Often without even realizing it, the woman stops reaching for new opportunities.”

In other words, women inhibit their career ambition because they think ambition is not as important as other things.

To this, Rebekah Lyons offers some very insightful analysis:

There are good things about being ambitious, about dreaming big, about working hard and achieving goals. But wait? Didn’t Jesus imply that life is found, not at the top of the ladder, but on the bottom rung? Matthew’s kingdom cry rang in my ears, ‘If you lose your life for (me), you’ll find it.’ And John’s idea that ‘apart from (God) we are nothing’? Scripture seems to regularly point us toward surrender instead of ambition. Further, it implies that strength is never perfected in us until we are weak.

True leadership, based on the example of Jesus (and found to be key to success by much of the latest literature on business leadership) is servant leadership. If our ambition is to lead in order to serve, then that is a righteous ambition. Lyons then states something profound:

“Ambitious people desire and are determined to achieve success.

Brave people are prepared to face and endure danger and pain.

Ambition has a tendency to bend a good thing—bravery—into a selfish thing. And the world doesn’t need more selfish women. It needs more women who are empowered to use their talents to renew their workplaces, as well as their families, neighborhoods and communities. If we lean in to a corporate culture that insists we climb our way to the top, we will miss a greater call to bravery: to transforming our surroundings, instead of conforming to them.”

To read more of Rebekah Lyon’s article go to QIdeas.org.

Image: cover of Time Magazine, March 18, 2013

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