Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant discuss 'Option B' at Wharton

this is beautiful thank you for being here this reason sheryl sandberg Adam gran in your home territory home sir this is a very long time coming you don't know this but in 2010 I had a student in one of my MBA classes send me this TED talk I was like okay cool I'll watch it later and then about an hour later another student sent me the same talk and within the first three hours I had about a dozen emails and I was like this is really annoying I'm gonna I'm gonna watch the talk so I don't knowing you ever sent it's true but I watched the talk and I was like oh this is this is cool it's a you know it's a woman leader talking about women leaders it's like the Seinfeld episode with a coffee table book about coffee tables and then and then I watched a little further and you were using all these studies some of the same studies that I talked about in my own classroom and I was like wow this person is kind of awesome and then I started reading admissions essays and there were just scores of essays where our students wrote I am applying to business school because I want to follow in Sheryl Sandberg footsteps and it happened over and over again and then in the classroom I would ask what leaders do you admire and students would name hundreds and hundreds of male leaders and yours was basically the only female name that ever came up and then Lehman came out I read Lehman and there was a sentence that that just it hooked me there are a lot of powerful sentences in that book but my very favorite one was the one where you said I was on a treadmill reading a sociology journal Cheryl are you aware that even sociologists don't do that I'm a geek I enjoy that so welcome it's such a treat to finally have you here seven years later thank you for coming I'm so glad to be here everyone so we're going to we're going to talk about option B and resilience for the first half we're going to talk about women leadership and lean in for the second half I want to start talking about Dave though Dave gave me one of the greatest gifts I've ever received in my life which was an introduction to you and I wonder if you could just talk to us a little bit about how you met and what it was that made you fall in love with him let me say again thank you to all of you for being here it's really I feel I feel very close to you all because I'm so close to Adam I even got to talk on the speaker the other day to one of your classes early in the morning but it's really it's really nice to be here where Adam teaches and Adams work works and so many of the great ideas that I've learned I know I was always quoting his students as them coming from them so real honor for me I met my husband in 1996 and like Ryan if you born then I had just graduated from business school I gotten divorced I moved to LA to work for McKinsey and didn't really know anyone I was moving far away on purpose to try to get away from what was personally painful at the time and friend of mine I was dating someone he was out of town a friend of mine was going to dinner and movie with a friend so he invited me and the three of us went to dinner on a movie and I fell asleep on the friend's shoulder the friend was Dave and he thought that now I was super into him but now he never Mario he knew then he learned later that I possibly on anyone's told her especially in any movies James became my friends I think it was right after I got divorced I wasn't ready to date anyone who was the right person and I dated a bunch of the wrong person for a bunch of years and then I said to my mom I was dating someone and breaking up and I just said I don't feel lucky person Bob you know it's not working not not the right person and I said whoever marries a bulwark is gonna be the luckiest person in the world and he was my friend and my mom said well you should really listen to that and so dave and i Dave and I started dating and then we got married and had two children a Dave Adam knew him dave was brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant Dave never believes kind of what everyone else believes he always had his own view on everything and he wasn't afraid to say it but he never said it in that I know more than you way he said in that you've your opinion I totally respect it but here's mine and I say what strongly say puts funny he played a lot of April Fool's jokes not always on April Fool's almost always on me David's great father and a great friend and I was lucky for a long time and I wasn't so I remember I remember after the funeral you it was so telling instead of yeah I think a lot of people in that situation would have asked how do I get through this you know I just lost this person who's the center of my world your question was how do I get my kids through this and I was struck them as so often by how other focused you were when you think about all kinds of diversity or hardship one of the most important things we've learned about how to get other people through it I was totally unprepared for tragedy Dave died suddenly we had no idea I found him I had to tell my children they were 7 and 10 that their father was gone and grief which is something I had read about but not experienced it's an overwhelming saying it felt like a void closing in on me my brother-in-law described it as a boot pushing on his chest and I had no idea what to do and I didn't invite anyone to the funeral I was just in a fog and Adam showed up at the end of the Shiva at my house do you ever was leaving I asked Adam to stay and I was like that was psychologists [Laughter] curiously I was like maybe and I lifted him and I'm sure hysterical I was like what do I do how am I going to get my kids through this like tell me what to do and Adam did something that might not have worked for everyone but for me was incredibly comforting which is he started summarizing the research no this was this is by the way this is the idiots guide to how to be a good friend like I know what's going to cheer you up Cheryl there's no specific route but it did I mean if you cheer me up it didn't tear me up nothing to cheer me up but it helped Adam said okay there's been one longitudinal study very well done of children who have gone through divorce or lost parents and here's what it says and then he said here the trap psychologist talked about the three P's you know etcetera but it it didn't help with the grief at all but it gave me steps I could take and when I learned with Adam I was asking the wrong questions how do i how do I get my kids through it was the right question but the wrong question I followed up on was well how much resilience do they have how much resilience do I have how do I figure out if we're going to make it he's like no no no resilience or the muscle you build it you build it in yourself you both and other people don't ask me how much you have asked me how to build it and for I know there are a lot of people I just had an opportunity to meet with some amazing students they're right here who are in a grief group on campus supporting each other when the grief closes in it is a complete loss of control it feels like there's nothing you can do and there is in many ways nothing you can do so when anyone gives you any steps you can take particularly for me once that social scientists had studied that they knew worked that was a lifeline and in many ways the path to writing option B and forming option B org let's talk about the three P's since you mentioned them I remember when I first brought them up you are like what why do you psychologists need three of everything why do they have to start with the same letter but we talked a lot about the the traps of personalization this is my fault pervasiveness this is going to ruin every part of my life permanent I'm going to feel this way forever and I wanted to talk about getting through those yeah Adam said look when you face adversity and it's not just deaf it can be the small thing losing a job getting fired not getting into a school you want to get into the break-up the big things death cancer incarceration you know serious long-term unemployment these things don't cure everything but there are these psychological traps you can fall into and I was falling into all three he told me about them and then he just kept pointing them out so personalization it's your fault I blamed myself I blamed myself for Dave dying we originally thought he'd gone off an exercise machine my brother's a neurosurgeon and he kept telling me that wasn't true but then we figured out we had an autopsy he died of coronary artery disease I'm the only non doctor in my family I didn't understand why I couldn't diagnose it maybe I should've gone to medical school as everyone told me all along but I didn't diagnosed it I didn't solve it I didn't fix it then when I kind of got over that because everyone explained I wasn't a doctor I was accepted I was inconveniencing ever and all the people at Facebook that were taking meetings for me my mom who gave up her life to live with me for a while I said sorry like always every sentence was I'm sorry for this I'm sorry for that so Adam told me I wasn't allowed to say sorry anymore yeah and then you're like well I apologized before that's not okay either but Adam said if you if you don't he told me that if I didn't stop blaming myself my kids can't recover because I couldn't recover and as we've done the resilience research and I've learned from such great research adamson it's not just forgiving yourself when it wasn't your fault it's forgiving yourself when it was self compassion turns out to be hugely important for recovery we formed option B org and we put this TED talk up it's by this woman and she has a story of another woman who got divorced and a while after that was going on her first stage was all excited and she gets dressed up she goes and the guy leaves after 10 minutes and then waits she's as she tells the story she says the friend said to her you know you're unattractive and boring of course he left right there's the gas right what a friend didn't say that to her she said it to herself a friend would never say the things we say to ourselves our friends are usually so much nicer than we are to ourselves and finding self compassion there are tragedies that happen that are people fall and Adam and I on purpose included them in this book and those people have to forgive themselves too and that doesn't mean anything anyone does is okay and there's not real responsibility in this shouldn't be real punishment that's not what we're saying but what we're saying is when when things happen we have to find self compassion speak to ourselves as we would to a friend and men and women do this women do this more but we speak to ourselves much more mainly than we would ever to a friend the second is pervasiveness is everything in your life everything in my life is a disaster and it definitely felt that way it really felt that way and the third was permanent with Adam and others who had been through real loss Adam with his experience others saying it would feel better and I did not believe it the grief is so here the sadness lingers but it does not feel the way it did to two years ago I can breathe there is no longer a boot sitting on my brother-in-law's chest and we want people to know that those are the traps so they can help get not just themselves but other people out of them you said I think a long time after we began the discussion about the 3 p's you said I wish I had known this when I was in college in business school you tell us yeah I think these are actually really good thoughts traps that you can all avoid right my first day of work after college I went to the World Bank someone asked me to enter data into what was Lotus 1-2-3 it's a spreadsheet I didn't know how to do that even though I cook studied economics and the guy who's a professor said to me I can't believe you've got this job not knowing how to do this and left the room so I went home crying to my three roommates from college and said I'm healthy had fired because the guy I work for just said I shouldn't have gotten the job and it's only day one but it wasn't pervasive I wasn't bad at everything I was just bad at spreadsheets and I learned and then when I got divorced and I got the worst young in early I was 25 I thought I was the biggest failure in the world and I thought I would never recover it would affect all areas of my life you know and it was my fault and so just applying those lessons to even the small stuff I've already found can make a really big difference so let's let's talk a little bit about some of the the discussions around how to imagine alternative paths I remember just a couple of weeks after day passed away we were we were sitting in her family room with your mom and I told you that you should imagine how this could be worse so y'all know this islands one of the most brilliant people I've ever met but when he said that I listed him like he was absolutely insane right I mean how it could be worse I just lost my husband like suddenly with no warning and he said well Dave could have had that same cardiac arrhythmia driving your children and that happens it's happens to people and the minute he said it I was like I'm good kids are alive I'm fine this is perfect right I mean that's thought I could have lost all three of them and it's so counterintuitive because you would think that if you're trying to recover from hardship or tragedy you should think positive thoughts but actually thinking about what things could be worse helps us see what's still good in our life and what we can be grateful for and it is a great irony of this journey for me and really studying Raziel with Adam and Adams brilliance to this which is that you can come out of this obviously lingering sadness lingering grief but more grateful I am more grateful today than I was two years ago more grateful for the gift of life itself something I just completely took for granted it never occurred to me Dave wouldn't turn 48 God willing I turned 48 in August and my god will that birthday mean a lot to me just like 47 did just like every birthday everyone around me has how many people have made a joke oh I'm turning I guess twenty I'm getting old come on how many people have made and I'm getting old joke if I can give you one thing today don't do that and I'm not joking don't do that my cousin Laura turned fifty two months ago and I called her and said happy birthday and I bet you woke up this morning with that oh my god I'm fifty things this is the year Dave doesn't turn fifty there are only two choices we grow older we don't and if we do it is a gift and just appreciating that is what we talk about in the book and Adam taught me is post-traumatic growth it is the things where you go through hardship that make your life better and we believe deeply in pre traumatic growth some of you have faced trauma some of you I've got to meet some of you I haven't but a lot of you haven't what would you do if you knew you had a year left how would you live what would you do if you remembered that not everyone lives until your next birthday you can have that that gratitude right now right here and pretty incredible thing so that I think that that surfaces the the idea of privilege which is you have had a lot to be grateful for there very few people who have the resources that you do and who also have such great supportive friends who you know have benefited from your generosity for four years and had a chance then to to pay it back I thought it really interesting when we started writing about resilience that resilience research started with extremely disadvantaged groups looking at children in severe poverty who had suffered violent abuse and asking how did some of these children come out so strong anyway and I'm just wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about what you've learned from you know sort of comparing across the spectrum of resources that people have available nothing prevented that for me or my kids but I know how lucky we are in many ways still and even in the face of trauma resources matter and I thought a ton and Adam and I have talked a lot about what it would be like and a lot of people have this to go through the trauma I went through and lose your house and lose your apartment and lose your job about the single mother waking up everyday in our country where our public policy is just abysmal and has to choose between taking care of a sick child and losing a job that she needs and it is interesting that the research the book is my story partially the book is also the research and the book is lots of other amazing stories some of which are from this community there people Adam knew they're amazing and the research and the other stories really come from people of all different backgrounds and one thing we've thought a lot about and we wrote a chapter about is about collective resilience collective I got through this because Adams an unbelievable friend you know someone who could just be there emotionally and right with me and process with me and summarize data for me and waited that maybe would've helped others but really helped commit but but we build resilience in each other and there are a lot of programs we talk about in the book that work with with severely disadvantaged population the nurse Family Partnership is one example these interventions where they go to underprivileged families and they start visiting homes from pregnancy until two years those people 15 years later have you know half the incarceration rates or more than that I mean the numbers are a day what happens and it just shows us that we have a deep responsibility to help prevent hardship because hardships not evenly distributed racism disadvantage poverty those people in who face that have more violence more deaths more job loss all of these things that cause more illness so we need to prevent that hardship in the first place but then we need to help rebuild and one of the things we are we are talking about is the public policy the corporate policy but also trying to talk about and teach how we build collective resilience because we have responsibility to do a lot more than we do as a society in terms of what we can do with individuals to support other people who are suffering I remember being a little stunned by a few of the comments that you face you know the friend who said after a year gee aren't you done with that grief thing by now or the other so-called friend who said you're just too angry and sad it's hard to be around you and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what you learned about how to be as good or supportive friend Adams shows that there's a whole section of self-help books but there's no help other sections help other section we want our book and what we're doing with option B to work to be in a health other section and I realized I got a lot of this wrong before before I lost David someone was going through something hard I would mention it the first time maybe I'm so sorry and then I would never bring it up again because if they wanted to talk they should tell me and I don't want to remind them that's ludicrous you can't remind me I lost Dave I know that and you can't remind someone she went for chemotherapy this morning you can't remind someone that his dad just went to jail they know and I'm not saying that every person will want to talk every time but you can always acknowledge and always ask I know you're suffering I'm here if you want to talk the other thing I learned was the power of not just offering to do anything but doing something again another thing I got wrong I've said to many people just let me know if there's anything I can do and I meant that really kindly I was coming from a good place but the problem is when people said that to me it shifts the burden to the person who needs to help answer the question and what do you say well to make Father's Day disappear some have to live through it do something my dear friends dan and Esther Levy tragically lost a child and they were in the hospital for many months and a friend of his texted and said what are you not one on a burger a friend of mine read this book two weeks ago before it came out I gave it to her and she has a not close friend who has a child with leukemia and they went back into the hospital and she said before she read the book she would have done nothing because she's not her best friend how dare she imposed they're in the hospital with leukemia but she read the book so she went to the toy store she bought a stuffed animal she went to the hospital lobby and she texted and said I'm in the lobby in case you want this through you want to come down but I'm leaving in a few minutes and the woman texted right away and said please come up and she gave the stuffed animal to the four-year-old and she said the mother was standing behind her crying mouthing the words thank you thank you for showing up you don't have to be someone's best friend from the first grade to show up with a burger you don't and you don't have to be someone's best friend to mention this asking is always right it won't be the right thing to show up in all circumstances but a lot more showing up and a lot more acknowledging would help a lot of people you were determined early on to make sure that you found joy and I remember in the the Facebook post you wrote my least favorite sentence was I will never feel another moment of pure joy again I tried to talk you out of writing it you wrote it anyway it clearly should have left them so often when Adam and I disagree he's almost always right true I will I will say one of my moments of joy is proving you wrong but in this case I would have preferred not to not to have to but I think that you know it was it was actually really interesting that you said despite that right I'm going to search for joy even though I don't believe that I'm going to find it and you have found joy can you talk to us a little bit about how well it wasn't easy and one of those sentences we write in the book that I really love is that joy is a discipline it takes work and it definitely takes work post loss or grief and it takes work for a lot of us anyway about four months after Dave died I went to a bar mitzvah and the childhood friends pulled me on the dance floor and we were dancing and a minute in I basically broke down kind of had to be taken outside kind of Barisan and I don't know what was wrong I felt different and the grief I didn't experiencing for four months and then I realized oh my god I was happy for one minute four months later and then the guilt just washed in my body just the guilt how could I be happy when Dave was gone how dare I be on his dance floor and around that time my brother-in-law called me crying on the phone and he said all Dave ever wanted was for you and your children to be happy don't take that away from him and death so that was a permission I needed permission to be happy and I gave it to my kids early I said daddy would want you to play daddy would want you to be happy but I hadn't given it to myself but then the question is how and Adam really helpfully the day after that performance that I came here with my kids and I told Adam how I collapsed at the dance floor he's like of course you did you don't do a single thing that would make anyone happy right yeah you're you're working you're taking care of your kids and you're writing about grief in a journal okay sounds delightful but what Adam said is that I think I thought happiness was going to be the big things we think happiness often is you know getting into pan or Wharton getting a job having a kid what happiness is the daily stuff the small stuff and Adam said start doing things that are more fun even those that remind me of Dave I took things back my kids and I started playing Settlers of Catan again even though Dave and I had been playing right before he died I started watching TV again even though Dave and I will hold on Sheryl Sandberg watched TV yeah I do I used to every night but then I didn't because it remind me of Dave everything fun reminded me of Dave so I did none of it but I took things back I took back Game of Thrones even though I don't really understand it now that Dave's not there oh and you all don't either it's very confusing I like you read the book which Dave did there's no way you understand here every little characters and they die so quickly you can hardly remember them I took back Scrabble Dave played with his brother of I rob Dave and Rob played and now Dave and I played and now Rob and I play but I also started noticing Adam suggested I write down three moments of joy in my journal before I go to bed and I started doing it I still do it and they weren't big had a cup of coffee someone told a joke my son gave me a hug without being asked maybe can sit up and I asked but because I was going to write them down at the end of the day I noticed them I was like oh that makes the journal and so I favored them more and we have to give ourselves permission and we have to give ourselves the tools what we focus on is what we focus on it doesn't mean there's joy every moment there's not there's still a lot of grief but there is joint out and there is pure joy now there are moments I am happy and I know David want me to be I want to talk about gender and there's a there's one subject in the book and I think if you quarter your experience and your values the bridge is the two which is confident I've not known you as a person lacking in confidence but pretty early on yeah you said like I don't feel like I can do anything well you certainly thought after Dave that I mean I'd read it back grief and so when the anger pain when the sadness came I had heard about that not in the amount they came but I wasn't shocked but what did shock me as really Dave death trashed my self-confidence and I had thought a lot about self confidence I wrote lean in and I am steady self confidence I definitely had trouble with it in college when I sat were you that I learned the data again the data always helps me that women feel less self confidence than men I don't like sexism even if it's in myself so I really worked to correct it and in writing meaning in building the lean in circles all around the world I gave a lot of women a lot of advice on how to feel more self-confident and I took that advice when you're giving advice all day you take it and so I was feeling good like I deserved my job like I could do my job like I could be a good mother and work so if I hadn't even felt a couple years before but it was pretty solid and in Dave deafness trashed it because I was now mothering by myself two grieving children I didn't know how to do that and I went back to work and I could barely focus through a meeting and not think about Dave let alone contribute and Mark Zuckerberg 15 years younger than I am I have no idea how he knew how to do this what I used to do when someone was going through something hard at work is offer them time off really important I think it's Facebook we do this very well I think other companies need to step up some do well we need to do better we need better public policy for those not covered by companies but I would offer them time off and I would say things like well don't worry of course you can't fully focus you look what you're going through but when people said that to me that just proves when I knew which is oh my god I didn't you I can't do my job and the pervasiveness I've lost David lose my job I'm going to lose everything and now I have nothing to do all day but grieve because my kids are going to be in school it was very scary but what Mark did is he said oh you would have made that mistake before it was actually very comforting when I fell asleep in the first meeting of the first day actually like a lot of people fall asleep and I was like whoo he's like a lot of people but then he said so you made two good points today and here's what they were and he billed to me back up and now when someone's going through something hard I offer them time off I ask if they want the project taken off them but if they don't and if they're back I say do you want to do this you're great at this or I take the time to compliment the little things that they might not have needed complimented before and that's really important because I think when we think about helping people get through trauma through tragedy through loss through illness through any of these things it is comforting them and holding them as they cry and showing up at the hospital it is also building them back up telling them they can do their job giving them permission to laugh and live let's let's talk about how to support women more effectively you you have some pretty strong views about career advice for women in particular can you talk to us about how to manage a personal brand oh my god you don't have a brand I get this question a lot particularly from young audiences and I shudder every time so I'm so glad you asked it if you think you are building your personal brand please don't you don't have a brand crest has a brand Perrier has a brand I work in marketing these things are packaged up and marketed like products but when I hear anyone talk about building their personal brands I know I know that's not right and the reason it's not right is that products are marketed this is sparkling water it is one of my favorites it is put in a bottle that I really like with packaging I really like what people are not that simple and we're not packaged and when we are packaged we are ineffective and inauthentic I don't think I have a brand but I do think I have a voice but it is not clear and consistent and wrapped the same way consistently it is a voice that I use to help build a company it is a voice that I spoke out on women it is a voice that sometimes gets things wrong I've gotten a lot wrong and a lot wrong publicly over the years and it's a voice I now use to talk about grief and try to break some of the isolation I felt if you think you are building a personal brand you will not have the career you want to have because you will not be authentic don't package yourself just speak and speak honestly I think speak with some data behind you don't assert things that aren't true and speak from your experience and be clear what the differences are Cheryl another topic job another topic you have strong views about we know that women get much less mentorship and sponsorship than than men do and you want to change that yeah it is amazing one of the things that happens pretty frequently to me but does not it's always women as women will say can be my mentor women I don't know and I would love that to be the case but men never say that and I really can't mentor someone I don't know and no one really can and I find it so striking that women ask that all the time and not men the other thing and this one I hate just as much as I hate the brand thing is will you be on my personal board of directors no perfect it out you don't have a personal board of directors because you're not a company it's much like you're not a bottle of Perrier you're not a product and I really feel strongly about this I have mentored a lot of people I mentor a lot of people and they are people that I've met through work through organically who also are working on things with me if two people start Facebook today and this happened to all the time I will try to see anyone I can 3 months in one person comes to see me and says you're really important here so I'd like you to help me I'll try but three months later someone else comes and says I've been working here for three months or six months or three years and I've noticed this and I think we got this wrong or I think you've got the stronger I don't understand why we do it this way I'm so much more likely to mentor the second person because the second person just made a really good point or a third person picks up and solve the problem if you ask someone to be on your personal board of directors you are asking them to do for you and you're not giving them any tools to do it the way we build the relationships where you really mentor people or by working with them and by helping them so don't ask someone if you can be on their personal they can be on your personal board of directors ask someone if they have a problem you can solve and they will then whine advising you and I'm so sad the way we keep telling women to ask for help that way not because we don't need help we all need help but because it's not going to work the other thing that is so powerful is peer mentorship when I was sitting where you're sitting you know if I had fast forwarded to my career there was no internet so I could not have figured out I would go to Google and Facebook but the people over the years that told me not to go to Google and not to go to Facebook for my mentors the people who told me to take those jobs over others older media jobs or my peers and it's been proven that peer mentorship can be just as important lean in circles or one way of doing it we now have 30,000 in 150 countries we grow by over a hundred a week we had some here get into yourself into a group it can be through lean in or through any program and mentor each other and to a great job and solve a lot of problems and that is the only way to get real mentors at work I would enjoy aboard you can be on someone else's real board one day [Laughter] there's one little wrinkle in that I think in the you know try to help the person who's mentoring you want which is I every once awhile I'll have a student come to office hours and say how can I help you and I just recoiled because it feels like a violation of the professor-student relationship in a professor because I want to be helpful not because I want my student what I hope might put it but but but generic offers much like an option B aren't as good how about I think this case study could make your class better case studies are terrible that's why I don't teach at Harvard all right okay okay I went to the wrong school how about I talk to five people after that lecture and these are three ways I think it could be better and I wrote it up for you that is very helpful you'll take that or how about you know I think we would benefit if we did a project or we did a survey and I wrote it up or I'd like to do that can I take the initiative that works catalyst Joan - the case studies I didn't like them that much either to be honest can you talk a little bit more about how women can help each other yeah and I think this is really important I think there's this myth out there that women don't help other women and it's grounded in some reality and it's historically you know historically if you were the one woman or two women there really was room for one promotion because it was a situation where there was going to be one room in in the room one woman in the room if any so historically there was I think the queen bee syndrome people talk about but I don't think that's true anymore and one of the things that happens is that women get less credit for the ideas they put forward women get less credit for the work they do and if you're a man and you take credit that usually goes pretty well or at least better for a woman if you try to take credit that's badly but saying my dear friend Mindy is here she's an alum Mindy did a great job on that project that is a win-win I look communal and helpful and supporting someone else she gets the credit she deserved jumping in and helping Mindy with we're going to do this together we really can help each other it's also an easy way to point out the biases which exist they exist everywhere they existed Facebook I'm sure they exist in a classroom here going to a professor and saying you know the women are getting interrupted more than the men sometimes a seizure it's great to do it when it's you but when it's not you I just watch these three women get interrupted today we speak for each other and sort ourselves I don't want to dissuade anyone for speaking up for themselves but sometimes we're not as good at that helping each other is a very good path to correcting bias building careers that speaks a little bit to the biases that often hold women back and I will say I've had over the past few years quite a few undergrads and MBAs men come by and say look you know look I understand that there's supposed to be a lot of biases that you know that may hurt women but I don't think those exist today the way they used to and also you know I see all these you know like career recruiters OCR people coming and like creating special opportunities for women that feels like it's disadvantaging men and I always want to sit back to them look if you actually read the data I'm pretty convinced that there is not a single white man who in a lifetime will face the same kind of bias that a typical woman does in a week but particularly a minority woman especially but it's often hard to make that case and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you view those situations that feel very zero-sum know we do we know through the data that that white men particularly young white men believe that the deck is stacked against them because there's a lot of talk about diversity someone asks me that it was a young employee at Facebook and I just looked at them I said God if we're biased for women and minorities do we suck right because we don't have enough women and we don't have enough underrepresented minorities and seeing your rank so if we're actually biased for doing it really that it's hard to imagine there's bias against male leadership with 95 percent of the fortune 500 CEO holding those jobs and this is important 30 percent more first promotions last year for men than women based on the most comprehensive survey done which is a wean in McKinsey survey of over 100 companies 30% more first promotions for men with the same tenure so if there's bias the other way it sure isn't showing up in the data and I think we need to recognize that the biases are really real and we need to call them out and explain what they are and it's definitely gender a man can be confident and liked because as he gets more powerful and considered more confident we like and more women face the trade-off as they get more powerful we like them less you can give out a resume the same resume with a white sounding name and a black founding name and the white sounding name will get 50% more callbacks it's worth eight years of experience in the workforce to have a white sounding name over a black sounding name that is recent data the biases are real new auditions orchestra members behind a screen and all of a sudden you hire more women some of those women were backup they work at whatever they call them understudies know it's what they call that understudy they were playing in the orchestra as sub but they didn't realize they were that good until they were behind a screen because they were women and so the data's super clear on this and I think we have to make sure that we are willing to call out the biases without making people feel I think the other answer is we have to recognize that a more equal world where people were given equal opportunity despite sorry give an equal opportunity without regards to race without regards to gender would be a better world we would be more productive our companies would be better run our kids would be happier and do better in school and so it's better for everyone this is not a zero-sum game economic growth moves a lot of companies up and we could have more of it one more question before we go to the audience questions I get a lot of students somewhere here in the audience today asking what I think of their 12 year career plan or the 15 year path yes they've mapped out what would you like to say to those students yeah so the trash can with the personal brand I'm the personal board of directors you put your six what is your six year plan sure yeah when I was four you are Mark Zuckerberg with an elementary school and so if I had mapped out my career I would not be here I would not and could not be here you need a long run dream and think about what it is and make it big and ambitious particularly if you're a woman particularly if you're an underrepresented minority you can do anything but white men to all of us you can do anything we don't want to leave you out but I want to be clear why I say it that way we know that performance of minorities and women is systematically underestimated compared to white men and we know that it's systematically underestimated by them as well as other people and so there's a reason I said that so we take a minute and everyone ambitious doesn't mean you need to be CEO I know not everyone wants a corporate job but ambitious to make a difference in the world to live your dreams ask yourself what you would do if you weren't afraid long run and then ask yourself what am i doing in the next year or two to get there you know year two years I'd say 18 months cause it feels kind of in the middle it is a great idea to map that out and it's not just what you're going to do and what's going to go on your resume something people worry about too much now it's what skills am I going to learn what am i badass and I might need to get better at try that don't build the perfect resume no one buys those anyway give yourself the opportunity to fail and to do the stuff you don't think you can do yet you're going to need those later and not about be an exterior to a skill building of investing in yourself and do not try to connect the short-term plan to the long-run dream because you will miss opportunities because Facebook didn't exist and I believe that so strongly I think you all grew up in a much more structured world than I did and even the world I grew up in is pretty structured it doesn't work that way careers are a jungle-gym not a ladder move sideways and backwards be willing to try new things but don't tie yourself up in knots building the perfect resume or building the perfect long run plan because it will hold you back it really will so we're taking we're taking audience questions we have a really interesting platform called Facebook that you can use to submit you can submit them out of the authors that weren't in page for those who are interested we have a bunch already so here's one that I like I'll add a little bit of color to this too Facebook has redefined what it means to be a friend or at least brought in the term friendship and I will say this took on personal meaning for me when one day you introduced me as your friend and didn't realize we were friends how do you actually define a friend and what do you think of when you think of friendship I mean there are your closest friends your your more distant friends but I think a friend is someone who has your interests at heart and wants things to go well for you and someone who will be there when things are hard and celebrate when you when things are good go up I mean I think that's actually I think it's pretty simple it takes different forms we need different things from our friends over different years but do you have a term for those people who are like in between friend and colleague or acquaintance I don't know if I spend a lot of a lot of time thinking about what what you call that but I think I think it's nice to think of the world is filled with a lot of friends I think losing Gabe's taught me that there's a lot I could do for friends there's a lot they did for me pretty special things to have people that care that care about you and have the people you can keep in touch with over the course of your life there are several people who want to talk a little bit about the process of writing option B my recollection of it was I would receive usually a journal entry from you and then read it and get feedback and then I would draft some research and I would get like a lot of track changes about four seconds later and I'm wondering what you remember from I mean so Adam and I it's in for me one of the best if not the best collaborations certainly writing I've had in my career we wrote together before we wrote in New York time series on women and leadership based on the data and experience and this book really has three parts that's my story which has come from my journal entries not everything of course I don't share everything but some of that and some research Madame always wrote the first draft of that and a lot of other people's stories of just amazing people who have faced all kinds of adversity and learned a lot but they can share and we kind of split writing those up and I know that as much as Adam helped me get through this and still help me make some getting through it the process for me of writing was so important you know I like writing the first drops when I do I like I like I like editing he likes writing he like Saturday finding one voice was hard we wrote the book we started writing it as we because it really is we we both wrote it together but it just it couldn't read well so much of it was my story so we're in fact the first person singular and Adam I say Adam that part's a little weird but there was like no other way no other way to do this but the writing process itself was a for me was really really a fun one to two final questions one is can you tell us a little bit about how you would go back and live college or business school differently oh my god yes I really am so glad to get that question my son his team basketball team lost the playoffs and all the other little boys were pretty upset that's happened a few weeks ago and they were some more crying and I said are you okay he was mom this is sixth grade basketball I'm fine so what he was saying was that his friends hadn't lost their father so they thought it was a super big deal I am sure there are students here that super big deal things are happening to some of you are losing parents some of you do have cancer some of you are facing life-threatening illnesses but the rest of the stuff please some perspective students are so nervous I promise it is not going to matter to your career if you are elected president of whatever club you are forming and it's not really going to matter I hope this is okay James if you get like an A or a B or whatever form you used for that if you can have grades here do you have grades here just checking after the whole case study fiasco but most of everything I worried about in college and Business School was silly and that doesn't mean almost trying to be a little limp at all I'm really I'm not I know breakups are real working hard on classes are real it just doesn't have this importance I thought it did and perspective would have made me understand it better and deal with it better and I do think for whatever reason students today and I do interact with a lot of them we do a lot of recruiting are from anxious and like I have a something to tell you you guys go to Wharton and then gonna be fine there are a lot of people in our society who aren't going to have a hard time getting jobs that's not you it's very clear that's not you and so some laughter some perspective do the stuff you enjoy you will be better at it we'll help you a lot and I wish I had known that more when I was in school what I would do to take our history now I mean what a fun thing to take it's harder for me than the economics I majored and I stressed a lot now I just which I enjoyed it when I go to museums I don't remember stuff and I think that's because I'm so nervous about it so Cheryl in closing you're you're the leader I admire most but more than that you're the for me it was redefined what it means to be a giver and I'm just so grateful that you're willing to come here with all the priorities that you have on your plate I am aware though that you know there's a little bit of a bittersweet flavor to this visit because you disappointed some very important family members by not coming to Penn and in lieu of that I wanted me to come to Penn mmm maybe we'll draw you back 52 class one day but in lieu of that I wonder if you could just share as a would-be alum your wishes for the audience no I like that I will say that Adam has redefined friendship for me I am I believe to the extent I have been able to find joy and happiness in my life Adam is just a ginormous part of that because he showed up and he showed up often he did what Dan's friend did he didn't just show up with a burger he showed up with the information and the love and the support I needed and I know his dear wife couldn't be with us tonight because kids kids kids are sick but she did too and I'm so grateful for both of them and wishes for all of you Wow I wish that you focus on what you care about that you do the things you believe in that you believe it's going to work out even when it didn't work out and I lost my husband so suddenly it was another side there's another day there's another laugh there's another cup of coffee and there's another day to cry too last year right around now they've died on May 1st with 11 days before May 1st a friend of mine had this conversation and we talked about how a year before Dave had 11 days left and we had no idea how would I have lived my life if I had 11 days left and I don't mean go off your crosses because it turns out that investing in yourself and doing real things it's not about partying all the time even though some of that's good but what would you do with your life if you knew it was limited Katie Couric interviewed me and Adam on the stage in New York on Sunday it was our first book event and she said something pretty profound she said everyone's terminal everyone's terminal like you only have so many days less than you actually none of us we don't know how many they are live them worry less live more love more more joy I wish that so deeply for all of you for more insight from knowledge at Wharton please visit knowledge Wharton UPenn edu [Music]

Channel: KnowledgeAtWharton

Views: 79,226

Rating: 4.8247013 out of 5

Keywords: death, grieving, resilience, adam grant, sheryl sandberg, facebook, wharton, option b, facing adversity, finding joy, work/life balance

Id: Qym57NxPwg4

Length: 55min 57sec (3357 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2017