Fun & Famous
SHE IS A BILLIONAIRE AND THEREFORE A WOMAN
And this is what you can learn from her
She is attractive, the director of Facebook, has a husband and children, and earns a tidy 26.2 million a year. So there’s something to learn from that. And it is this.
1. Step on the gas
Many women think at the beginning of their careers about what will happen when they have children. Most of the time, they choose the safe route and a more manageable job because, well, who knows, when the children arrive. Tip from Sheryl: don’t do it. Stay in the fast lane, press that gas pedal. When the children come, you’ll figure out how to arrange everything. You never know what your life will look like. (Here by the way, what reactions from women who find out they are pregnant.)
2. Away with that modesty
Give a woman a compliment and she says that ‘everything came together’ or that ‘the people around her were so good’. I had a friend who asked not to earn too much because she wanted to prove herself first and only earn a ‘real’ salary after six months. While she was actually the very best for the job. Sheryl herself once had a passage removed from her high school yearbook because it stated that she was the child with the greatest chance of business success. American school, right? Never shy of a little trumpet blowing. But Sheryl didn’t want that. Out of fear of failing and yes, also of not being liked by classmates. This brings me immediately to point 3.
“If you stand up for yourself firmly, you will do that for the company as well.”
3. Don’t want to be everyone’s friend
“Leading cannot be done with clean hands.” Wise lesson from Jet’s father when I was appointed as editor-in-chief of Marie Claire. He would know, as he had been editor-in-chief of Het Parool for many years. Not that he meant I should occasionally have someone eliminated, but in a figurative sense, yes. Sometimes you have to fire people because someone is just not right for that job. Yes, even that single mother. (‘My’ single mother actually found a job that suited her much better with nicer working hours and a much better salary) And you also have to say when you don’t like something. In short, there’s always someone who would rather enjoy a glass of your blood in the evening than a large glass of Amarone.
When Sheryl Sandberg started at Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg said she had to let go of wanting to be liked. Something Mark Zuckerberg himself is very good at, because I believe there are just as many people who hate him as there are zeros in his bank account. He said her biggest pitfall was wanting to be liked. She immediately applied that, just look at point 4.
4. Ask for (more) money
Nice, that tip from Zuckerberg about not wanting to be liked. Sheryl could immediately step on that gas pedal further when the salary negotiation came up. To be honest, Sheryl was already over the moon when Mark Zuckerberg asked her to come work at Facebook and his offer was already quite generous, but she still asked for more. Because that’s what you do. Or as Sheryl now says: “You won’t be valued unless you negotiate.”
“Our society is set up based on how the distribution between men and women has always been. Changing that takes time.”
If you stand up for yourself firmly, you will do that for the company as well.
5. Don’t try to change your man
If you want to go far as a woman, you also need to strive for balance at home. Currently, women still ‘work’ an average of two extra days, but then in the household. Divide tasks and don’t complain if your husband collects the laundry in a different spot (for example, next to the laundry basket) than you do. That’s discouraging. Let him.
6. Accept that things are different
Men and women are different. The UvA can give a hundred lectures on gender studies, but give a boy a car and a doll and he will choose the car. Or he will fight with the doll. Our society is set up based on how the distribution between men and women has always been. Changing that takes time. One of the highest placed individuals at Renault in the Netherlands is a woman and she often has a different Renault under her slender backside. Then she immediately gets the question whether ‘her husband works at Renault’. You just have to laugh a little about that. And slowly show that we are also in the boardroom. And not just to bring the coffee.
