Fun & Famous
she’s a billionaire and a woman
And this is what you can learn from her
She’s stunning, the director of Facebook, has a husband and kids and earns a measly 26,2 million a year. Clearly we’ve got something we can learn from her. And this is what.
1. Crank up the speed
A lot of women always consider what life will be like when they’ve got kids at the beginning of their careers. Usually they’ll opt for a more approachable job you know, just incase they end up having kids. Top from Sheryl: don’t do it. Stay in the fast lane, go up another gear. When the kids come around, you’ll figure out how to combine the two when the time comes around. No one can plan what their future will look like. (Read this by the way to see how women respond when they find out they are pregnant.)
2. Get rid of modesty
Give a woman a compliment and she’ll say ‘everything fell into place’ or that ’the people she worked with are so great’. I had a friend who once said she didn’t want to make to much money because she wanted to show her worth first and ask for a ‘real’ salary six months later. Even though she was clearly the best for the job. Sheryl once got a page taken out of her high school yearbook in which she had been nominated as most likely to succeed. But Sheryl was not amused. Out of fear to end up failing and yes, also to not be liked by all her classmates. Which brings me straight to point number 3.
“Being in charge won’t work if you don’t get your hands dirty.”
3. Don’t try and be everyones friend
“Being in charge won’t work if you don’t get your hands dirty.” Wise words from our lifestyle editors father when I became editor in chief of the Dutch Marie Claire magazine. He would know, he was editor in chief of one of the biggest newspapers in the Netherlands for a really long time. This means that sometimes you just have to fire the people who just aren’t that great at their work. Yes, the single mom included. And you have to be upfront when someone isn’t doing their work the right way. Long story short, there’s got to be at least one person who’d rather drink a glass of your blood in the evening instead of a nice glass of Amarone.
When Sheryl Sandberg started to work for Facebook. the founder Mark Zuckerberg told her she had to get rid of the idea of always wanting everyone to like her. Something Mark himself is good at, because I think the amount of people in the world that hate him is the same amount of zero’s you can find on his bank account. He said her biggest downfall was that she wanted to be a people pleaser. She adapted right anyway, check out point number 4.
4. Ask for (more) money
Great tip from Zuckerberg to not try to hard to be liked by everyone. That way Sheryl could switch to yet another (faster) gear and ask for a raise. Honestly, she was already over the moon when Mark Zuckerberg had asked her to come work for Facebook and his first
salary offer had definitely been a royal one, but she still asked for more. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Or like Sheryl herself says: “You won’t be valued unless you negotiate.”
“Our society has been split depending on what men and women used to be like.”
5. Don’t try to change you man
If you want to make big as a woman, you have to make you know how to balance things out at home too. On average they say women spend an extra two days ‘working’, aka chores at home. Split up those chores and don’t start complaining when you man leaves the laundry somewhere else instead of your usual spot. This discourages him. Let him be.
6. Accept that things are different
Men and women are different. There might be a multitude of gender studies out there but if you give a boy the option to play with a doll or a car, he’ll (almost always) go for the car. Or he’ll start fighting the doll. Our society has been split depending on what men and women used to be like. One of the most important job at Renault in the Netherlands is run by a woman. This means that she’s drives around in quite the fancy ride which results in people asking her ‘if her husband works for Renault’. All you can do is smile, and then show them that we too can fill up those boardrooms. And not just to get the coffee.
