enter label: Lean Out

Pains of Lean in and the 2010 era (v1)

Dear Companions,

In 2012, I was too busy embracing the philosophy to actually read Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. But I was clearly under its influence: try hard, aim high. In my case, sign artists, close money, build in China, hire employees, join accelerators, sleep on couches, sleep on planes, withstand getting yelled at in many languages, be single minded. Then I struggled a bit to have a kid, entered the pandemic pregnant, got the vaccine, got Covid, and bam, one day, I simply stopped functioning. I leaned in, but unfortunately the wall wasn’t onboard with my plan.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about how much of this radical implosion was solely due to the vaccine and COVID, or how much was due to this combination of factors: the vaccine, COVID, having a baby, and over a decade of running a start-up in a perpetual state of crisis. How much of it was foreseeable? Or addressable if properly resourced?

In a similar vein, what happened to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In after her husband died hitting his head while running on a treadmill during a vacation in Mexico. She published a book on grief called Option B, but how did her ideas on feminism change especially since her prescription for female success relied heavily on a supportive husband. Now I understand that finding the right partner is the most important career decision you can make. But it’s not the whole story. It doesn’t get me back.

Then Pandora’s lid went the way of Dorthy’s house in my mind. How many of us felt ostracized by the sterile businesswomen luncheons on Fridays in the lobby of some retail bank? How many of us did the egg freezing and now face the added pressure of embryos in wait? Or found the partner who offered equal share for the first kid, but not the second or third? Who took hit after hit, stoically, with a smile, but then ended up alone in a doctor’s office with crippling issues? Who had work-from-home turn into work-from-dungeon? Who felt resourceless, alone, and without a mentor when forced to "lean out" due to life circumstances? Who had no interests outside of work and home, balancing the self at the expense of drilling it down to a dichotomy?

Through conversations like these, I’m getting the feeling many of us who came of age during the era of Sheryl Sandberg and Me-Too are re-evaluating the guiding principles of 2010. We are seeking an addendum. But for that to be real—let’s call it Lean Out—it needs to bring what’s missing: self-preservation, without a reduction in dreams. In looking at the history of living species, stretching back five mass extinction events, it's impossible to predict who survives. But we can try to take notes from the small animals—burrowing holes mainly—while striving for the top of the food chain.

As a pop feminist track, Lean In was dishonest. It ignored the practical actions necessary to truly support the pursuit of 'having it all.' This isn't just a woman's issue. My dad, who has seen the brightest people in finance and math, assures me that men could benefit from some cushioning too. The key would be to convince younger people that combining Lean Out with Lean In enhances results in the near term, rather than simply preventing burnout in the distant future. This approach could be popularized by a female Joe Rogan type, a Jody Wogan.

As a matter of vibe, Lean Out would be less uptight, contrary to stuffy female luncheons I did anything to avoid. I don't yet have that level of ease. Instead, today, I feel like a child presenting her spelling schoolwork.

not ai generated

In the meantime, if you know anyone that can contribute to Lean Out ideas, I would be grateful if you can share this with them. I don’t mind if they communicate via memes.

2010

Lean In was born out of Sheryl Sandberg's speech to the all-female graduates of Barnard in 2011. Afterward, she recalled, someone in the audience came up to her and called her the "baddest bitch." Thus, Lean In and the Girl Boss movement emerged simultaneously, just as we, graduates of the early 2000s, headed into business or the field of entrepreneurship.

2015 in a Google/AP accelerator

The plan was to get as many women as possible into leadership positions, board seats, and decision-making roles. As Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg's advice primarily focused on how women can rise up the ranks (rather than say, build a brand). She aimed to address the statistic that of Yale alumni who reach their forties, only 56 percent of women remained in the workforce, compared to 96 percent of men.

To achieve the goal of more women at the table, she suggested: 1) pushing past the desire to be liked to become relentlessly pleasant, 2) embracing the mess of opportunities, 3) relying on your spouse for an equal share at home, and 4) identifying with women in key moments like negotiating salaries.

Each of Sheryl’s elements was necessary for changing the ratio. We can agree there is no point in discussing how women can maintain their positions if they have none to begin with. But the question becomes—did Lean In deliver the greatest number of possible women to the top ranks. Could it keep them? What about utilizing women elsewhere in the jungle gym?

The Lean In generation is still achieving, but the pandemic messed us up. Roe v. Wade is like icebergs in the midst. How much gas is left? Is the younger generation taking a worrisome note? There are trends they are dropping out of the workforce, looking for a man in finance—the very thing we originally rebelled against.

Criticism

IT’S UNSETTLING TO think that we prefer our female commentators as moralistic hopemongers…  Pop feminism allows us to label ourselves as progressive without the possible cost—to our reputations, our convictions, our friendships, our free time—that comes from thinking critically on controversial issues. 

Viviane Fairbank

Why I Don’t Read Rebecca Solnit | The Walrus

Like Mansplaining, Lean In is pop feminism—some great ideas, full of hope mongering, but not much critical thought on the controversial issues. Sheryl admitted sacrifices need to be made, but didn’t provide detail on which, when, where. Or how to bounce back when sacrifice became so large as to push you out, whether knowingly or unknowingly. To Sheryl, perhaps, a percentage of women were necessary roadkill to inflate the numbers at the top.

Hang in, Burn Out

In my personal life, I am not someone who embraces uncertainty. I like things to be in order.

-Sheryl Sandberg

Leaning in, by definition, is an act of control. Thus, it subjects its adherents to toppling over. Pick the best job opportunities, stay for as long as possible, stop only just before having children, return to the high paying job you’ve established, have an incredible partner who supports you. Rinse repeat with child two and three. It should have been called Hang On.

Sheryl gave a few stories of returns to work after maternity leave but beyond her husband’s support and a 530 end to the day, which she recognized as exceptional, not much else as to a roadmap for children. Or aging parents. Or even a breath on sickness. The hardest part of her pregnancy appeared to be puking while sending emails, which is the easy part for many women, especially older ones who leaned in. Yet, Sheryl called for authentic conversations toward the end of her book.

Sheryl committed a disservice by making it seem like simply adjusting your schedule could solve the challenges posed during childbearing years. By suggesting that legerdemain could fix big problems, she underestimated, or at least failed to communicate, the degree of creativity required to navigate life’s challenges, and how hard the body gets impacted. Furthermore, she did not prepare her students to grant themselves self-compassion when Jurassic levels of willpower ruled the day.

As a young person, the attitude from above was this is all totally doable, worry about it later. Of course, that is the identifying mark of being young as Tolstoy woefully bemoans in War and Peace, but accurate representations of real life could help change the mindset, without affecting the ambition.

Reps and Warranties

Sheryl talked about the need for more positive representations of working mothers. Thanks to the likes of her, Meg Whitman (CEO Hewlett-Packard and eBay, mother of two), Ursula Burns (CEO Xerox, mother of two), and Marissa Mayer (CEO Yahoo, mother of three), we have many examples of serious female leaders. But what about successful representations of burnout or disequilibrium?

Cynthia Hogan took a 12-year maternity leave after giving birth to her second child. When she returned to the workforce 12 years later, it was to work for Joe Biden again as Council to the VP during the Obama administration. The lesson Sheryl drew from this was Cynthia had reached an agreement with her husband: it was her turn now.

But what happened during those twelve years? What did she do to remain relevant 12 years later? How did she feel about work during those years? How hard core of a good wife was she in order to have her husband feel so magnanimous? These stories are rare and mysterious. Are they only applicable to exceptionally extraordinary women, or do they perhaps hold a key to "leaning out" that is yet unspoken?

Purple Bulging Eyes

Leaning in is not just hard. It requires maniacal degrees of success and luck. Fortuitous health of both husband and wife, and children, ongoing upward mobility to ensure the women’s career can be justified in the face of nanny costs. Planning, foresight and adaptability. But rest assured, each time you succeed in pulling all the pieces together, your autonomic system does in fact take a hit. For example, to be relentlessly pleasant throughout your career requires a level of cognitive dissonance. This is fine and manageable, to a point. If you are not aware that your body is keeping a score, you will be surprised when one day its unwillingly to service you anymore. When the inner voice is only the dogged motivational one, you become like a hammer that finds itself operating in vain on something other than a nail.

Sheryl talked about Ariana Huffington’s advice to perceive oneself as a child, to let bad things roll off your back. But I’ve seen my child, who—after throwing a 45-minute uncontrollable fit—can look up me, eyes still bloodshot purple, and ask if I’ll play with her. This is the true autonomic resilience of a child. The idea that we can just replicate this is false.

A savings account

You’d have to train hard to come within miles to of what a child can naturally bear, and that’s assuming your health and hormones are in order. Without understanding that, Huffington’s advice is just lip service. Breath work, therapy, HRV analysis, targeted supplements, magnetic stimulation, sleep, proper hydration, functional medicine, the mind body axis, journaling, are all examples of supportive systems. I scratched only the surface of these things until a year into my illness. And what of all the other elements, like a child’s expressiveness?

It seems all women are getting now are large supplies of antidepressants whether for mood disorders, nerve pain, depression or inflammation—the panacea of the medical world for women. I had 4 different kinds offered to me within 2 months of getting sick. This is so commonplace that even mentioning the statistics (1 in 4) feels redundant. The medicine is not the problem per se, it’s the atmosphere in which it is dispensed. I had one doctor quit on me mid-appointment saying there were too many people like me. It’s a multi-pronged problem.

Sheryl’s whole advice system relies on a credit system. A loan you are taking against your nervous system, that one day has to be made do. Indeed, the idea of Lean Out is like a savings account, for the relentless winding door that is the Lean In checking account.

Stiff female luncheons

Lean In asked that women come together, but women like me never bought the book. I thought it was enough to simply succeed in a male world—that was my brand of feminism. To me, the female movement in business had merit, but was always too stiff. Why were we relegated to Chase Business luncheons with stale muffins, freezing our buts off in the air-conditioned rooms with printed out pdfs. What if our organizing principle were, I don't know, reading Nietzsche.

Or why did it have to be overtly female oriented? Why did I have to pitch a female focused fund and watch as a lady breastfed in the corner of the room? Of course, I wouldn’t have a problem if they had invested me in me, but instead they required months of meetings with no definitive answer. In the world of fundraising slow rejections are unprofessional. It’d be nicer if women’s stuff didn’t require all the hoop jumping.

Shery’s female colleagues who headed up the movement in 2010 produced stiff luncheons necessarily. Corporate executives beget corporate attitudes and events. It’s incumbent on women who aren’t in those positions to foster an atmosphere that surfaces a different part of the soul. We can take some notes from the Manosphere.

Jody Wogans

When listening to media moguls like Joe Rogan, I wonder how it is possible that men are gobbling up all the newest ideas on spirituality, brain findings, nutrition and family life. We need more voices of these women, whom I call Jody Wogans in the last post, like singer Jewel, a homesteader raised in Alaska, who grew up with no indoor plumbing and an outhouse. She became famous while also living out of a car. She could talk about surviving outdoors, building businesses and nonprofits, but she also knows about motherhood—she has a son.

Sheryl urged a new view on acceptance for working mothers and those who chose to stay at home. But we can go beyond that to create a larger environment that includes successful powerful women, and funny culture makers, and soulful communities, with men, especially in the digital age.

No man’s land

Sheryl talked about speaking authentically and bringing the whole self to work, but what is the whole self when it is consumed by the two dichotomies proposed in that system: work and family? What about everything else?

The Lean In balancing act will have the true self beaten out. We act as though this is a necessary part of aging, but the intense degree of suffering seems to grow exponentially as compared to actual aging at a certain point.

I can't remember when I stopped reading fiction, but it happened. When I started smiling to become more personable, to win deals, I no longer smiled for other reasons. And when I became a mother, the only escapist avenue that remained was reality TV. Sheryl referenced watching trash TV at night too, once. So now we know she's human. But what else made-up Sheryl? When she talked about self-improvement, it was only in the context of skills to improve your career.

I had never even heard of the science of self-compassion until I was suffering from major pain. Those nights, all I could do was listen to Kristin Neff’s Self Compassion audiobook. It ended up being useful. It changed my perspective on my inner voice. Learning this earlier would have made me a superior entrepreneur. It takes years to master. And here I am, fourth decade, year one of a self-compassion practice.

Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In repeatedly bifurcates life between family and work, focusing on the sacrifices one makes toward the other, while ignoring the self—the entity that has to make these choices. The whole self becomes smaller and weaker in the face of this perennial dichotomy.

Lean in, Lean out—the real balancing act

Lean Out should be viewed as a complement to Sheryl’s treatise—a way of life and a state of being. By leaning out, during periods of leaning in, you reinvest into your system making it possible to bounce back if and when leaning in is not possible. In Sheryl’s book, such idea would be a prosperous waste of time.

While Lean In focuses on control and career advancement, Lean Out, introduces concepts from Zen, spirituality, functional science, self-compassion, autonomic medicine, immunity, lessons of other cultures, art—to handle life's uncontrollable aspects.

Lean Out also builds the irreverent culture and the development of a generation that values unity beyond gender. The mission necessarily goes beyond simply achieving a seat at the table, diversifying the use of women across a plethora of activities—at home, creatively, at work. It binds women.

Instead of merely respecting each other’s decisions, mothers and CEOs, professionals and hobbyists, can all serve a role, reflecting a higher state of wholeness. With Jody Wogan, it’s about widening the representation of women’s interests so that we have more to lean on for sustenance then the dichotomy of work life and home life.

The corporate world spends tons of time on training communication, diversity hires. The start-up world talks a lot about minimum viable products and elevator pitches. How about some training in empathy and self-compassion? These skills would create successes.

Life is setbacks and an aspiration for continuous growth. Evolution. The path is not just crooked—it veers gradually, then suddenly, into black holes. How can we continue to follow dogma that does not address this.

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🥸🥸Does any of this resonate? Would you have wanted to learn some of this?

I look forward to having many interesting conversations with you on this topic.❤️❤️

With Much Love from the Healingvrse,

Rebecca