When the book Lean In came out a couple of years ago and it was a hot topic of discussion among my girlfriends (most of whom are highly educated professional women), I was surprised that many had such mixed reactions to the book. There were several criticisms brought up. They included the argument that the book was only relevant for the small segment of well-educated women who had the choice of working more or less as well as flexibility in the kind of work they pursued. Another was a criticism of Sandberg herself, that she could do many of the things that she encourages women to do in the book only because she is in the financial situation to hire help to cover a lot of the responsibilities parents (and moms in particular) have to bear.

While I felt that these complaints were true (the book is generally relevant to a only small segment of well-educated women and it is easier to prioritize your career when you can pay for household help), it didn’t bother me as much. I accept that these highly educated women have the best chance of increasing female leadership of the large companies and other organizations that have a huge impact on the lives of people, and it doesn’t bother me as much that what she’s saying focuses on this relatively small and privileged group. And while few of us have access to the kind of extraordinary wealth that Sandberg has been able to accumulate throughout her career, even the best-resourced working mom faces tension between spending time with her family and work, and much of the advice that she offers on spending more on household help when your children are young to be able to stay in your career, accepting imperfection in housework and childrearing, and making your spouse take on a more equal share of household duties are still applicable to many of the women she is targeting.

However, there was one criticism that stuck in my mind – a college friend, who was at the time in the middle of residency, said “I feel like we’re being encouraged to act more like men, but I don’t want to act like my male co-residents! They take credit for everything, they bombast their way through rotations, they are overconfident. I think that men should act more like women in the workplace.” She was referring to the examples written about in the book (mostly in the first two chapters) that exemplified how men often operate differently than women in the workplace. Mostly suggesting that men are more confident, aggressive, and self-promoting, these examples include observations like men continuing to raise their hands and being called upon even after the speaker has said they will take no more questions (while the women have lowered their hands), Sandberg’s brother confidently stating that he aced an exam while she and her female roommate prepared diligently and yet fret about how they did on the same exam (they all aced it), men interrupting a speaker to give their commentary while women hesitate (and when they do, being told they interrupt too much).  To be fair and clear, when I revisited the book again to write this post, I didn’t find any examples in the book where Sandberg directly advocates for women to take on this type of behavior. But she makes ample mention of these types of stories and often this type of behavior seems to get results, and coupled with her general push for women to ‘lean in’, I think some may have walked away with the impression that she is advocating for women to imitate these behaviors.

I think the truth is more nuanced then that. In some cases, Sandberg implies that women probably have too much self-doubt and maybe we really need to re-tune our level of self-confidence to be closer to where men are and to reflect reality more accurately. In other cases, she acknowledges that women behaving like men may not even a viable strategy because women who exhibit some more typically male-leader characteristics (like self-promotion) are less liked.  But even if Sandberg isn’t advocating for women to follow men’s lead in terms of (over?) self-confidence, being more aggressive at work, being more self-promoting, I feel like there was an opportunity lost by not directly addressing this question: what’s a woman to do when facing these behaviors from male colleagues? Should we a) just try to persevere (which seems to be the implicit suggestion for the most part), b) imitate them or c) do something else?

I liked Lean In and revisiting it again for this post reminded me of how much I appreciated the book again. However, I do feel like there is this question that a lot of professional working women are asking – do I need to be more aggressive, more rude, more self-promoting to continue moving ahead in the workplace?Even if the answer is yes, I think many women wouldn’t want to embrace those attributes – many of us don’t want to participate in a kind of “race to the bottom” to see who can be more aggressive, more self-promoting, more baselessly self-confident in order to get ahead. Where can we demonstrate with data that women’s perceptions of themselves are below their actual capacities, and that we actually need to re-tune our self-confidence to be more in line with reality? What are some different tactic to take when our male colleagues are getting noticed by self-promotion but we know similar behavior from us won’t be taken as positively? What if we don’t even want to self-promote? Has anyone seen good resources for this?