Maxine Williams and Sheryl Sandberg: Diversity and Careers at Facebook: Howard University

It's Sheryl Sandberg. I'm the new head of diversity at Facebook and I started about a month ago. But the whole point is that there are jobs and then there are candidates, and we just have to find a way to get the right candidates in the right job. I think students like comments, questions. We love to talk about Facebook, we talk women.

I wrote a chapter on this in my book. I think these are books we must have brought, so I'll give you one. But I wrote a chapter on this where I talked about thinking about a career as a jungle gym, not a ladder. That's really important, particularly if you're studying law and you're not sure you want to practice law. The obvious place to go is a law firm or an in-house counsel. But if you want a different path, and I really encourage that, the days of joining one company and retiring with a gold watch are long gone. There's just a lot more mobility in our work. The advice I give people is to really look for opportunities and, a little bit counterintuitively, don't worry about the level you're in. It's interesting, both of the jobs I took, and I write about this in the book, both at Google and at Facebook, are actually lower in level than any other opportunity I had when I came out of Treasury. I had bigger jobs with bigger titles at other companies. At Google, I went in to be a director of a business unit that didn't exist, and people said you're going down. I said, well, I don't have any skills, I've never been in technology, I want to get my foot in. Then when I left Google and went to Facebook, I went in as number two, and anywhere else I went I would have been the CEO. But for me, I wanted to work on something that was growing and beginning. So my answer is have a long view. Don't worry, because if you are coming out of law school and you want a business side job, you don't always get credit for the first few years you spend. You sometimes have to take something to someone who takes out of undergrad. But if you have a history, if you think long term, you're going to work in the workforce for the next 40 years. Does it really matter? Get your foot in the door on something that's growing and throw with it. We have really complex problems to solve, and the more people with different perspectives we bring together to apply their minds to those problems, the better solutions. We are just looking for the best people.

Stereotypes are enormously dangerous things. Stereotypes. There's something sociologists call stereotype threat. Stereotype threat means that the more you are aware of a stereotype, the more you will act in accordance with it. So when we tell girls they're not good at math and science, if you remind girls right before they take a math test to check off that they are a girl, they will do worse on that test. If you tell girls on the way in, girls do really well on this math test, they do better. And so systematically, because more people who have been successful and leaders are men, it also is true of race. We are systematically biased against people who don't look the way we expect people to look, which is essentially male. And so when men and women perform at the same level, everyone, including those people, we remember the man's performance slightly higher and the woman's performance slightly lower. And so when it comes time to sit at the table, men think they've done better than women, and more men sit at the table. We also are systematically biased from early ages. Mothers, not just fathers, mothers overestimate our sons' crawling and underestimate our daughters' crawling. You go into the schools, we systematically call on more boys than girls. So from very young ages, these women have been systematically underestimated compared to men. So when it comes to having to sit, pick your seat at the table where you feel you belong. It's not every woman, but on average the data is super clear. And so that's what's happening. And what Lean In is trying to do, both my book and the foundation, is make us aware of these biases because we cannot fix what we don't address. People are afraid. People are afraid to talk about gender, people are afraid to talk about race. People think if you mention any of these things you're going to get in all kinds of trouble. Well, not talking about them is getting us to where we are now, which is not good enough. And so the message of Lean In is that we need to talk about this. Let's talk about the fact that there are 500 Fortune 500 CEOs, 22 are women, five are African-American men, one is an African-American woman. Out of 500, it's not good enough. But unless we are willing to talk about the biases all of those people face, we will not change them. And so to sit at the table is part of surfacing that bias. But we understand that having a diverse perspective increases, particularly when you look at the fact that Facebook has 1.2 billion users, and we expect that will grow, and those people don't look like me. Here's my other advice, which is to sit at the table, metaphorically and literally. Sitting at the table, everywhere I go, every meeting I walk into, every business meeting I've ever been to at the same level, men and women sit literally at a table, and more women sit to the side or women speak. And so this is about finding our voice. I think about how often you're sitting at a meeting, let's say, and the woman says X, and then it's repeated by a man, it's like she never said anything. How often does that happen? Right, right. And it's like he's the reference point and you said nothing. And that is a perfect example of that stereotype. And it happens for two reasons. One is that we all remember the man, but the other one, and research is clear on this, is that women apologize before they say it. The man doesn't. It's both systematic bias. Even if the man and the woman say it exactly the same way, we will remember the man. But what also happens is a lot of times the man says, well I believe X, and the woman says, well I'm not sure but there it is. And so they're not saying it with that same authority in their voice and confidence. And confidence is enormously a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leadership is a self-fulfilling prophecy. One of the reasons I wrote Lean In is my daughter, she was four. I played a song for Presidents Day of all the American presidents, and she looked up and said, Mommy, why are they all boys? That's what Howard does, it makes you believe that you can. As you know, there's been a long road to get establishment companies or corporations understanding that Howard schools, like Howard, HBCUs, can produce quality. Now that we know that, it's your job to be that quality that we want to see. You understand. So we need you to be your best so that we can then build those. It's hard to look at Facebook right. We still want... I have a friend in Germany, her son, 5 years old, said to her, well I can't be Chancellor, I'm not a girl, because Angela Merkel is the only leader he's ever known. Now he'll grow up and he'll realize he has a great opportunity.

I hope so. I wrote a whole chapter on that too. Y'all are hitting all the main points. That's how I know I think they're the main points of our whole chapter. Mentoring is a huge issue. We like people that look like us. That means that if mostly white men are in power, they are mentoring mostly white men. And so on. One of the most important things the Lean In community is pushing, our foundation, my lovely board member DC Bass is sitting right here next to me and she's working on this, is what we call Lean In Circles. So the data is really strong that peer mentoring is actually just as good as mentoring above you. I think about my life. My mentors told me not to go to Google and Facebook, but it was my peers who said those are good jobs, go there. And everything from microcredit to health groups to book clubs to weight loss groups shows us how powerful peer mentors can be. I'm announcing today on the stage here the launch of our Lean In Campus program. We are hoping to find great people like you all, men included, we always invite men, to jump in and help be Lean In Campus leaders and form mentorship circles of men and women. You know, 10 people who agree to meet once a month to support each other. We also work hard with companies and all of our partners to explain to them that we need to mentor women and men. One of the things, again, my thing is I want to surface the things no one's willing to talk about. Here's what no one's willing to talk about: a man and a man alone in a room at work looks like mentoring.

Yeah, you know, well I'll say what it's entailing, but you can say what it's going for. So my messages on diversity and inclusion are really simple. We should want more women, more people of color, not because we're doing something nice for someone else but because it's better for our bottom line. We know that when we take the full talents of the population, companies outperform, institutions outperform. So this is a critical business issue for Facebook and my entire industry. We need more women, we need more people with all kinds of backgrounds because we are serving 1.2 billion people around the world. And how do we serve those people if our company doesn't represent that? The way we've hired mostly has been posting jobs and people finding us, and women don't find us as much and people of color don't find us as much. So we're now coming to you basically. That's what's happened.

The first thing I would say is that the most important thing coming out of school is actually picking what table, picking your industry, picking your table that you want to do. Do something you really love, care about, and hopefully you want to do something that's expanding. The best career decision you can make is actually go to a field that's expanding, because no matter how good you are, fields and companies that are shrinking have fewer opportunities and a lot of qualified people to do it. And when fields and companies are expanding, they're expanding. Probably the best decision I made coming out of government was go to technology. And it sounds obvious now, but I did it in 2001 when there were no jobs and there was a huge recession and the tech bubble had burst. You're all way too young for this, but trust me, it was bleak. And people thought I was crazy, but I really believed tech could grow. Now it doesn't have to be tech, it can be something you love. But I tell people really pick an industry you love, start there, and then pick the growing part. There's a growing part in every industry. There's a place where your skills... The next thing I would say is, when you're first coming out, as much as you want to focus on the table, focus on building the skills that get you to the table. You're probably not going to run a business your first year out. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out and started, but I wasn't that talented. But there are skills you can get which will get you to that table, and I would really focus on building those skills. Another thing I talk about is take jobs, especially for people where there are biases against us, minorities, women, take jobs where things are measurable. Take sales jobs. Sales jobs are great. Not enough people take them, especially coming out of business schools like Howard. Sales jobs are awesome because your success can be totally measured. And life is really a lot about that. It's kind of counterintuitive. I don't think people talk enough about it in business school, or maybe they do here. I haven't met a lot of business school students who are trying to get sales jobs, and the sales jobs are really great entry. A man and a woman alone in a room looks like... 64% of managers in the United States say they're afraid to be alone in the room. We only mentor alone in the room with people. And so if we don't start systematically being honest about the fact that every time a man and a woman are alone together doesn't mean something wrong is happening, we can't get the mentorship they need. So Lean In works with students to form Lean In Circles. I don't want you to wait around for someone to mentor you. I want you to mentor each other because you can do that. And we work with companies and institutions to encourage them to get you the mentorship you need. So I hope you join us.

I look for people who are going to solve problems, not raise them. Raising them is great and we want people to be honest, but people who have a track record of solving problems. We look for leadership, and you've shown it. You're one of the leaders of... yes, you've shown that, which is great. But I think Lean In Circles are really great leadership opportunities. Anything you want where you've led. I also look hard for people who want to get their hands dirty, particularly coming out of business school. It's not just people want to manage other people, it's people want to do real work. I have a poster in my office that has two really dirty hands and it says, the future belongs to those of us willing to get our hands dirty. So you know, I'm the COO of Facebook, but I do recruiting on my own, I handle sales, I still do sales calls, I still do deals. We really care about people who are willing to get in there and do real work. We never want to hire people who just want to manage other people doing stuff, because we want generals who are there with their troops. If you're going to be a great manager and leader, you need to do the work along with them. And I think showing that you are willing to do anything. We talk about Facebook as playing low and playing high. I mean, I'm the COO, I come here, I give big speeches, but you know what? Mark, my boss, sometimes I have to bring Gatorade for him because if he doesn't have Gatorade, his blood sugar goes down and it doesn't go as well. So I literally walk around with Gatorade in my purse. It's about whatever it takes to get the meeting to go well, whatever it takes to get the job done, I'm willing to do. And I think people who are willing to play low and play high make a huge difference.

What it entails is actually understanding the way the business works and then figuring out how diversity can be, as I said, an asset to that. So obviously the biggest asset is our people, and we want the people to be the brightest ones who will understand the business and be able to reflect what the people who use the product want. So my job is to understand the company really well and then to build the strategies that we need to do three things. One is to communicate well around diversity. What is the message? How do people understand diversity? Because the way you understand it will influence the way you approach it. We want everyone at Facebook to be a champion of diversity and an ambassador. So we want to be sure that we have the message right, people understand it, because too often people think in the business world when you talk about diversity, you're talking about lowering standards, letting people in just because of their agenda, just because of their race, as opposed to seeing that as an asset. So we want to get ahead of that message. And then we want to actually recruit more, find more of these people, because we think it adds to our value overall. And then ultimately, and this is a big piece of it, we want to make sure we can cultivate that talent. It's not enough to get them in the door if we don't have an environment that will foster them and that will build them, because we want more leaders. So it's sort of three main buckets, and we want to try to work on those strategically and systematically so we can build them out to scale, because Facebook is actually a big business. I think a lot of students use it a lot, but people often say there are people working on Facebook, you kind of think you post something it just kind of goes up. Maybe there are four people in a room, maybe you saw the movie and they like 20 guys sitting around. But it's not like that anymore. Actually, to get something posted and seen by all of those people really quickly, to work that whole news feed, it takes a lot. So we need a lot of different minds working on it. We want to make sure it's a place people want to come to. Part of my biggest advice, along with getting your hands dirty, is done is better than perfect. So most organizations, most law firms, most businesses, most companies, most institutions, they don't fail by doing too much, they fail by doing too little. Think about how do companies fail, how do institutions fail? They almost never fail by doing too much. Those stories are few and far between. They fail by moving too slowly, by doing too little. And so I don't do anything perfectly. Charlton, the one person who works to recruit me at Facebook, will tell you, boy, we got some big gaps in my work. He helps find them. But I don't do anything perfectly. If I did anything perfectly, I would do nothing because I would be like, oh my God, this has to be perfect. So literally, people who move fast and are willing to do things and turn them in, that's what we're looking for. And most of our institutions do too little. We are worried if Facebook fails. We are not going to fail by doing too much. We are going to fail by getting out-innovated by three probably men who are in a garage somewhere. That's how we're going to fail. And you look at the history. I think really understanding that you don't have to be perfect, you have to keep getting up, is so important.

I would just add to that. I think that you also have to be mindful of the stereotype that people will project on you. It's helpful to be as perfect as you can, and then you have established the credibility so that you can be more creative, you can move more quickly, you can have more leeway to come up with better ideas that may not always... Other people may come up with ideas about different things, and that's great. You come up with those ideas, but you have to from day one make sure that you are setting an incredible perception.

Oh, it's huge. It's why I do this job, and I'll talk about it on the stage today. You know, you think about the world. For social media, in order to have distribution, to have your voice heard, you need to be rich, famous, on a TV station. Facebook gives every single person for free a voice. Everyone can publish to the world. Now some things catch on and some don't, but the fact that we give voice to people who are historically not empowered is huge. And you see that across large swaths of population. I mean, I remember when Barack Obama was running and he was very derisively called the Facebook candidate. Anyone remember that? He was the Facebook candidate, and that was not a compliment at the time. We were cheering, we're like, yes he is, and he's going to win because he is using his voice in a really authentic way. You look at small businesses. Small businesses drive our economy. Small businesses employ more women, small businesses employ people of color. How do you start and market a business? If before you had to buy TV ads, now you can go into Facebook and buy ads for five bucks. And so these tools, which are given to everyone for free, which are replacing very expensive distribution methods, are so important for voice. And it's why I do it.

Well, I'd be doing what I am doing, which is fighting for equality for women and for everyone. You know, I really love Facebook because I love how we give voice to everyone, rich, poor, whether you're born literally in the hills of Africa and you get a cell phone, or you're born into New York City. We give voice. And I really believe that we need diversity in our leadership, and it's not happening. The numbers are not moving up for women, they are not moving up for people of color fast enough. And so the ability to work on Facebook and the ability to work on Lean In with amazing women, with amazing men, makes a huge difference. I feel like I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. And the thing I'll say is, I didn't always. Not every job is perfect, not every part of being at Facebook or even every part of Lean In is perfect. I take the good with the bad, but over the years I've worked my way into stuff I just really, really believe in. And you have to go into the workforce believing you will too, because you will. I mean, you're getting the best education at one of the country's leading schools. You can do anything you set your mind to. Sometimes you have to start more junior, like I did in tech, but it's worth it.

If I saw one more headline that said women taking over the Senate, I felt like calling up all those journalists and saying, dudes, 20% is not a takeover, especially for a group that's more than 50% of the population.