Life Journey of Sheryl Kara Sandberg

Early Life

Sheryl Sandberg was born in 1969 in Washington DC. She was born into a Jewish Family. Eldest
of her three siblings. She was the daughter of Adele and Joel Sandberg who was an
Ophthalmologist, and her mother worked as a French Teacher.
Her family moved to Florida when she was two years old. She went to high school at North
Miami Beach High school. She was the president during her sophomore year. And later became a
member of national Honor society and was a board member of senior class executives. She used
to teach Aerobics while in high school.

Beginning of her career

She went to Harvard College in 1980 & graduated in 1991 with a Bachelor of arts in Economics
and was awarded John H Williams Price for the top graduating students in economics. During
her course at Harvard she co-founded an organization named Women in Economics and
government.
A Professor Lawrence summers was her mentor and adviser for her thesis. She was recruited to
be his research assistant at the World Ban, where she worked for a year on health projects in
India dealing with various issues like leprosy, AIDS and Blindness.
In 1993 she again enrolled at Harvard for an MBA and graduated in 1995 with the highest
distinction. She also earned a fellowship during her first year.

Unit 1

1 Meaning of Leadership and Sheryl Sandberg as a leader

As we know a leader is the one that influences people, the one who takes initiative and the one
who craves changes for good.

We can clearly see those qualities in Sheryl when we see her record during her school years
when she was the president of her school during sophomore year and she co-founded an
organization for women empowerment which was really advanced and thoughtful during her
time while the world was still slowly changing and moving towards fighting for equality.

 Life Journey of Sheryl Kara Sandberg

2 Era to which Sheryl Sandberg belongs to

She belongs to the leadership era 4 where the organizational structures were still ran under one
man show and there was no proper structure of hierarchy and that was the time she was emerging
to be different and empowering. She give peer mentorship, sharpen their skills, and helps them
achieve their ambitious. She makes sure to provide enough opportunities for employees to grow
and develop – physically and professionally.

3 Sheryl having a reflection of new or old paradigm

Technically she falls under the New paradigm leader as we can see she was a change maker yet
humble. She diversified her knowledge took charge and she was out there to make an impact.
She did things that other people were scared to do, to go out there and make changes to the
world. Sheryl had a vision followed it and influenced a lot of other people to work towards
shared vision and how to overcome obstacles and move forward in life. She has created an
environment where employees were free to share their ideas and ensured that she bought those
idea into action and clearly see that it is running successfully. Example When Sheryl Sandberg
started as Facebook's COO, she went to hundreds of people's desks and interrupted their work
and said: "Hi I'm Sheryl." She then asked lots of questions and listened to them without
disrupting them.

4 How Sheryl differentiate herself as leader from manager

We can see she was definitely a budding leader from a very early age and when she started using
her talents to find something more creative and unique from google employee to First Woman
Board member of Facebook & a COO. She really displayed her qualities. She definitely wasn’t
out there just to manage people she was out there to lead them. That’s what makes her different
from a manager.

Unit 2

1 Leadership traits of Sheryl Sandberg

 Life Journey of Sheryl Kara Sandberg

Optimism: Sheryl is an optimist. She never backs down. She follows what she believes and does
her best to abide by her own principles. She is always calling out to women to take a seat at the
table which means take on a leadership role not just be a mother at home. She believes more
women should come forward and take charge.
Critical Thinking: One of Sheryl’s leadership traits is critical thinking. She is always thinking
about future and working on the present to shape the future. She does not only prepare people to
succeed positions after others, she also prepares people who will be succeeding after them. She is
always 3 steps ahead of others
Courage: Sheryl has a lot of courage. She is one of very few female leaders in the world ruled
mostly by men. It is not easy at all to keep the leadership role for so many years as a female. But
Sheryl fights the world to establish her views and she encourages other women to take lead as
well.

2 Behavioral Approach of Sheryl Sandberg

Sandberg’s leadership style would be High Structure. Sandberg concentrates on managing the
day to day operations so that Zuckerberg can concentrate on what he enjoys doing- product
development and engineering. Since Zuckerberg is busy with non-managerial tasks, it falls to her
to set the tone and make the rules (High Structure). Sherly Sandberg leadership style can be
considered democratic as she spends a lot of time emailing and in meetings where she can
influence others who are a part of her team and motivating others. Sheryl is well known for
asking many smart questions about what employees think and encouraging debate. She
understands that the high value of the debate, because it gets better results.

3 Leader behaviour in Path - Goal Model

Sheryl is a great leader who believes in transformation of people. She loves her work, and her
people. She gives encouragement to her people. She is lone fighter who is fighting the world to
make it better for women. She encourages women to take lead instead of just going back to the
safe heaven called home. She wants women to transform and become future leaders. So, her
behaviour can be termed as supportive leadership.

4 Personal characteristics of Sheryl

 Life Journey of Sheryl Kara Sandberg

The personal attributes of Sheryl took her to greater heights in terms of her career. Like her
optimism that she can make a change in the world and the self confidence that drove her to take
initiatives like Facebook Ads that generated billions of revenue to the company, which her totally
her idea. No Facebook ads are the best place for marketing any product. Self-awareness that lets
her learn from “failures” is one of the quality of Sheryl. Strong, open communication quality
allows employees share their thoughts in the decision making process and also through her Lean,
NGO women share your struggles, give and get advice, and celebrate each other’s wins.

5 How strengths of Sheryl matched with her leadership roles

Her strength to to collaborate with people got her place in the Board of directors of Facebook.
Her being Proactive and taking initiatives took Facebook to a greater position. Her ability to lead
people made her a Great influencer, where she influence so many people with her ted talks

6 Entrepreneur traits and behaviour

Sheryl is an Entrepreneur who was highly motivated and she served to be great asset for both
Google and Facebook. She initiated a lot of new ventures under Facebook which are actively
running and successful. She is self- motivated, even wrote a book “Lean In: Women, Work, and
the Will to Lead” which emerged out of her own motivation to empower women world wide. She
was even working with a lot of NGO’s in India and during her sophomore year she even co-
founded an organization for women in economics and government.

Unit 3

1 Sheryl Sandberg a transformational leader

Sandberg can be seen as a transformational leader. Transformational leaders, by definition, is

creating a connection with people on a level that increases motivation by setting high
expectations, providing support for achieving those high expectations and celebrating the
successes. When Sandberg began her job at Facebook, it was reported that she went to every
employee’s desk to introduce herself, ask them what their role is and about any changes they’d

 Life Journey of Sheryl Kara Sandberg

like to see. Getting to know employees on a personal level is important to Sandberg. In a recent
interview, Sandberg relayed the importance of leaders showing emotion and vulnerability. She
feels strongly that letting your team see you like that helps them see that you too are human and
sometimes make mistakes. She says it builds relatability and trust.
Transformational leaders must be charismatic (Example - A few years ago, Facebook found itself
negotiating a tricky partnership with PayPal. Whenever the teams were stuck, Sandberg would
personally reach out to John Donahoe, the CEO of eBay, which owns the payments company.
The high-level check-ins ironed out the differences and over time also led to eBay spending far
more on Facebook ads) Sheryl Sandberg is not shy about her feelings about women in leadership
and provides guidance for women who need a little extra encouragement to achieve their goals.
She displays human kindness in all of her interactions and is therefore seen as a caring, yet
strong pioneer.

2 Kind of culture promoted by Sheryl Sandberg in the organisation

She followed the adaptability culture in the organisation where employees were valued and
customer centric. They valued them and adapted according to needs and changes.

Sheryl Sandberg through Lean, a NGO encourages women to come together to learn from each
other and achieve their goals. Women get and give peer mentorship, sharpen their skills, and
have a place to be unapologetically ambitious. The biggest getaway is to provide enough
opportunities for employees to grow and develop – physically and professionally.

3 Type of culture adopted by Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg has responsive culture since she as a leader is concerned about women to
provide inspiration and support to help them achieve their goals. Her organization desires to
support women in three main ways: community, education, and circles, or small, coordinated
peer groups that meet to share their experiences and learn together. Sheryl has the ability to
respond to her customers’ and fulfil them in a timely manner and bring about a useful change.

4 Dimensions of social value system

We can relate Sheryl’s story to collectivism dimensions of social value systems. Sandberg’s
leadership was not only exemplified to the model of leadership but had a mission to support new
and growing leadership. Her reaction to leadership is not competitive but rather collaborative.

 Life Journey of Sheryl Kara Sandberg

This represents a new way of thinking, one that seeks diversity and the achievement of shared
goals through innovation. She believes in encouraging leadership and confidence in one's
partner, teammates and staff members through practice and support and bring about a change
which is best for community and society.

5 Ethical values in the organisation

Sandberg demonstrates integrity and ethics not only in her business decisions, but also what she
has chosen as personal priorities, such as empowerment of women in the corporate context .
Sandberg is trying to right a wrong that she sees in the business world, but in a way that does not
undermine, but rather strengthens business objectives as well as ethics.she takes business
perspective of not wanting to lose the value that comes when people discriminate, thereby
holding back capacity to contribute. Her simple approach is to encourage all that voice and
contribution is important and that it is leader most of all who need all to take initiative to
participate and engage, even they are not fully confident.

6 Sheryl Sandberg’s Mentor

Sandberg met her mentor Summers while studying economics at Harvard while she was trying to
set up a new student organization, Women in Economics and Government at Harvard to
encourage women to major in those subjects and he also volunteered to be Sandberg’s thesis
adviser. Summers mentioned in a recent article named The Guardian that if he was making a
mistake, she told him. Summers fully repaid that loyalty. In 1991, when he became the chief
economist at the World Bank, he recruited Sandberg as a research assistant. In an HBR interview,
Sandberg said that being mentored by Summers “helped tremendously. I’ve had a lot of mentors
over the course of my career, Summer being one of the absolutely most important.

7 Sheryl mentoring others

Sandberg is in a position of power, she’s taken the opportunity to both help her mentor and to
pass the gift of mentoring on to others. Sheryl through her lean, NGO provides mentoring to
women by understanding their mentee’s career goals, then think through her best path forward
and how they can help. Women who are mentored by women feels more supported and satisfied
with their career. She feels instead of asking people to be their mentor, people should ask them

 Life Journey of Sheryl Kara Sandberg

questions, ask for advice from time to time and update them on their progress. It usually ends up
being a mutually beneficial relationship.

8 The visible component of organisation culture under Sheryl leadership

The visible component was that her idea for Facebook on introducing Facebook Ads and Market
place generated and still is generating billions of revenue into Facebook. The invisible
contribution that everyone is overlooking is that as soon as her idea came into place the user base
of Facebook tripled. Before Facebook concentrated on teenagers and young adults to connect
with their long lost friends. But when the Ads and Market place came into action all the elderly
people and small business owners joined Facebook. And the small business owners took it as an
opportunity as a platform to grow their business. And all the big brands created and Posted ads to
attract the customer base they want . They advertised in a way that we have never seen before.

When we look at is us Gen Z would look at it as a small change but if we look at the person who
introduced it and the era she belonged to where the cellphones were not easily available she had
come a long way and introduced things that we could have never thought of.

UNIT 4

Sheryl as a communication champion

1 Type of communication under Sheryl leadership

When Sheryl Sandberg started as Facebook's COO, she went to hundreds of people's desks and
interrupted their work and said: "Hi I'm Sheryl." She then asked lots of questions and listened to
them patiently. Sheryl is well known for asking many smart questions about what employees
think and encouraging debate. She understands that the high value of the debate, because it gets
better results. The answers could come in the form of a list, a few sentences or something longer
such as a speech, paragraph or essay. So, we can say there was open ended communication
under her leadership.

2 Any barriers to organisation communication under Sheryl leadership

I see that there were no barriers in her communication model. As she had an idea in her mind she
took feedbacks, sold her ideas to the board and she bought that idea into action and as we can

 Life Journey of Sheryl Kara Sandberg

clearly see that it is running successfully. We have a working and successful example of her
communication skills and she lead the company towards working for her idea, which they did.

3 How Sheryl used technology effectively for message disbursement and penetration to the
target audience

Sheryl was the COO of a firm driven by technology and innovations. She makes sure her
communication is clear and is reaching the target audience. She is a great Speaker, she has given
multiple ted talks regarding women empowerment and her journey which indeed has influenced
a lot of people and we can clearly say that she has mastered the art of communication and
making her message make an impact to the listeners.

4 Sheryl as a communication champion

Sandberg is a communication champion as she has a good communication skill followed by

people’s skill. She is a communication champion as its not an easy job to sell any idea to the
company like Facebook and bringing it into action. And it takes hundreds of people to work for
that idea to ensure that it runs smooth. Today we see how Facebook is running and growing easy
day we know for sure she has made sure that her message reaches every one crystal clear and
work towards a common goal. Using the tools of a story-teller, she finds moments of humor and
insight to underscore her points, or illuminate the nuances of a concept. Sandberg is very clear
about her goals for equality, and uses storytelling to provide insight into her own personal
approach to equality at work and in the home. The Lean In movement focuses on using narrative
and communication in small groups to develop leadership in women

5 How Sheryl ensured vision, mission, values of the organisation gets communicated to all
the employees effectively

Any communication of idea has its own challenges and making sure it reaches the employees
well and clear is not an easy job at all when its hundreds of employees that you have to
communicate it to and make them work towards it. Sandberg frequently uses data to set context
and illustrate her points to ensure all values of the organisation are communicated to the staff
effectively. Her speeches and writing all reference numerous gender studies which illustrate her
vision for the future. She relies extensively on scientific studies to underscore narrative points.
Her journey was not easy she faced obstacles criticisms but she overcame all of it and got her
idea in place and working successfully.

 Life Journey of Sheryl Kara Sandberg

References

https://leanin.org/about?amp=1

https://www.geteverwise.com/mentoring/how-Sheryl-Sandbergs-mentor-helped-launch-her-
career/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/research-leader-leadership-qualities-sheryl-sandberg-
duddu