FT Business Book of the Year

Best business books

All the books longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

Lean In

Lean In holds a rare spot in the canon of career and corporate leadership advice, most of which is written by men. Sandberg has produced a clear and engaging treatise outlining the sociological forces that work against women’s professional advancement. — Read the complete FT review

Synopsis

Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they’d feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in.

The statistics, although an improvement on previous decades, are certainly not in women’s favour – of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world of big business, a meagre eighteen of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Business – draws on her own experience of working in some of the world’s most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.

Learning to ‘lean in’ is about tackling the anxieties and preconceptions that stop women reaching the top – taking a place at the table, and making yourself a part of the debate.