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" Sheryl Sandberg&amp;#039;s not just releasing a book, she&amp;#039;s launching a movement. It&amp;#039;s called Lean In , and its aim is to create a global community encouraging women to lean in to their ambitions. One of the main components is the launch of Lean In Circles, groups of 8 to 12 peers who meet regularly to explore work topics and share their experiences. When Cosmo assembled the first ever Circle at our NYC office, Sheryl and her cofounders Skyped in from the Facebook offices before the group discussion started. Meet our 9 young women, and listen in on the conversation\u2014we&amp;#039;ve saved you a seat at the table! AMANDA C. Age: 28 Profession: Publicist. Best advice you&amp;#039;ve gotten? Be kind to everyone, because you never know...the assistant may someday be the boss. VALERIE Age: 23Profession: Retail product developer. Secret work weapons: Quarterlette.com, an online magazine for women navigating their quarter-lives SARAH Age: 23 Profession: Talk-show production assistant. Power secret: Make sure to always leave a lasting impression. DOROTHY Age: 23 Profession: Publicity coordinator. Secret work weapon: My alarm clock. I get 75 percent of my work done before 9 a.m. HILLARY Age: 23 Profession: Writer and editor. What makes you fun and fearless? Heels. Comfortable ones! AMBER Age: 27 Profession: Editorial assistantSecret work weapon: Post-it-note mantras on my computer. When things get tough, they remind me of the big picture. ALEXANDRIA Age: 23 Profession: PR and communications professional. Power secret: Lots of coffee and a willingness to jump into anything thrown my way JOSY Age: 20 Profession: Community manager for a web start-up. Words she lives by: &amp;quot;Always speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.&amp;quot; AMANDA P. Age: 27 Profession: Cofounder of career site Levo League. Words she lives by: &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.&amp;quot; Moderator: HELEN GURRERA Age: 34 Profession: President of gourmet-food chain Citarella; member of Young Presidents&amp;#039; Organization (Lean In Circles are partly based on YPO). Power secret: Accepting that you&amp;#039;ll make mistakes. It makes you stronger. SHERYL SANDBERG: Hi, everyone. I&amp;#039;m Sheryl, and I&amp;#039;m here with the Lean In founders. Thanks for being here. We all know that women do better with the support of others than we do individually. Everything from book clubs to weight-loss groups to school projects teaches us that. So the concept of Lean In Circles is to give you that support to help you believe you can sit at any table, have any job, and have any life you want. So with that in mind, Helen will get you started, so you can lean in to your careers and truly reach your potential. Have fun! [Skype call ends.] HELEN: Hi, everyone. As you know, I&amp;#039;m moderating today&amp;#039;s Lean In Circle. I&amp;#039;d like to start off with a question: When was a time that you leaned in or leaned back at work? Let&amp;#039;s have Sarah go first and then go around the table. SARAH: At my old job in TV news, we had to make quick decisions about whether we&amp;#039;d join a shoot. The more that I just saidyes, the more opportunities I opened myself up to. You want to go and produce this shoot with a famous chef? Sure! I even produced a segment that&amp;#039;s going in the Oscar special. I&amp;#039;m terrified of shooting, but I just kept saying yes. But recently, I found myself leaning back. Now, I work on a new show, and someone asked if anyone could shoot. I was just in Africa for a month shooting by myself. I know how to shoot! But at the meeting, I didn&amp;#039;t raise my hand. I kept thinking, it&amp;#039;s a camera I&amp;#039;m not as familiar with, I&amp;#039;m nervous....It was that fear of &amp;quot;If I say yes, are they going to expect a cinematographer?&amp;quot; HELEN: If you did volunteer to shoot and you brought back footage that wasn&amp;#039;t what they were looking for, what would you learn from that? SARAH: I would learn how not to do it. But at the same time, if it comes back not how they want it, then you&amp;#039;re on the line for it. At my old job, if I didn&amp;#039;t shoot it right, they would go over it with me and say, like, &amp;quot;This isn&amp;#039;t right; here&amp;#039;s how you do it.&amp;quot; So it&amp;#039;s also the environment you&amp;#039;re in. You&amp;#039;re either surrounded by people who are okay with failure or people who are, like, &amp;quot;What is wrong with you?&amp;quot; HELEN: Thank you for sharing that, Sarah. Josy? JOSY: Last summer, I was doing a project, and it was me and four guys who were all older than I am. Their ideas were good, but they were targeting a market they didn&amp;#039;t really know how to appeal to. At our big pitch meeting, the presentation wasn&amp;#039;t going very well. And I thought to myself, this isn&amp;#039;t going to go anywhere unless I step up and add my opinion. So I did, and when I kind of took the lead, the meeting went really, really well. But at another a meeting a few months ago, I found myself leaning back. This key guy kept shooting down everything I was saying, every idea I would offer. I just gave in. Later, I thought about it, and I was, like, &amp;quot;You had more confidence a year and a half ago than you did a couple of months ago!&amp;quot; HILLARY: So recently, a lot of new people came to my company, which was really exciting. But before that, I had free rein to write about all sorts of things. And then suddenly, dedicated reporters on various areas were coming in, and I didn&amp;#039;t know exactly what I was supposed to cover. I first felt like I leaned back by waiting far too long to address it with my managers. It&amp;#039;s something that really frustrated me for a few months and made me feel like I was doing something wrong. In fact, it was more that the company was growing. When I did finally meet with my manager, I didn&amp;#039;t initially like a lot of the things about the new role he had for me. But I discussed it with someone else who actually had a really good perspective about why it could be good for me. Once I saw it that way, I leaned in. I learned to address my concerns with others, especially if you have people who understand. ALEXANDRIA: What happened to me was that a lot of junior staffers had left my company, which meant that I had to really step up to the plate in terms of our accounts. It was a really good opportunity to get recognized. I was doing a lot of work beyond my level, but I was so scared to ask for a raise. Literally, I spent hours just building a case for myself and summoning the courage to go into that room and ask for it. At the end of the day, it wound up being worthwhile. I realized that you have to be your own advocate. Building that confidence is tough and scary, but it&amp;#039;s worth it. HELEN: This will be a common theme throughout--building your self-confidence and knowing your worth. Amanda, you&amp;#039;re up. AMANDA P: I got this amazing job out of college, but I wasn&amp;#039;t from a school that my company typically recruits from. I was so intimidated walking in my first day that I didn&amp;#039;t really talk, and I usually can&amp;#039;t stop talking. I thought, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not smart enough to be here. I don&amp;#039;t know what I&amp;#039;m doing.&amp;quot; I would present ideas [timidly], like, &amp;quot;maybe if we did this...&amp;quot;--I was just terrified. Basically, I was saying my ideas were not very good! But eventually, in that first job, I reached out to the most senior female director at the company. She was doing research on women, which was really interesting to me. I sent her an e-mail saying, &amp;quot;How can I help you? I&amp;#039;ll do anything.&amp;quot; And within three minutes, she writes back to me and says, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s your availability?&amp;quot; It really helped me to start thinking [that I should lean in]. SARAH: I want to clap for you right now! HELEN: Me too! Okay, go ahead, Amanda C. AMANDA C: I&amp;#039;ll start with the time when I didn&amp;#039;t lean in, and it&amp;#039;s kind of literal. On one of my first projects, I had worked so hard, but I was working in tandem with people who were more senior than I was. We get to the actual presentation, and there&amp;#039;s a conference table. I sat in this chair in the corner, almost outside the door--it was as though I wasn&amp;#039;t even in the room. I didn&amp;#039;t sit at the table because I was terrified. But during the meeting, any time anyone had a question, everybody at the table had to turn and ask me. It was so awkward! I had felt like I didn&amp;#039;t deserve to have a place at the table, but clearly I did. So the next time something came up that I wanted to handle, I went into my boss&amp;#039;s office and said I wanted to do it...on my own. She gave it to me. HELEN: Good for you. Excellent. DOROTHY: When I was an intern, a position came up--working for my boss--that I applied for. I was seeing other interns interview for that same job. A few weeks had gone by, I hadn&amp;#039;t heard anything, and I was getting discouraged. I asked a coworker if there was any way that I could find out when the job would be announced. And she gave me great advice--she encouraged me to be patient and, in the meantime, act like my boss&amp;#039;s assistant for the next couple of weeks so that she would see how passionate I was about the position and how much I wanted it. So I took her advice, and I got the job! AMBER: On my first day at my former job, I found out the person who had the position before me had been paid way more than I was. It kind of disrupted my experience there. I felt like it affected my work, because how can you give a hundred percent of yourself when you feel like you&amp;#039;re being screwed over? It took me six months before I went to my boss and said, &amp;quot;I need more money. I know I&amp;#039;m doing way more work than the person before me was doing.&amp;quot; So it was a lean-back-then-lean-in moment. VALERIE: In the beginning of my job, I leaned back too often. I look at a lot of numbers, and that&amp;#039;s not the most comfortable part of my job for me. Over time, I talked to my boss so I could learn more about that aspect. And now, the more I know about it, the more confident I am, and the better I am at my job. Now I&amp;#039;m even training other people. I think that&amp;#039;s a big part of leaning in--passing along what you&amp;#039;ve learned. HELEN: Thank you all for sharing. I wrote down some themes that I heard throughout our conversation. Here are some things we might want to discuss in future meetings: Waiting too long to address a situation, your role and the expectations of your boss, how to build up the courage to ask for a raise, and knowing that it&amp;#039;s okay to make a mistake.So, when is everyone free for our next Lean In Circle? For more information on Lean In, go to Lean.org or facebook.com/leanincommunity "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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