A rollicking discussion of Sheryl Sandberg's white-hot new book, "Lean In," led to expected outcomes earlier this month: Great professional connections, robust laughter, tough questions and diverse answers, and a promise to push the conversation forward.
But the gathering of about 100 women of all ages and industries at the Woman's Club of Minneapolis last week led also to a surprising new buzz-phrase: Lean on.
As we talk among ourselves and, I hope, with our male colleagues about the importance of women in leadership, we have another question to ponder.
How do we rate on the "lean-on" meter? In other words, how good are we at mentoring younger women? There's a diversity of opinions about that, too.
The informal and inclusive book club was the brainstorm of master people-connector Mary Angela Baker, director of St. Catherine University's Leadership Institute. Baker attended a women's leadership conference in March where everybody was talking about Sandberg's book, in which the COO at Facebook encourages women to confidently take their place at the table and (bless her) calls "having it all" what it is — a myth.
(Along those lines, Sandberg, named one of Fortune magazine's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business, recounts a funny story about taking her kids on a plane to a business conference and discovering onboard that they both had head lice.)
But her book's message is serious, and backed up by troubling research: Women enjoy nowhere near equal representation in positions of leadership in government, industry or on boards of directors which make key decisions affecting them.
The 2012 Minnesota Census of Women in Corporate Leadership, for example, found that while women control 73 percent of U.S. household spending decisions, they hold only 14.5 percent of the board seats of Minnesota's top 100 public companies. The number has remained stagnant for five years.