Leading through Covid-19: Lessons from Shellye Archambeau & Sheryl Sandberg

Leading through Covid-19: Lessons from Shellye Archambeau & Sheryl Sandberg

For March in honor of Women’s History Month we wanted to feature an episode specifically focused on topics impacting womxn. With it also being the one year anniversary of COVID-19 forcing shutdowns across the world and a change to the way many of us now work - we thought this episode from the fabulous Tilted series was perfect.

We’ve listened to Tilted before - it’s the podcast series put out by the Lean-In organization. In fact, we listened to Tilted just a few months ago so normally we wouldn’t revisit a series so quickly… but this episode just seemed too perfect for this month, so here we are.

In this episode we get to hear from two leaders that I have a ton of respect for - Shellye Archambeau who is the author of “Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms” and Sheryl Sandberg who probably needs no introduction but is COO at Facebook among so many other things.

Suggested discussion questions (if you need something to start the conversation):

• COVID-19 is disproportionately impacting women in the workplace and creating new struggles in an area which was already challenged. Do you see evidence of this in your workplace?

• If you work online -> have you noticed a difference between kids being present in men’s camera feeds vs. women’s? Do people react differently depending on if it is a man’s feed vs. a woman’s?

• Sheryl Sandberg talks about the difference between sponsorship and mentorship. Are both happening in your workplace? If the difference between the two was new to you, what stood out the most?

• What do you think about leading with compassion and flexibility (over policy)?