Lean In

now serves as New York City’s police commissioner. Instead of reaching out to offer assistance, I called Commissioner Kelly with a request from the secretary. The impression I made was that my job was to demand and his job was to listen. It was a mistake. Ray’s response was quick and clear. “[Expletive], Sheryl,” he explained. “Just because I’m not in Larry Summers’s [expletive] thirty-year-old brain trust doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I’m doing! If Secretary Summers wants something from me, tell him to [expletive] call me himself!” Then he hung up the phone. I thought,
This is not going well
. My first week on the job and I’d angered a man who knows a thing or two about firearms.
    After I stopped shaking, I realized that Commissioner Kelly had done me a huge favor. His “feedback” was extremely helpful and delivered in a way that I would never forget. I reassessed my outreach strategy. With the other bureau chiefs, I initiated conversation by asking what I could do to help them achieve
their
goals. It’s no surprise that they reacted more positively and with far fewer expletives. And after I employed my “What have I done for you lately?” approach, they were far more eager to return the favor.
    As often as I try to persuade people to share their honest views, it is still a challenge to elicit them. When I started building my team at Google, I interviewed every candidate before we made an offer. Even when the team had grown to about one hundred people, I still spoke with each finalist. One day at a meeting of my direct reports, I offered to stop interviewing, fully expecting everyone to insist that my input was an essential part of the process. Instead, they applauded. They all jumped in to explain—
in unison
—that my insistence on speaking personally to every candidate had become a huge bottleneck. I had no idea that I had been holding the team back and was upset that no one had told me. I spent a few hours quietly fuming, which, given that I have no poker face, was probably obvious to everyone. Then I realized that if my colleagues had kept this to themselves, I was clearly not communicating that I was open to their input. Miscommunication is always a two-way street. If I wanted more suggestions, I would have to take responsibility for making that clear. So I went back to my team and agreed that I would not interview anymore. And more important, I told them that I wanted their input early and often.
    Another way I try to foster authentic communication is to speak openly about my own weaknesses. To highlight just one, I have a tendency to get impatient about unresolved situations. My reaction is to push for people to resolve them quickly, in some cases before they realistically can. David Fischer andI have worked closely together for fifteen years at Treasury, Google, and Facebook. He jokes that he can tell from my tone of voice whether he should bother to complete a task or if I’m about to just do it myself. I acknowledge my impatience openly and ask my colleagues to let me know when I need to chill out. By mentioning this myself, I give others permission to bring up my impatience—and joke about it too. My colleagues will say to me, “Sheryl, you asked us to tell you when you get nervous and push the teams too hard. I think you’re doing that now.” But if I never said anything, would anyone at Facebook walk up to me and announce, “Hey, Sheryl, calm down! You’re driving everyone nuts!” Somehow I doubt it. They would think it. They might even say it to one another. But they wouldn’t say it to me.
    When people are open and honest, thanking them publicly encourages them to continue while sending a powerful signal to others. At a meeting with about sixty Facebook engineers, I mentioned that I was interested in opening more Facebook offices around the world, especially in one particular region. Since the group included members of the security team, I asked what they were most worried about. Without being called on, Chad Greene blurted out, “Opening a Facebook office in that region.” He explained why it wouldn’t work and why I was dead wrong in front of the entire group. I loved it. We had never met before, and I will never forget that strong introduction. I ended the meeting by thanking Chad for his candor and then posted the story on Facebook to encourage the rest of the company to follow his example. Mark feels the same way. At a summer barbecue four years