Lean In

benefit of the doubt. Cynthia Hogan served as chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee under then-senator Joe Biden before leaving in 1996 after her first child was born. Her plan was to return to the workforce a few years later. But when her second child was born prematurely, those plans changed. A full twelve years later, Vice President–Elect Biden called Cynthia to ask her to join his staff as chief legal counsel in the White House. “My first reaction was that I no longer owned any clothes other than yoga pants!” Cynthia said. But her larger concern was whether she could manage the long hours in the White House and still see her family. She put it beautifully: “I knew that whether this would work depended on two men. So first I asked my husband if he could step in and take on more of the responsibility for the kids. He said, ‘Of course, it’s your turn.’ And then I told the Vice President–elect that I really wanted to have dinner with my kids most nights. Andhis response was, ‘Well, you have a phone and I can call you when I need you after dinnertime.’ ” 14
    Cynthia believes that the lesson of her story is “Don’t be afraid to ask,” even if it seems like a long shot. Being offered a senior job, especially after being at home for so long, presented a great opportunity. Many women would have accepted it without even trying to carve out the time they needed for their families. Others would have turned it down, assuming that having dinner at home most nights was not negotiable. Being forthright led to opportunity.
    Every job will demand some sacrifice. The key is to avoid
unnecessary
sacrifice. This is especially hard since our work culture values complete dedication. We worry that even mentioning other priorities makes us less valuable employees. I have faced this too. As I described, once I had children, I changed my working hours to be home for dinner. But only fairly recently did I start talking about this change. And while the impact of my actually leaving work early was negligible,
admitting
that I went home at five thirty turned out to be kind of a big deal.
    I first openly discussed my office hours at the launch of Facebook Women, an in-house resource group. The initial meeting, run by Lori Goler and Facebook’s head of engineering, Mike Schroepfer, was open to any Facebook employee, including men. During the Q&A, I was asked the (inevitable) question about how I balanced my job and family. I talked about leaving work to have dinner with my children and then getting back online after they went to bed. I said that I was sharing my schedule because I wanted to encourage others to personalize their schedules too. Even though I had planned in advance to discuss this, I felt nervous. Years of conditioning had taught me never to suggest that I was doing anything other than giving 100 percent to my job. It was scary to think that someone, even people working for me, might doubt mydiligence or dedication. Fortunately, it didn’t happen. A few people at Facebook thanked me for mentioning it, but that was it.
    A few years later, producer Dyllan McGee interviewed me for her Makers video series. We spoke on a wide range of subjects, including my daily work schedule. The video was posted to the web and was instantly the subject of heated debate. Thanks to social media (
serves me right
), everyone had an opinion about my leaving the office at five thirty. I got flowers with an anonymous thank-you note. Mike Callahan, Yahoo’s general counsel at the time, told me that several of the more senior women in his legal department said my admission struck a chord and they were going to follow my example. Author Ken Auletta said that I could not have gotten more headlines if I had murdered someone with an ax. While I was glad to jump-start the discussion, all the attention gave me this weird feeling that someone was going to object and fire me. I had to reassure myself that this was absurd. Still, the clamor made me realize how incredibly hard it would be for someone in a less-senior position to ask for or admit to this schedule. We have a long way to go before flextime is accepted in most workplaces. It will only happen if we keep raising the issue.
    The discussions may be difficult, but the positives are many. We cannot change what we are unaware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.
    Even a well-established institution like Harvard Business School (HBS) can evolve rapidly