Don’t Lean In

I loved Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In for its practical career advice. At the risk of mischaracterizing her message—which advocates leaning into challenges, opportunities, and ambition, not leaning on someone—I still find the title troubling. The phrase suggests women need support to stay upright, as if we’re inherently unstable.

In my experience, the opposite has been true: success comes from standing straight, not leaning anywhere.

During my book launch for The Woman In Deed, a young woman asked how I found my mentor. Another doubled down: who was my mentor, specifically? Their assumption—that success requires a guide—revealed how deeply mentorship mythology has penetrated our thinking. The short answer? Nobody.

However, there’s an important difference between learning from others and leaning on them. I learned too—but by observing how people conducted themselves, identifying what I lacked, and working to improve it.

For example, I struggled with expressing myself effectively in public presentations and conference rooms. I studied those I admired, like Stanford’s Professor Kailath, who gave thoughtful talks as he formulated his thoughts aloud. His words resonated with audiences—and with me. I never asked him how he did it, but I set it as a goal and worked toward it. Slowly but surely, I improved. This is what I mean by learning, not leaning: I took what I needed without creating dependency.

I learn this way constantly. As a competitive bridge player, I absorb lessons from coaches’ post-game analyses—not by asking them to mentor me, but by extracting wisdom from their experience. Sometimes it’s refreshingly mundane: just putting things in perspective. A basketball coach once said, “It’s not about how many baskets you missed, but how many you scored and how you finessed them.” I applied that mindset to my game: focus on wins, learn from technique.

As an immigrant woman in American business 35 years ago, I had no access to the good-old-boys’ networks. Mentorship is often just networking dressed up. Being a cultural outsider forced me to rely on myself—though my admiration often came from people like me, such as Professor Kailath, who had immigrated from India fifteen years before I did. I learned by watching, not by asking.

Standing straight requires what precedes it: self-confidence. But here’s what most people miss: self-confidence is a muscle that develops only through use—through making tough decisions, seeing consequences, and adjusting. It’s far from innate. Nor is true self-confidence the same as confident body language or assertive speeches; that can be false bravado. True confidence is inner strength—the wisdom to evaluate situations independently and act on your instincts. It grows through continuous learning and reflection. A word of caution, though: we’re often blind to when we get too far ahead of ourselves and start believing we know it all.

When you lean on someone else, you hand over power. You position yourself as incomplete, as needing completion by another. Reducing your own currency is no recipe for success. When you devalue yourself, others will too. The mentorship model, however well-intentioned, can create this dynamic—casting you as the incomplete one who needs to be elevated by another’s wisdom.

Stand straight.