Anne-Marie Slaughter says you know you’re growing as a leader when you feel sick to your stomach.
Slaughter, a former Princeton dean who took a top U.S. State Department post under Hillary Clinton in 2009, catapulted herself to the center of a nationwide conversation on equality with her Atlantic essay “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All.”
The piece on men, women and the workplace was inspired by her own decision to leave the State Department to take care of one of her sons, who was struggling behaviorally.
Three years later, she’s continuing to drive that conversation with a new book, “Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family.”
Now president and CEO of New America Foundation, Slaughter spoke last week at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She also spoke with Blue Sky Innovation about her approach to leading a movement — and why gut-wrenching fear is often an indication of growth.
Q: The Atlantic article thrust you to the front of this conversation. Did you want that?
A: Honestly, when the article had such a reaction, it felt like my real identity was being subsumed. I’m a foreign policy person. That’s who I am, and that is really what grounds me in the world. But I also felt that it wasn’t OK to call for a conversation, then run away from it.
Q: What are the biggest challenges of leading this conversation?
A: As a leader, you want a positive vision. In this debate I’m often cast as the negative person, the person who’s saying, “You can’t have it all. You can’t do it.” That’s not a good place, that’s not the kind of leader I am, and that’s not a message anybody really wants to hear.
My proposition has been: We have to be honest here. If a woman with as many advantages as I have couldn’t make it work, then most other people are facing much, much bigger challenges, so we’ve got to make bigger changes.
Q: You’ve said you didn’t think of yourself as a leader until you were 40.
A: I thought of myself as a smart person, as a professor, an academic type, but not really as a leader. It wasn’t really until I had the experience of leading that I discovered, of course I can do this. I have strong opinions and I’m willing to stand up for them. But I think it does go to the way women are also shaped that I did not perceive myself as a leader.
Q: You’ve also written about how women speak in a less demanding way.
A: My husband told me, after listening to me early on when we were both in seminars together, ‘If you tell people there’s no reason to listen to you, they won’t.”
So if you say, ‘I’m not an expert but I think …’ most people stop listening after, ‘I’m not an expert.’
When men are insecure, they get more assertive. Their attitude is, ‘I’m going to put it out there and dare you to challenge me.” And women often are more, “I’m going to sort of edge my way into this. I’m not going to put myself out there.”
There is a vocabulary of power, a body language of power, and we do need to learn how to adopt that.
Q: How can you create a culture that allows employees to take care of their children or others?
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A: You absolutely have to have leaders who walk the talk. At New America, we have six weeks of paid time off a year. You can roll over two weeks, but not more than that, because I think you’ll be a better worker if you take time off. I have reviews of people where I say, “You’re doing a great job, but you need to take more time off because you’re burning out, because you’re stressed, because your stress is affecting your coworkers.”
And I walk that. I take six full weeks every year and probably eight.
Ditto with paternity leave or maternity leave. I don’t think anybody who is really stressed out about a child, a parent, a spouse, a boyfriend, whatever it is, you’re not going to be able to concentrate on your work and give me your best work.
Q: What are some of the hard truths of being a leader?
A: I supported Marissa Mayer’s decision (to ban working at home) at Yahoo. She was a new CEO and had a company in trouble, and she had to change the culture. I’ve been in organizations like that. You just have to deliver a real shock to the system.
From a work-family point of view, it’s unfortunate. But she had to get people into the workplace or they weren’t going to have jobs to come to. I see that from a leader’s point of view.
I have high standards, and I expect people to take a lot of initiative. And if you don’t do that, then you’re not the right fit for my team or for my organization. I’ve got a lot of confidence in people’s ability to motivate themselves.
Q: How do you push yourself to grow as a leader?
A: The day I took over as director of policy planning, I was terrified. Who wouldn’t be? I’d never been in government. I had a team of 40 people I had to manage, and I’d never met them. I’m reporting to the Secretary of State.
My line is always, if your stomach hurts, you’re on the right track. If it’s like that first day of camp or that first day of school, where you really would just as soon go home and crawl into a little ball, that means you’re doing something that will help you grow.
Q&As are edited for length and clarity.
Email: [email protected] * Twitter: @megancgraham