If you do please everyone, you are not making enough progress.

We have to ask ourselves if we have become so focused on supporting personal choices that we're failing to encourage women to aspire to leadership.

Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

All of us want the same things. We want to be good to the people around us and for our lives to have meaning. For me that means making the world a little bit easier for women.

Talking can transform minds, which can transform behaviors, which can transform institutions.

Let's acknowledge that men reach for opportunities more quickly and more easily than women. So often as managers, we give the job to whoever starts solving the problem, to whoever jumps in. Since we know men will jump in faster than women in so many circumstances, we have to slow down and encourage more women to sit at more tables.

What works for men does not always work for women, because success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. That's what the research shows. As a man gets more successful, everyone is rooting for him. As a woman gets more successful, both men and women like her less.