From what I've read of Sandberg, she is an executive looking at grooming executives. In her mind, "professional" is equivalent to a plumber: not her children.
Her athlete analogy makes a special sort of sense in that context. I have seen a strong connection from the athletes and spec-ops people I went to school with now moving into executive positions. I'm not sure what the common denominator is, because I know a lot of athletes who are now in construction too. But if you're an athlete and can hang intellectually, there's a desirable mindset there. And I think that mindset is the striver: they see themselves every day as a little faster or a little slower, never the same. And they always want to be faster.
In Plato's Republic, there's a chapter on training the guardians, and I think that reflects her ideas reasonably well, in so far as a lot of Western leadership practices derived from the Greeks and the Republic in particular.
Her athlete analogy makes a special sort of sense in that context. I have seen a strong connection from the athletes and spec-ops people I went to school with now moving into executive positions. I'm not sure what the common denominator is, because I know a lot of athletes who are now in construction too. But if you're an athlete and can hang intellectually, there's a desirable mindset there. And I think that mindset is the striver: they see themselves every day as a little faster or a little slower, never the same. And they always want to be faster.
In Plato's Republic, there's a chapter on training the guardians, and I think that reflects her ideas reasonably well, in so far as a lot of Western leadership practices derived from the Greeks and the Republic in particular.