Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg urged Tsinghua graduates to “win hearts” if they want to become world class leaders, a quality her late husband Dave Goldberg exemplified.
Sandberg was in Beijing Saturday to give the commencement speech at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management.
In her 20-minute speech, she opened up about her husband’s sudden passing in May, saying “no one won more hearts than my beloved husband.”
“Dave was a truly inspiring leader. He was kind. He was generous. He was thoughtful. He raised the level of performance of everyone around him,” she said.
“He did it as CEO of SurveyMonkey, an amazing company that he helped build. He did it for me and for our children.”
Goldberg, a Silicon Valley executive and father of two, collapsed while exercising on a treadmill in Mexico.
Sandberg, who joined Facebook in 2008, rose to international attention as a leading advocate for females in the workplace with her bestselling book “Lean In.”
During her speech, she emphasized that great leaders “do not just want to secure compliance.”
“They want to elicit genuine enthusiasm, complete trust, and real dedication. They don’t just win the minds of their teams, they win their hearts.
“If they believe in your organization’s mission and they believe in you, they will not only do their daily tasks well but they will do them with true passion.”
English address
Unlike her boss, Mark Zuckerberg, who last year gave a speech at Tsinghua University entirely in Chinese, Sandberg used English in the address. She was the faculty’s first ever female commencement speaker. Last year, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma addressed the school.
Sandberg also took time to discuss the gender gap and Chinese society stereotypes of “sheng nu,” a label meaning leftover women or females who haven’t married by the age of 27.
“We can walk up to someone who calls a little girl ‘bossy,’ and say instead, ‘That little girl is not bossy. That little girl has executive leadership skills,'” Sandberg said.