From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of women transforming technology, brought to you by VMWare >> Hi, this is Lisa Martin covering the 5th annual women transforming technology event. But the first time this event has been completely digital. Coming to you from my home in San Jose, and I'm very pleased to welcome one of the event's speakers, the CEO of Be Leaderly, Jo Miller. Jo, welcome to theCUBE. >> Hi Lisa, a pleasure speaking with you today. >> Likewise. So I was looking up some information on you Jo you are quite impressive and I wanted to share that with our viewers. You have dedicated two decades to really helping women advance in their careers, into positions of influence. You've spoken with 100,000 plus women in that time and you've developed a roadmap that you published in 2019, a book. Tell us about that book and some of the really interesting things you've learned along the way. >> Thanks for asking! Well look the book was really born out of a conversation I had about 15 years ago with a woman, a software engineer, who told me that she felt like she was the best kept secret in her organization and of course, you know, being indispensable in your current role won't move your career forward and she had become indispensable for doing the type of work that was downplaying her potential and it started me on this journey of understanding how is it that we as women can end up being the best kept secrets in the organization, that invisible employee, so to speak. But also, speaking to hundreds of very successful, very seasoned women leaders to understand how did they advance in to the positions of influence that they're in today and so, uh, you've got the opportunity through a publisher to formalize those more than ten years of you know, speaking, and workshops, and all of the interviews that I've accumulated over time, all of that, expertise that I have learned from and put it together into my book with the nine steps that women can take to really thrive in advancing their careers and leave a leadership legacy. >> And what are, give me the first like three steps in the book is women of influence: nine steps to build your brand, establish your legacy, and thrive. Give me like the first three steps that we need to be able to do. >> Well, I think one of the most important ones is to realize that we are all already leaders whether we're in that high level executive leadership position or not, and so, a first step is just to understand all of the ways in which you're already a leader and to identify your own leadership strengths which you can do at any career phase quite frankly. From there, it's about understanding what do you bring to the table that could be a unique value proposition to your organization and matching your strengths to work that you are passionate about or care deeply about, in delivering something that your company or industry or customer base really needs and values and I call that your leadership superpower. So, from your strengths, identifying that niche or superpower and then up leveling that, so taking your personal brand and everything you have learned about your strengths and your value and turning that personal brand into a leadership brand so that people around you start to sit up and pay attention and notice the leader in you, but even more so I think so that you can see the leader in yourself. >> That's great advice, especially now with the COVID-19 crisis that is, regardless of what industry you are in, if you were someone that has worked from home before, it's completely different now, the uncertainty in everything whether it's job security or can I get Clorox wipes? It's a huge challenge. Do you find that those nine steps are still the same if not even more important in today's climate? >> I'll leverage what you said and say they're the same but possibly even more important, you know, if you think about how you were perceived say two months ago, and the value that people around you see in you, well that may have shifted dramatically now that our world has changed and frankly there's never been a time where there has been a greater need for people to step up and bring leadership to the table. And so I really encourage people right now, if you have the time in that busy work life and home life, that have become so mushed together, see if you can take a moment or two to step back and think about how has my world changed and what other really big problems that are emerging or what are the leadership gaps that I could be uniquely built to fill and start to just kind of reinvent and reimagine how you want to be perceived as a leader, like what's that you value proposition that you have to offer in this changed world that's going to continue changing. >> I like that. Reimagine and rethink because even though there is a lot of crisis and challenge going on right now, there are opportunities. So I like your advice of encouraging women and men to really reevaluate what it is that you can bring uniquely positioned, to help however your company is pivoting in this time because there is going to be a lot of change that is probably permanent as a result of this. So how, one of things that I love is talking about the difference between a mentor and a sponsor and you did a session at WT2 the other day, 90 minute interactive session digitally that's a challenge. So I am very impressed and excited to hear about that but you were talking to women about attracting the advocacy of influential sponsors. So, first off describe for our audience the difference between a mentor and a sponsor because I'll be honest with you, I didn't even really know there was a difference until a couple of years ago. >> I love this topic too Lisa and an article that really piqued my passion and interest in sponsorship is one that appeared in Harvard business review, again about a decade ago, and by the way the article was titled 'Why men still get more promotions than women.' and so that truly piqued my interest because I'm so fascinated by anything that can help women advance in their careers. But the article was some authors of a study saying that they'd found that high potential women were over mentored and under sponsored relative to their male peers and that that was one of the reasons that they weren't advancing as much in their organizations. And so I think that the key distinction between mentors and sponsors can be understood first by knowing that a sponsor is, like a mentor, someone that believes in you but they might see that potential that's unformed or untapped potential you might not even see in yourself and they're willing to place a bet on your talent and put their reputation on the line to advocate for you and put your name forward and publicly support you. And so, they're really putting themselves and their own political and social capital on the line. So compared to a mentor they do go beyond giving the feedback and the advice in order to bring their accumulated political and social and career capital to move your career forward within an organization. And so, look you know, whereas a mentor might help you skill up, a sponsor will help you move up and mentors will certainly talk to you but a sponsor is someone who will talk about you so if you can imagine, you know a mentor gives you advice on climbing the ropes, on uh on um, sorry a mentor will give you advice um, on uh, sorry just lost my train of thought there! >> Your advice on what, climbing the ladder. >> Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah, I meant what shows you the ropes, there found it! A mentor shows you the ropes, whereas a sponsor is the one who helps you climb those ropes and so really what I meant, or what a sponsor is like is that rocket fuel for your career but in a good way. They can really alter your career trajectory and move you forward with new momentum. >> Can a sponsor be someone that you're currently working for? >> Yeah, absolutely. And of course not every manager or leader in your management chain will be a sponsor if you're lucky you'll have one but it might be a leader in a completely different area of the organization but I think one of the practical suggestions that I gave to the participants in my session was start to notice who the sponsors are in the organization around you like learn to spot the leaders who have the qualities that make a good sponsor. >> So if I'm out there doing that and I'm maybe going to write down, all right, who have been my mentors over the last few years, who do I think maybe from that category could become a sponsor, looking for sponsors what do we need to know about what a sponsor is going to expect of us. >> Well you know one of the really important distinctions to know about is that when you can go and ask someone to be your mentor, you really can't ask someone to be a sponsor in fact that might backfire, it might have the opposite effect and so sponsorships not something that you would you probably go and directly request, it's something that you earn instead. So, some of the things that sponsors will look to in you would be are you able to be committed and loyal to their goals and the goals of the organization and are you delivering outstanding performance that goes beyond what's being asked of you in your job description and role. But they're also looking for you to bring something truly unique and special to the table and that goes back to our earlier comments, our conversation about understanding what your strengths are, your technical and your leadership strengths and how you can apply them to bring something truly unique to the organization that differentiates you. So that's one of the things that we can do to start to attract sponsors which is to do that self-inventory of what can I bring to the table, what problems can I solve, what leadership gaps can I fill. >> So Jo let's talk about your 90 minute interactive session that you digitally for WT2 the other day. Given the gravity of the situation that COVID-19 is delivering tell me about some of the comments and the questions that you had, a woman going 'All right, in today's climate when we're not sure about even job certainty how do I up my chances of finding a sponsor?' >> Mhm, you know and I think it speaks to the timeliness of the topic. I think we had more than 300 people join the session and so one of the things that I love to do is to make it as interactive as I can by having some panelists join who spoke about examples of the sponsorship that they've gained in their career. But we also heard a lot from participants who are sending their comments in via the chat giving examples of the times when they had been sponsored, how it began, what the sponsors were able to do to help them move forward in their careers and then as we went further along in the session we spoke about the concept of micro sponsorship and how one of the most important ways to understand how sponsorship works is to sponsor someone else and so we saw just a wealth of examples and comments coming from participants about all the ways that they were declaring they were going to take action by sponsoring someone else in their organization. >> So a micro sponsorship that is an interesting concept, tell me a little bit more about that is that say, I'm a sponsor and I'm going to sponsor someone else or is it I have a sponsor and I'm going to get another sponsorship from that? >> Hmm, good question, so there's a couple of myths around sponsorship. One is that you do need to be a high level executive who's able to promote someone or create the perfect role for them or give them that high exposure assignment. And that's certainly one way that sponsorship can take place, the big gestures. But one of the executives I interviewed, Millette Granville said look you don't necessarily need to be an executive to be a sponsor but you do need to have influence and I think we all have influence, we just might not completely leverage it to the greatest extent we can. So we're leaving our influence on the table so if you can't sponsor someone in big ways think about looking for micro sponsorship moments in which you notice a colleague perhaps who's talent is going unseen or under leveraged and recommend that person, put them forward for an ideal opportunity or it might be something as simple as when you see someone share a great idea and no one notices, amplify that idea, attach the person's name to it, or when someone is being spoken over the top of, say 'let her finish' and so we can sponsor in large and in small ways. That's what I mean by micro sponsorship so notice the scope of your influence and use whatever influence you have to be speaking up and advocating for others. >> I love that. Thank you for that clarification. Were there concerns right now with all of the uncertainty, the volumes of people that have applied for unemployment. Were there any concerns from the audience in your session about if somebody else has a great idea will it just highlight that I don't? And will I be in you know a bright light a is she really delivering value if were having to cost cut, were there any concerns that the women brought up? >> Um, not that I noticed but by the way there were 300 people in the session so the chat log was going through so fast and if I was lucky I was able to pluck a few comments to read back to the audience. But I think you're right on target with that concern, I can only assume that a number of people have had that concern for themselves so one of the things that I talked about is the importance of making your value visible and how you don't want to speak up and amplify and promote every single thing that you do but be really strategic about amplifying the accomplishments that align with your aspirations. So, you know speak up and showcase and reveal and make known those high profile results that you are delivering that align with where you want to go in your career and of course that frees you up to be amplifying and promoting and making visible the achievements of others in the organization. In fact, I think if we care about having diverse and equitable workspaces we really need to be lifting others up. >> I love that. Focus on the visible. Last question, in the last few seconds that we have here, how does a company go about building a culture of sponsorship and how do you see that? >> Mhm, that's interesting because you know a lot of companies have a really fully-formed culture of mentorship and they have formalized mentorship programs. On the other hand there tends not to be so many companies that are having sponsorship initiatives but those that do typically will attach them to an existing talent or high potential or diversity initiative and so if you're in a position of influence and leadership and one thing of course to do is be open and transparent about what it would take for you to sponsor someone. But if you're already doing that take it a step further and champion having an open and diverse and equitable culture of sponsorship in the organization, talk to other leaders about what that looks like and get involved in those existing talent and diversity and high potential initiatives and champion the idea of adding a sponsorship component where participants are matched to leaders and the leaders have accountability to help produce results in that participant's career advancement. >> I love that, accountability. This is definitely a topic Jo that I love talking about mentors vs sponsors and it sounds like it's one that just needs more and more and more air cover so people really understand that there is tremendous value there. I wish we had more time, but it has been such a pleasure talking with you Jo I really appreciate that. We thank you for joining us on theCUBE and we appreciate the fact that you have been able to do this, remotely from Iowa, I am in San Jose, so for Jo, I am Lisa Martin and you are watching theCUBE's coverage of women transforming technology, the digital version, 2020. Thanks for watching. (outro music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Women Transforming Technology. Brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin covering the fifth annual Women Transforming Technology. The first year that this event has gone completely digital. We're very pleased to welcome back to theCUBE one of our favorite alumni, the Chief People Officer of VMware, Betsy Sutter. Betsy, welcome back! >> Oh, thank you, Lisa. It's great to see you and it's great to be back. Love this time of year. >> Likewise, me too. And you know, I've had the great opportunity and pleasure of covering WT2 for theCUBE the last few years so I know walking into that courtyard area in Palo Alto, VMware's headquarters, you feel the energy and the excitement, and it's really genuine. And so, knowing that you had to pivot a couple you know, eight weeks or so ago or more, to convert what is such an engaging in-person experience to digital, hard decision, the right decision, but huge in terms of the number of attendees. Tell us a little bit about that process of taking We Rise digital. >> Yeah, you know, it was a pretty quick decision. At VMWare, we were starting to virtualize some other events, and so in realtime, we said, "let's go ahead "and virtualize Women Transforming Technology 2020." And so, when we immediate, flipped to that mode, things started to really open up. The possibilities became pretty interesting. And so honestly, we did not imagine you know, the people attending would grow from roughly thousands to over 5,000. And that's what digitalizing the event, virtualizing the event did. And it was super fun to use technology to make it so much more inclusive and accessible for people around the world. I'm sure you've heard that we had over 5,000 people from over 500 companies represented from 30 different countries. So that was amazing in its own right. >> One of the things that I think was a great advantage knowing that this was the fifth one, but that you had the opportunity to build the community, and such a strong, tight-knight community over the last few years, I think was probably a great facilitator of the event being so much bigger digitally. But when I spoke with a number of your speakers, everybody said, and I saw the Twitter stream, that the engagement, it wasn't like they were watching a video. It was really interactive, and that is hard to achieve with digital. >> Yeah, you know, what I love about the technology was that there were chat rooms, and there were Q&A rooms. And so, there was a lot of back and forth in realtime, even while the speakers were talking. You could sort of multitask, and the speakers were really, really fun to interact with that way as well. And it's super fun to see people in their home environments. You know, it's a just a little bit more information about them, and they seem a little bit more relaxed too, so it was tremendous. Watching Laura Dern, who is an activist and an obviously a very famous actress, in her own home talking to us about the issues she's faced as a woman in her industry, and then moving to another woman named Kathryn Finney, who is the CEO of digitalundivided, in her home with all the activity, she had a four-year old sort of in the background, was super fun and really landed their conversations with us even more solidly. It was a great day. >> I heard that throughout Twitter that people really felt that there was a personal connection. Lot of people talking about, I'm sitting here zooming with Laura Dern, what are you doing today? And some of the things that she said about, you know, you don't have to stay in your own swimlane. That resonated with me and I think with your community very well. >> You know,the diversity, the eclecticness of the women that were able to join from around the world and from many different industries, but you know, technical women, women in tech, was, it just up-leveled everything and it fit into the theme of the conference which was "We Rise", because you know, you're trying to rise as an individual, but there we were rising as a collective for a full day, and the workshops were super fun. I mean I participated in a number of 'em, and I literally went through a workshop with I don't know how many women, but you know, I was drawing on paper then engaging on the screen, then chatting, using the Q&A feature. It was a really dynamic day. I'm wondering now if we'll ever go back, honestly. >> Right, well I was already thinking, "Wow, you can take WT to global and do original events." And there's so much opportunity right now. Tremendous amount of challenge but on the same time, there is a lot of opportunity. In fact, when I was speaking with Sharmain (mumbles) yesterday, it was amazing that she was talking about, you know, right now, like the percentage increase, in people actually reading email because they have more time to, the commute time is gone. And so her advice to be really vivid, in making yourself visual, in terms of how you communicate, and evaluate your role and how you can add new value during this challenging time and I thought that was such a powerful message because we do need to look at what opportunities are we going to be able to uncover? There will be certain things that will go away, to your point, maybe we do digital because we can engage, we can interact and we can reach a bigger audience and learn from more people. >> Yeah, I think that's spot on. I couldn't have said that better. And you could really feel it that day and then the response from both the attendees, but even the keynote speakers, both Laura and Kathryn reaching back to us and talking about the experience they had. It was a pretty uplifting day, I'm still flying pretty high from it. And it was Cinco de Mayo so there had to have been at least margaritas, skinny margaritas, maybe, you know, virgin margaritas. But something there to celebrate an accomplishment of doing something in a short period of undertaking that community and being able to push the energy through the screen is awesome. I'd love to understand, you've been the Chief People Officer at the VMware for a while, the COVID crisis is so challenging in every aspect of life. We often talk about disruption, you know, in technology, a technology disruptor, you know, video streaming was a technology disruptor and Uber was a disruptor to transportation and the taxi service, but now the disruption is an unseen, scary thing and so the emotional impact, people are talking and a number of your folks I spoke to as well said it's hard to be motivated but it's important to acknowledge that I don't feel so motivated today for managers to be able to have that check-in with our employees and our teams. Tell me a little bit about the culture of VMware and how maybe the "We Rise" theme is really kind of, pervasive across VMware right now. >> Yeah, you know, one of the things that I believe and that I've seen in the people business is that more and more people join communities, they join companies but they join communities and communities come together based on you know, their actions, their ideas, their behaviors and what I've seen in terms of VMware's response to COVID-19 has been pretty remarkable. I think at first, you know, we were in crisis mode, sort of going in triage mode about what we do to keep our people feeling safe and healthy. But now we're sort of in a mode of "okay, there's a lot of opportunity that this presents." Now, we are very very fortunate, very blessed to be in the industry that we're in, and a lot of what we do and build and provide for our customers and partners fits into this new business model of working distributedly, so there's been some highs and some lows as we've navigated. First and foremost, we've just put our employees first and their health and safety, making sure that they're comfortable is just been top of mind for us. We just did a small sentiment survey, six questions. Because about two weeks ago, I realized, "I wonder if we really know how people are feeling about this?" And one of the things that came through, I'll say this, out of 32,000 people within 24 hours, over 10,000 people responded to this six question survey, they wanted to tell us how they were doing. But over 70% said they felt, if not the same amount of connection but more connection with each other working in a distributed fashion. And I think COVID-19's brought that alive. That we're going to work in a new way, it's a new business model and so we're doing it at VMware and then we're really pleased that we can offer that to our customers and partners around the globe. >> You know, I'm glad that you talked about the employee experience because obviously, with any business, customers are critical to the life, blood of that business. But equally important, if not sometimes more impactful to the revenue of an organization is the employee experience and being productive day in and day out. And that, if the employee experience is, I think, I don't know, you can't have a good customer experience without a good employee experience. And to (mumbles) that focus is key. So it must have been really nice for the VMware employees to go, "they're wanting to know how I feel right now." That's huge for people to know, the executive team genuinely cares. >> Yeah, you know, Lisa, we have really amped up our communications. We have done more town halls, whether it's to our management community our leadership and executive community or to the whole company. Yesterday alone, I think I did six town halls and two ask-me-anythings just to make sure we know it's on top of people's minds, what's important to them and that's kind of the new normal. And it's so much easier, right? I'm not trying to get to places, I'm just kind of clicking on a button and I'm all of a sudden talking to the employees in India. And you know, when I talk to my colleagues in other industries, like, Beth Axelrod or Tracey Ballow, that are in the you know, the Marriott and the Air BnB industries, their challaneges are so different. And what they're facing in this short-term, in the medium term. VMware is in a position where we can really help these businesses and at the core of that is really, how well our employees are doing and so that's been our focus. >> One of the things that I also talked about yesterday with Jo Miller, the CEO of Be Leaderly, was the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. And I had never even understood that they were two different things until WT2. And so, I thought, you know, we all know about mentors, we talk about that all the time. But I, she was really, I think it's an important message for your audience and ours to understand the difference and she said, "people are often over-mentored and under-sponsored." And so I thought, well, "I want to understand VMware's culture of sponsorship." Tell me what's going on in that respect. >> Yeah, we're, well, I agree with everything that you said on the mentorship side and so what we've instituted on the mentorship side at VMware's reverse mentorship. So every executive at VMware has a reverse mentor, so that they can learn something that they might not be thinking about. And whether it's a reverse mentor who happens to be, if you're a man, who happens to be a woman, or if you want to engage with the under-represented minority, or if you just want to learn about the different aspect of the business, we're big on reverse mentoring. On the sponsorship side, we do do that. And that's a really important aspect to any company's culture if you're trying to cultivate talent. And sponsorship is really championship, right? And I know I champion a lot of people, a lot of the talent around the company and it's very different than maybe coaching, advicing, and interacting in that venue. It's more about, what's the right opportunity for this person? When I'm in the board room, or when I'm in the executive staff meeting, actually advocating for that person, and I'm fierce about that. Especially for women right now at VMware, and it's just important. And a lot of people are starting to adopt that mindset because there's a lot more power and influence in having sponsorship behind you than having mentorship. >> I completely agree. Are you saying that, you know, we often talk about the hard skills and then the soft skills. And I always think soft is the wrong word but I keep forgetting to look it up on the thesaurus to get a better word. Because right now, I think, more important than ever, looking at someone who might have all of the hard skills to be on this the track to the c-suite,  but the importance of authenticity and empathy, I think now are under a microscope. We talked a lot about that too with some of your guests, tell me little bit about those kinds of conversations, that came up during the interactive sessions with WT2. >> Yeah, well, you know, this is one of the blessings that's come out of COVID-19, and this pandemic is that people are starting to see, because everyone's impacted by this and not just in one way, but in multiple ways. So, there's really this once in a lifetime opportunity, at least as far as what I've seen in my lifetime, to seize this heightened level of compassion and empathy for all the people around you in terms of what we're doing. At WT2, I saw it a lot in terms of the quality of the conversations that were happening virtually and sometimes with the key notes and the guest speakers, with the audience, there was always a lead-in with compassion and empathy in terms of all of us. All of us, no matter where you are in the world, or no matter what you're doing, adjusting to what we're calling this new normal. And there's a new business normal but the new normal on the personal side I think is going to take a little bit longer, right? In terms of what people are managing. But in the business world, I think you know, people are starting to re-bound and rebuild, they're honing those skills, and they're going to be wiser and better because of it. But at the heart of it all is, as you said, a lot more compassion and empathy 'cause never before, have we all kind of gone through something quite so traumatic as COVID-19. >> Traumatic and surreal. And you know, we are all in this same storm and I think there's a level of comfort there, that I know I feel with knowing, okay, everyone is going to be feeling this rollercoaster at some point. Some days you're here, some days you're here. But we're all in this, whether you're, you know, in your role, or Pat Gelsinger or an individual contributor role, we're all in the same sea. Betsy, congratulations on a successful fifth WT2, first digital. I'm so glad the theCUBE and myself was able to participate digitally. It's always one of my favorite events every year and I look forward to seeing you again soon, which I soon will be digitally, but I look forward to it. >> Lisa, thank you so much and thanks for all of your sponsorship and mentorship with WT2 over the years too. Thank you. >> All right, you too. That was Betsy Sutter, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology 2. Thanks for watching, see you next time. (soft music)