>>Live from Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the cube covering EMC world 2015. Brought to you by EMC, Brocade and VCE. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. We are live here in Las Vegas with the cube at EMC real 2015. I'm John ferry, the founder of Silicon Ang. I'm joined with two special guests. Stella Lowe. Who's the global communications at EMC runs, global communications and Amy Posey, neuro facilitator at peak teams. Welcome to the cube. >>So >>You had a session women of the world. We did it last year, but great cube session last year. Um, so I want to get a couple of quick questions. What's going on with women of the world, what you guys just came from there and you guys were on the panel and then what is a neuro facilitator? And then let's get into it. Let's talk about men and women, how we work together. >>Okay, great. So let's start with women of world. So, um, so last year we talked about the challenges that we face and how we reframe them into opportunities that we had some fantastic panelists, but this year I was really interested in the science behind men and women. So it's clear that we're different and we're all bled for success, but, but we're wired differently. And we kind of knew that already. I know we talked about it before John, but we now have the science behind it. We can look at brain scans and we can see that we, Oh, we have different brain patterns. We think differently, uh, different parts of the brain fire fire up when, in times of motivation and stress and people like Amy here, who've done lots of work into this, have having the stages. It was great to have her on the panel to discuss it. >>I'm going to give you a plug because EMC does all kinds of things with formula one cars, motorcycles, getting the data and understanding the race. But now you're dealing with people. So what is going on? Tell us what's up neuro facilitator and let's >>So a neuro facilitator is maybe the best made up job title in the world that I gave myself. So essentially what I do is I look at information about the brain and I curate the research that's out there. So there's a lot of new technology to actually read and look inside our heads. We all have a brain, but we don't necessarily all know how it works. So there's a lot more research and, and tools to read our brains and take a look inside. So what I do is I take that research and, and work with, um, neuroscientists and neurobiologist at Stanford, Columbia, UCLA, and, and reach out and figure out how do we take that information and make it easier, still attain. And I do it in the scope of leadership at organizations like EMC and other technology companies to figure out how do we work better? What information is out there? You know, soft skills and sort of relationship skills. I've always been sort of squishy, right? So now there's a lot more science and information about our brains that are informing it. The, the data's out there, what I do and what my job is, is to pull the data and figure out how do we make it into practical, useful applications for us at work at home, wherever we are. So that's essentially, I'm doing so you >>Guys discussed and how men and women are different. Actually look at the data. We have to give a lot of qualitative data. I mean, it keeps counselors in business. You know, the grant in the workforce, uh, balance is important, but we have a lot of that data, but what's the numbers. What is your findings? So >>What's interesting is looking at men and women's brains. What's fascinating is that we are more alike than dissimilar in looking at a brain. If you looked at a brain scan, one of a man and woman, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two, but they're now finding and looking at different parts of the brain in different functions. So for instance, men have approximately 6% more gray matter than women. So in terms of the gray matter, that's the thinking brain essentially, and women have more white matter than gray. Matter about 9% more than men. And the white matter is what connects the brain and communicate both front and back and side to side. And so you can make some extrapolation of that information and say, you know, men may focus more on issues, solutions, problems, whereas women sort of think more broadly or wider. >>So, I mean, there are generalities, but a lot of the sciences is fascinating. There's also some interesting science about the hippocampus, which is, um, sort of deep. If this is your brain, it's deep inside the brain and the hippocampus is the memory center. And it's what they're finding is that for women, they tend to store emotional memories more effectively. So happy, sad, fearful those types of emotions get stored more effectively in the hippocampus. Whereas men oftentimes during stress, the hippocampus actually has a challenge in making connections. So that's where, again, some of the, the focus and determination and silo viewed sometimes that men have in situations or problems comes into play. Um, there's one other piece, the anterior cingulate cortex, which is sort of within the brain and that's the brains error detector. And it turns out it's a little bit bigger in women. So women sort of tend to look for, uh, issues CA you know, problems, um, maybe less solution focused, especially under times of stress and, and a lot of this, data's interesting. >>It, it causes you to make some generalities, you know, not everybody is going to operate in that way. Your mileage may theory, but it's, it's good because it helps us inform some of the quirky behavior that we deal with at work and figuring out why, why don't you do that? Why do you do that and installed that women being better or women using more of the brain or less of the brain it's, it's, it's simply about we, we, if all brains away from differently, we both bring different things to the table. And how do you take both of those benefits and bring them forward into a better outcomes? >>Always great to talk about because in the workforce, people are different. And so differences is a term that we use, like, you know, with kids learn differently, some have evolved differently and men and women have had differences. So the data shows that that's clear. Um, I want to share a quote that my wife shared on Facebook. It says mother, um, well, a worried mother does better research than the FBI. So, um, I bring that up, you know, it's instinctual. So a lot of it's also biological and also environmental talk about the dynamics around that, that wiring, because you're wired by your upbringing too, that affects you. And what's the, what's the data show in the biology. >>So it's interesting because the, the key piece is that it's not just the biological brain differences. It's, it's a whole host of factors that leave a footprint on us, in our behavior. So it's our education, it's our, uh, you know, where we, where we grew up, our culture is part of that. It's also gender stereotypes that play a role in how we operate. And I think all of those things leave a footprint on a, an and lead us to different behaviors. And so you can't just say it's the, the, the information that's on our brains. It's a whole host of factors that influence. So my study of looking at how the brains are a little bit different and what the research is coming, it's, it's blended in with research around leadership and things like confidence and motivation in the workplace bias in the workplace. And they're, they're showing very different things. >>So for instance, if you think about confidence, we did an interesting exercise in the event at women of world. And I asked, you know, there's, there's a lot about confidence and confidence is essentially the will or motivation to act. So how many women in the room, uh, would raise the, you know, go up for a job that they were really interested in and fascinated by, but maybe weren't a hundred percent qualified for, like, how many of you have maybe turned down that job or decided not to apply because it wasn't the right time. Like you, you're pretty competent, but not a hundred percent confident in it. And it was funny because the majority, all the women's hands went up in the room. So then I asked him, I flipped the question in the room and I asked the men in the room. I said, okay, if you were only about 50% confident for a job that you were going up for, would you, of course, right. Like, yes, I >>Fabricate some stuff on their resume and you make >>Them look bigger. So, exactly. So what's interesting is testosterone plays a role in confidence and motivation at work. And it turns out men have 10 times the amount of testosterone as women do. So part of that is that aggression, but we both have it, but that, that aggressive factor, that idea to go after something, to be more confident, um, women are behind the curve in that, from the research that I've seen. So it takes more effort to, to, to be able to have the confidence, to go for it and to sort of break down those barriers that exist for women to, to go after those jobs that they want, even if it's not a hundred percent. And so we did a, an exercise in boosting confidence in testosterone called power posing. And Amy Cuddy out of Harvard does a, a whole Ted talk on it, which is fascinating. >>But the idea is that you, you know, you, you put your chest back, you put your hands on your hips and it helps boost your testosterone up to about 20%. And it reduces cortisol, which is a stress hormone. So it's a, it's a quick way. You don't do it in front of people. You do it sort of on the sly or else you kind of, you don't look very nice to others, but you, you boost your confidence doing that. And it's just a small sort of brain hack that you can do to give yourself an upper hand, knowing that knowing the science behind it. So it's a behavior changing type of research that's coming out, which I think is really, >>That's really interesting, but now it translates into leadership and execution in the workforce. So people are different than men and women are different that changes the dynamic around what good is, because if your point about women not asking for that job or having confidence to the field, like I'm not going to go for it, like a man bravado, whatever testosterone that's what mean that that's the benchmark of what drive means. So this came up with Microsoft CEO at the Anita board conferences, which we had a cube there. And, and this is a big issue. So how do HR, how do the managers, how do people recognize the differences and what does the data show, and, and can you share your thoughts on that? >>Yeah, so I think a lot of it comes down to bias and bias is essentially a shortcut that we use in our brains to take less energy. And it's not a bad thing. It's, it's something we all do. And it's conscious and it's unconscious. So bias, I think is a key piece of that. And the research on bias is fascinating. It's very, it's, it's very popular topic these days, because I think being able to do a couple of things, be aware that there are hundreds of biases and they're both conscious and unconscious, uh, acknowledge that it exists, but not legitimize it not make that. Okay. The third piece is to, to counter it and, and being able to counter bias by making sure that people have opportunities. And even though you may have re removed hypothetical barriers explicitly stating that you want people, men, or women to apply for promotions, be this type of leader, not just assume that because there are no barriers that it's okay, but really be explicit in how you give people opportunities and let them know that they're out there. I think that's really key. >>Yeah. That brings up the point around work life balance, because, you know, I have a family of four, four kids it's stressful just in and of itself to have four kids, but then I go to the workforce and the same with women too. So there's also a home dynamic with leadership and biases and roles. Um, what's your take on any data on the how of that shifting persona realities, if you will, um, shapes the data. >>It's interesting because it's, it's something that we even talked about in the session that it's a struggle and, and, um, Bev career from Intel was talking about that. There's a period of time that actually is really tough to keep women in the workforce. And it's that time where you're growing your family, you're growing your career. And oftentimes things sort of struggle. And I, I read something recently around women in STEM careers, over a 10-year period, 42% of women drop out of the workforce in comparison to 17% of men. And so I think there's a lot, a ways to go in terms of being able to set up environments where working life is integrated, because it's, it's not even balanced anymore. It's integration. And how do you set up structures so that people can do that through how they work through how they connect with others. And, and to me, that's a big piece is how do you keep people in the workforce and still contributing in that critical point in time? And, you know, Intel hasn't figured it out. It's a tough challenge, >>Stamina. We're a big fans of women in tech, obviously because we love tech athletes. We'd love to promote people who are rock stars and technology, whether it's developers to leaders. And I also have a daughter, two daughters. And so two questions. One is women in tech, anything you could share that the data can talk to, to either inspire or give some insight and to, for the young women out there that might not have that cultural baggage, that my generation, at least our worse than older than me have from the previous bias. So motivating young daughters out there, and then how you deal with the career advice for existing women. >>So the motivating young women to get into tech, um, Bev shared a really absolutely fascinating statistic that between the ages of 12 and 18, it's incredibly important to have a male support model for young girls to get into STEM careers, that it was absolutely critical for their success. And it's funny because the question came up like, why can't that be a woman too? And what's interesting. And what we find is oftentimes we give men the short shrift when they try and support women, and we don't want to do that. We want to support men supporting women because when that happens, we all win. Um, and so I think that's a big piece of it is starting young and starting with male support as well as female support. So many women who, who cite men as, as he had mental was in that gray, you know, or in their daily life. And it's pretty important that they can feel that they can do that. >>And this goes back down the wiring data that you have the data on how we're were wired. It's okay, guys, to understand that it's not an apples to apples. So to speak, men are from Mars. Women are from beans, whatever that phrase is, but that's really what the data is. >>And being explicit to men to say, we want you to support women instead of having men take a back seat feeling like maybe this isn't my battle to fight. It's, it's really important to then encourage men to speak up to in those, those situations to, to think about sort of women in tech. One of, uh, a really interesting piece of research that I've seen is about team intelligence and what happens on teams and Anita Willy from Carnegie Mellon produced this really fascinating piece of research on the three things that a team needs to be more intelligent. It's not just getting the smartest people in the room with the highest IQ. That's a part of it. You want table stakes, you want to start with smart people, but she found that having women, more women on a team actually improved the team's overall intelligence, the collective intelligence and success of a team. So more women was the first one. The second was there's this ability and women tend to be better at it, but the ability to read someone's thoughts and emotions just by looking at their eyes. So it's called breeding in the mind's eye. So just taking a look and being able to sense behavior, um, and, and what someone's thinking and feeling, and then being able to adjust to that and pivot on that, not just focusing on the task at hand, but the cohesion of a team with that skill made a difference. >>It's like if it's a total team sport, now that's what you're saying in terms of how use sport analogy, but women now you see women's sports is booming. This brings up my, my, your, uh, awesome research that you just did for the folks out there. Stella was leading this information generation study and the diversity of use cases now with tech, which is why we love tech so much. It's not just the geeky programmer, traditional nail role. You mentioned team, you've got UX design. You have, um, real time agile. So you have more of a, whether it's a rowing analogy or whatever sport or music, collaboration, collaboration is key. And there's so many new disciplines. I mean, I'll share data that I have on the cube looking at all the six years and then even women and men, the pattern that's coming up is women love the visualization. It's weird. I don't know if that's just so it's in the data, but like data scientists that render into reporting and visualization, not like just making slides like in the data. Yeah. So, but they're not writing, maybe not Python code. So what do you guys see similar patterns in terms of, uh, information generation, it's sexy to have an iWatch. It's >>Cool. So like a cry from Intel on the panel, she gave a great statistic that actually, uh, it's more it's women that are more likely to make a decision on consumer tech than men. And yet a lot of the focus is about trying to build tech for men, uh, on the, you know, if consumer tech companies want to get this right, they need to start thinking about what are women looking for, uh, because, uh, they're the ones that are out there making these decisions, the majority of those decisions. >>Yeah. I mean, it's an old thing back in the day when I was in co, um, right out of college and doing my first startup was the wife test. Yeah. Everything goes by the wife because you want to have collaborative decision-making and that's kind of been seen as a negative bias or reinforcement bias, but I think what guys mean is like, they want to get their partner involved. Yeah. So how do, how do we change the biases? And you know, where I've talked to a guy who said, the word geek is reinforcing a bias or nerd where like, I use that term all the time, um, with science, is there, I mean, we had the, the lawsuit with Kleiner Perkins around the gender discrimination. She wasn't included. I mean, what's your take on all of this? I mean, how does someone practically take the data and put it into practice? >>I think the big thing is, you know, like I said, acknowledging that it exists, right? It's out there. We've been, I feel like our brains haven't necessarily adapted to the modern workplace and the challenges that we've dealt with because the modern workplace is something that was invented in the 1960s and our brains have evolved over a long time. So being able to handle some of the challenges that we have, especially on how men and women operate differently at the workplace, I think is key, but calling it out and making it okay to acknowledge it, but then counter where it needs to be countered where it's not right. And being explicit and having the conversations I think is the big piece. And that's what struck me with the Kleiner Perkins deal was let's have the conversation it's out there. A lot of times people are reticent to, to have the conversation because it's awkward and I need to be PC. And I'm worried about things. It's the elephant in the room, right. But it actually is. Dialogue is far better than leaving it. >>People are afraid. I mean, guys are afraid. Women are afraid. So it's a negative cycle. If it's not an out in the open, that's what I'm saying. >>And the idea is it's, what can we do collectively better to, to be more positive, to, to frame it more positively, because I think that makes a bigger difference in terms, in terms of talking about, Oh, we're different. How are we the same? How can we work together? What is the, the connection point that you bring, you bring, we all bring different skills and talents to the table. I think it's really taking a look at that and talking about it and calling it out and say, I'm not great at this. You're great at this. Let's, let's work together on what we can do, uh, more effectively, >>Okay. Team sports is great. And the diversity of workforce and tech is an issue. That's awesome. So I'd ask you to kind of a different question for both of you guys. What's the biggest surprise in the data and it could be what reinforced the belief or insight into something new share, uh, a surprise. Um, it could be pleasant or creepy or share it. >>Price to me is intuition. So we always talk about women having intuitions. I've had men say, you know, well, my wife is so intuitive. She kind of, she kinda gets that and I've had that in the workplace as well. And I think the biggest surprise for me was that we can now see, we've now proved the intuition. Intuition is a thing that women have, and it's about this kind of web thinking and connecting the dots. Yeah. So we sort of store these memories deep, deep inside. And then when we see something similar, we then make that connection. We call it intuition, but it's actually something it's a kind of a, you know, super recall if you like, and, and, and replaying that situation. But that I think was the biggest surprise to me, Amy. So I would think that the thing that, that always astonishes me is the workplace environment and how we set up environments sometimes to shoot ourselves in the foot. >>So, so often we'll set up, uh, a competitive environment, whatever it is, let's let's and it's internal competition. Well, it turns out that the way that the brain chemicals work in women is that competition actually froze us into, to stress or threat cycle much more easily than it does to men, but men need it to be able to get to optimal arousal. There's a lot of interesting research from Amy Ernest in, at Yale and, and that piece of how you can manipulate your environment to be more successful together to me is absolutely key. And being able to pull out elements of competition, but also elements of collaboration, you kind of knew it, but the science validates it and you go, this is why we need to make sure there's a balance between the two. So everyone's successful. So to me, that's the aha. I could listen to Amy all day and how we apply it to the workplace. That's the next big step. Yeah. >>Yeah. You guys are awesome. And thanks so much for sharing and I wish we could go long. We're getting the hook here on time, but is there any links and locations websites we can, people can go to to get more information on the studies, the science. So I, a lot of my day curating >>And looking for more research. So peak teams.com/blog is where I do a lot of my writing and suggestions. Um, it's peak teams, P E K T E M s.com. And so I run our blog and kind of put my musings every once in a while up there so that people can see what I'm working on. Um, but they can reach out at any time. And I'm on Twitter at, at peak teams geek. Speaking of geeks, I embraced the geek mentality, right? >>Well, we have, I think geeks comment personally, but, um, final point, I'll give you the last word, Amy, if you could have a magic wand to take the science and change the preferred vision of the future with respect to men and women, you know, working cohesively together, understanding that we're different decoupled in science. Now, what would you want to see for the environment work force, life balance? What would be the magic wand that you would change? >>I think being able to make women more confident by helping reduce bias with everybody. So being more keyed in to those biases that we have in those automatic things we do to shortcut and to be more aware of them and work on them together and not see them as bad, but see them as human. So I think that's my big takeaway is remove, remove more bias. >>Fantastic. Stella Lowe, and Amy Posey here inside the cube. Thanks so much. Congratulations on your great work. Great panel. We'll continue. Of course, we have a special channel on SiliconANGLE's dot TV for women in tech. Go to SiliconANGLE dot DV. We've got a lot of cube alumni. We had another one here today with Amy. Thank you for joining us. This is the cube. We'll be right back day three, bringing it to a close here inside the cube live in Las Vegas. I'm John Forney. We'll be right back after this short break.