 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 fifth annual Women Transforming Technology, WT2, from my home in San Jose, California, because this is the first year that WT2 has gone digital. Very excited to welcome next one of the speakers on the executive track. We have Charmaine McClary, president of McClary Group, but also author, C-suite advisor keynote speaker, Charmaine, so nice to chat with you. An absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. So you have an incredible background. You have been for two decades working with leaders in, I read, 27 industries, five continents, and from some pretty big well-known brands, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, my particular favorite Starbucks. Tell me a little bit about your background in your career and how you came to be working with potential leaders. Early on in my career, I was working in politics, actually helping politicians understand their constituency and then how to communicate effectively with them. And then went on into marketing. And really what I say is that what I do is a conglomeration of all of my life experience, working with leaders, either in politics, in marketing, in sales, in a variety of industries, including gas and oil. And coming together and helping them understand how to communicate their message effectively, how to have executive presence, and ensuring that they are seen, heard, and remembered. That's one of the things, sorry Charmaine, one of the things that, talking about being remembered, especially now during a crisis that nobody has ever experienced before when there are so much, so much concern and so much uncertainty. I read that you said effective communication is more than just words and phrases, especially in today's climate, what is effective communication? Effective communication is making sure that people hear your value, your value proposition, and that is really essential. Today, one of the things you want to do is that you want to elevate your visibility and you want to elevate the value that you bring to your organization. There are a number of competing priorities and what you want your organization to understand is what is it that you see that others don't see and that is a part of your value proposition? How are you going to help your organization innovate through this time? And wanting to do that is really speaking about what is of value? What is it that is going to make the difference for the organization today with this crisis and that will also take it further into the future? So tell me a little bit about this session that you did at Women Transforming Technology the other day, 35 minute interactive session since everything for this year's event was digital. I love the name of your session. Speak up, stand out, be heard. Talk to me a little bit about when you first learned maybe last month that this event was going digital, did you change anything? Were there certain elements of your expertise and your recommendations that are now more, even more important with respect to visibility and value? Yes, so what I changed in was I really wanted to make it as conversational as possible because in this isolation, it's easy to not feel seen or heard. And I wanted people to be able to elevate again their visibility and their ability to add value. So a couple of things that people can do is they can actually rewrite their narrative if they need to. Meaning, I believe that if you do not define yourself, others will and their definition will inevitably be inadequate. So if you know that you are seen as a very quiet person and a person that is in the background and you want to have greater visibility, this is a great opportunity for you to rewrite that narrative and make yourself more visible. Meaning, the expertise that you have or again, the insight that you have, making sure that you bring that to the table. You can do it in a number of formats. You can do it not only on a Zoom call with your colleagues, but you can also, your email is heightened if you're using language, I said the language of leadership, language that really perks people's ear and that creates a visual. So now what you want to do is really make sure that you're using language that is very vivid and allows a person to touch, taste and feel what it is that you're saying. So that's one of the things that you can do. The other is that I say is that I want to make sure that my clients are not well kept secrets. I want to make sure that in this time of isolation that they're finding opportunities to reach out. So most everyone is at home, sheltering in place. So people have more time on their hand in terms of reading your emails. One of the research has found that there is a 26% increase in say your newsletters being read, your emails being read. So now is the time that you could actually heighten that kind of communication. That's fascinating. I love that you said about making what you're communicating in an email, maybe it's even text or over something like Slack, vivid. Say somebody has a great idea and I think, all right, so terms have changed, my job function is different or it's challenging to complete certain tasks. Give me some words that you think, since now you're saying people are actually focusing more on reading what you're saying. What are some vivid words that I could use if I had say an interesting finance project or a marketing project that I wanted to raise the visibility of and get someone to really kind of feel what I'm looking at. So when you speak about a finance project, one of the things that you want to do is think about what is a story that can articulate those numbers, that can tell the story with those numbers. So if you were saying, let's just make it as simple as possible, two plus two equals four. Well, what you want to think about is, what is it that is going to be different when you finish this project or what is it that's going to be, that's going to shift in the marketplace? And so you want to create that visual of what does the future look like and using examples of things that are very basic to our life today as opposed to using really complicated language. Now is the time to have your language simple, have it very clear and have it very vivid. So- I'm glad that you brought up, go ahead, sorry. No, please, go right ahead. I'm glad that you brought up simplicity because so often I think people think maybe I'm managing a project or I'm creating a methodology. And I think it's really, it's just, it's simple. But we often second guess ourselves because I think, and I've included in this, a lot of folks think it can't be that simple. It's got to be more complex. I need to show, you know, like an episode of I'm picturing an episode of the Big Bang Theory and Sheldon's talking about string theory. You need to make it complex to show your value. And sometimes it's the simplest methodology the simplest way of communicating that is the most effective. Do you find them that sometimes folks, regardless of their level of executive-ness are challenged to really step back and look at the simple way to communicate or the simple answer? Absolutely, and simplicity is best, whether it's during this time period or even beyond this pandemic, but particularly now. So I don't know if anybody's ever seen the show, the marvellousness is, I think it's made out. Yes, it's made out. And one of the things that she asked her husband, she goes, well, honey, what do you do? And I think in the first episode, and he says, you know, I sign papers, I do this, I do that. And he says, I really don't know what the hell I do. And I remember an incident with one of my clients and I asked her, what does she do? And she gave me her job title. And I said, okay, how many people work at your company? And she said, 49,000 people work here. I said, how many people do you think have the same title as you? And she goes, well, you know, I'm sure at least a couple of thousand. I said, yes. So what distinguishes you? And so she wanted to talk about the title, which is like talking about acronyms at a company. And I said, so really what do you do? And what we realized is that what she does is that she was responsible for the fastest growing market segment in her company. That articulates her value proposition that made a very vivid and brought it to life. So people were able to understand when someone asked me, what do I do? I don't say that I'm an executive coach because you may have read an article last week that says all executive coaches suck. That defines me. I want to define myself. My value is I help smart people get promoted. When I get promoted, they communicate the big picture. So I help smart people get promoted and communicate the big picture. I provide executive coaching to senior level executives. I articulated my value. You know who I work with? They're smart people. They're not smart. They're not working with me. When they work with me, they get promoted. Why? Because they communicate the big picture. Really simple, one sentence. So what is the value? That is what really heightens your visibility and heightens your and levels, level up your ability to be seen and heard in your organization. And you, I was looking at your website. You have a 98% success rate of folks that have worked with you that had been promoted within the following 18 months. What are some of the both hard and soft skills that you were looking for when you select clients to work with that demonstrate they are ready to be in the C-suite? Well, there are a couple of things. One is the person has to be open and willing and not being volunteered by the organization, meaning saying you have to do this. If it is mandatory that someone work with an executive coach, that's not a winning proposition. The winning proposition is the person is open and open to change and ready to make change. As I say to my clients, if you want everything to remain the same, I am not the coach for you because you're going to see change and you're going to see significant change. So that's one. The other is preparing your organization for the kind of change that's going to take place so that your organization begins to see and hear what you're doing different. So for example, I would say to a client, if you're prepared to really step up and make the commitment to making this shift, you want to let people know what kind of shift that you're making so that they can begin to look forward. People like to look for success. They like to be able to reward you when you're successful, but you've got to let them know that you're there for that shift. So that's one of the things that's really important is that people be open to it and that they be ready to take their spotlight. If you want to do it and remain behind the curtain, that's wonderful. This is not the work for you. It requires a little bit of vulnerability then or maybe a lot of vulnerability to be able to do that. That's not easy unless you're a Brené Brown fan like I am. Talk to me about, especially in this time with COVID-19, the uncertainty in every aspect of our lives, every single aspect is it's dense and it's an emotional challenge. So do you find that it's harder for some folks, whether they're men or women, to do what your title says, speak up, let them know. I'm coming, I'm on my way. How are you advising folks from a psychological perspective to be able to do this? Well, I think that there are a couple of things. One is that with the three questions I ask every client and those three questions are, one, how do you see yourself? How do other people see you? And the third is how do you want to be seen? So when you're able to become introspective and answer those questions from the heart, from your heart, then you can get really clear about what you want the world to know about you and how you want to show up and what does require vulnerability. It requires you to look inward first for you to make that decision on how you want the world to see you. And then once you're able to make that, get that clarity and instead of this process, getting that clarity, then you can speak about that to the world. My thing is, again, if you don't define yourself others well and their definition is inadequate. So when you define yourself, and you know who you are and what you stand for, you can then shout that at the top of your lungs, but you don't really have to because your actions will speak very clearly about what it is and who you say you are and how you want the world to see you. And you're always asking yourself, am I congruent? I love that about defining yourself so that others don't do it incorrectly. Talk to me about how somebody can develop their own communication style. What are some of the steps that they need to recognize? For example, if you see someone and you think they're too bold or they're too brash or maybe dial it back a bit, especially because messages are getting read more now, what's that process internally that I would need to take to develop an effective communication style? What is it that you need to do to develop that effective communication style? One, as I said, being able to define what that looks like for you and what that is may not be appropriate for every organization and every corporate culture. So you need to make sure, either evaluate whether or not you're in the right corporate culture so that you can be successful and or find a new one so that you can be successful. Once you have that, really helping the people in your organization to make it easy for them to come to you. So by extending yourself first, that is one of the things that I would say would be really important in terms of stepping up during this timeframe is saying, I feel really, this is really, let's say someone has been felt really shaken by this. I feel really shaken by this, but I am determined to leverage this as an opportunity to really show up as my best self and show my greatest humanity. And I think that when we let people know where we're going and where we're headed, it's far more easy for people to support you and to provide you with the venues in which to exhibit who you are. This is a great time for you to volunteer as much as possible to have that visibility because I think one of the questions you'd asked me earlier is, how do you become comfortable with this? You get comfortable with it by practicing. Lady Gaga says we're born that way, but we aren't. The only way that it happens with people that are really successful is because they practice. Something that is so interesting is during this time in particular is getting, is accountability, right? It's so easy right now, more than ever to lose accountability. And I like that you said, and that's what I'm hearing when you say, let people know the direction that you're going in. I think for the person, you set that, okay, I publicly said this. I need to hold myself accountable so that I deliver. I think there's a lot of power in that. There is. And when you step up and articulate to the world who you're about, what it is that you're going to deliver, your level of excellence, you hold yourself accountable because the person who is most important for you to be accountable to is yourself. Others come second actually, sort of like being on the airplane in the mask. You've got to do it for you first because if you let yourself down, that is the most horrific. And so stepping up to that is so much, there's so much power. And I believe that people provide you with a lot of grace when you do that and people know they can count on you. And that's so important. Knowing, demonstrating your dependability in any situation. Shermaine, I wish we had more time. It's been such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for sharing your insight. I am going to be visible, show value and be vivid in communication and accountable. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. You as well. And for Shermaine McClary, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of the digital version of Women Transforming Technology 2020. Bye for now.