Speakers at the Women Transforming Technology event in Palo Alto, CA, examined top-of-mind issues for women in tech, including the gender gap in technology leaders.

During the event, Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) (pictured, left) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick) (pictured, right), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, discussed what defines a leader and how colleges and companies might better develop young women and men into strong leaders.

Knight noted that Kara Swisher’s — co-executive editor and co-founder at Recode — keynote included points on the power of graciousness in a leader. Frick replied that by the same token, Swisher acknowledged that many great entrepreneurs are individualists who don’t readily warm to compromise.

“They don’t collaborate, and they don’t kind of toe the line. And they do break glass and break barriers, because they think differently,” Frick said. “It’s an interesting kind of juxtaposition of maintaining individuality, yet you also have to operate in the world in which we live.”

The new leadership drill

Frick said it surprised him that schools and businesses did not draw more from the military in training leaders. “They teach young kids that are 18 years old, 19 years old to turn into 23-year-old leaders that are sending people to their deaths for the cause of the greater good,” he said.

Knight, who lives in academic mecca Boston, said that she sees educators “trying to take other disciplines and finding the best bits and what they can apply in terms of how you run your business.” These diverse disciplines might include philosophy, art or design thinking, she said.

Speaking of which, Knight said, “I loved listening to Nicola Acutt [vice president of sustainability strategy, office of the chief technology officer at VMware Inc.] talk about how she uses design thinking to devise a sustainability strategy at VMware.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Women Transforming Technology 2017 event. (*Disclosure: TheCUBE is a media partner at the conference. Neither VMware Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE