Nobody handed me a leadership framework growing up.

No textbook. No formal training. No TED Talk queued up on a Saturday morning.

What I had was my mother as I transitioned into an adult.

And looking back, she was teaching me how to lead long before either of us had a name for what she was doing.

These are the lessons. Some I received gracefully. Most I received with a deep sigh and an eye roll I prayed she didn’t catch. All of them are still influencing me and guiding how I lead and make decisions.

1. Focus on Yourself First

I used to be more focused on developing the people around me because I wanted them to succeed. What I didn’t realize was that I had made people my project.

And people, even people who love you, will eventually resent being someone’s project.

I meant well. But meaning well is not the same as leading well.

Effectively impacting and leading others long-term starts with leading yourself first. 

Leaders who skip this step eventually hit a wall that no skill and no title can get them over. 

You cannot sustainably pour from a place you haven’t tended to. 

2. Be Resourceful. Start With How.

My mother’s version of this is simple: “everything is figureoutable” (is that even a real word?).

Her instinct was always to find a way forward. Which is why one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone brings an idea to the table and immediately someone else lists all the reasons it won’t work.

You’ve heard of Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. I want to offer something in addition: Start With How. Or at least, start with why followed by how.

The inner pattern that gets in the way is almost always fear. However, a leader who has done the inner work chooses curiosity over fear and self-preservation. That one shift changes the entire energy of a room, team and company.

3. Be the Best That People Don’t Want to Lose You

In your job. As a friend. As a daughter or son. As a significant other. As a leader. Be the best.

It doesn’t mean people will always cherish you for it. But it means you will always know you gave everything you had and have no regret that you could’ve done more.

This is an inner life commitment. The standard you hold yourself to privately has nothing to do with recognition or a performance review.

4. Articulate and Annunciate

I cannot count the number of times my mother said this before an important event.

“Honey, you’re so smart. What you have to say is important and people need to hear every word. They can only hear it when you slow down and articulate.”

I rolled my eyes every single time. Yet, she was right every single time.

You make a far greater impact when people can follow your words clearly. But articulation requires something deeper: trusting that what you have to say is worth saying. And that it’s worth people receiving it.

My mother was not just teaching me elocution. She was teaching me to believe in my own voice. 

And you need to not just speak, but you need to believe in your own voice and believe that what you have to say is worth saying and that it’s worth people receiving your message.

5. Work Hard

This is one lesson my mother never sat me down to teach. She never had to. I learned it by watching her.

She showed up for work, for the people she loved and for her communities with a consistency that has been impossible to miss.

Some of the most powerful leadership lessons happen when people are watching what you do. Not what you say, but what you do.

6. Let People Learn From Their Own Experience

Years ago I was in an abusive intimate relationship. It was hard for my mother to watch. And though every instinct she had was screaming at her to rescue me, she allowed me to go through it.

She understood something most well-meaning leaders forget: sometimes people need to learn from experience for the lesson to stick.

Don’t try to always rescue the people around you from the weight of their own decisions. This includes your team, your clients, your children, your friends and yes, even your partner.

Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is trust their resilience enough to let them walk through it and simply be there when they need someone to lean on.

7. Practice Your Unbiased Muscle

My mother is almost sometimes aggressively unbiased. And I mean that with full love and visible admiration.

Whenever I find myself in friction with someone, especially my partner, and I feel completely justified, she listens to my entire case and then gently takes the other person’s side. In their absence.

“Whose side are you even on?” I have asked so many times.

She has taught me that to resolve conflict well, you must look at how the situation is landing for the other person even when it makes no sense to you. I’m not going to lie, I hate it sometimes. 

However, I’ve learned that the goal is not for you to win. The goal is for the relationship or partnership to win. The goal is for a common goal to be accomplished over the individual desire.

The leader who can set their ego down long enough to ask what this situation actually needs is the leader people trust with the hard things.

8. Show Up. Especially for the Funeral.

People remember how you show up in the hard moments far more than the easy ones.

Show up for the funeral. Show up when someone loses their job, when they are sick, when they are falling apart. Not necessarily with answers. With presence.

The leaders who built the deepest loyalty with their people are the ones who showed up when things were hard.

9. Never Say "I Told You So"

When I finally left the abusive relationship I referenced earlier, I was bracing myself. I had gone back after she advised me against it, sharing that it was not a healthy choice. 

She had been right. 

I was fully expecting the “I told you so” the moment I reached out to her.

She never said it.

Instead, she showed up, embraced me, and walked me through that journey without a single word of told-you-so attached. Years later, she still has never said, “I Told You so.”

The restraint it takes to love or care for someone through a consequence instead of highlighting the error is one of the most underrated characteristics of a leader I have ever witnessed.

It is far easier to be right than to be useful. My mother always chose to be useful.

10. Stop Fixing What Isn’t Yours to Fix

I used to be the person who had to make peace with everyone, even the ones who wronged me. So I would reach out, smooth things over, absorb tension that was never mine to carry.

My mother watched this for years before she said it plainly as she prepared me a meal:

“Honey, you’re feeding into the drama. You don’t need to fix it. Just let it go.”

Underneath that was a deeper lesson: trust yourself. Trust that you are strong enough to survive whatever comes. Trust that you don’t have to fix everything and that it’s okay for things to not work out sometimes. 

It’s okay for relationships, friendships and partnerships to not work out sometimes.

You can learn. You can heal. You can keep going and come out on the other side more grounded in who you are as a leader.

That, I think, is one of the most profound things a leader or parent/guardian can do for someone: see what they are capable of becoming before they can see it themselves.

What She Was Really Teaching Me

My mother never called herself a leadership coach. No whiteboard. No framework. No reading list. She just lived it. And though I unintentionally witnessed many of these lessons, they remain an active influence in my life. 

Every lesson above is one I carry with me. Because underneath all of it, she was teaching me the same thing I now commit to teaching others:

The way you lead others is often a direct reflection of the way you lead yourself first.

That is what Healed Leadership is. And my mother was its very first teacher.

What is one lesson someone in your life taught you about leadership whether directly or indirectly? Share it in the comments. I would love to read it.

Ready to go deeper into the inner work that shapes how you lead and make decisions? Start with the Self-Trust Reset™ Guide at mamancooper.com/reset.

By Maman Cooper | Leadership Development Speaker & Facilitator