What My Wall Street Mom Taught Me About Leadership

The best leadership advice I ever received came from watching my mom, Eileen, one of the first women options traders on Wall Street. She walked onto a trading floor where every face around her was male, where no one made room for her, and where the assumption was that she did not belong.

She showed up anyway. And she excelled.

One of my favorite stories is that she took screaming lessons so the men on the trading floor could hear her. Who takes screaming lessons? My mom did. She learned to be louder in a room that was not built for her, and she excelled because of it. I watched that, absorbed it, and brought it with me over 25 years of leadership in corporate America. It still guides how I work today.

My Leadership Lessons:

Believe in yourself. If you do not, no one else will.

Ask for what you want. If you do not ask, the answer will always be no.

Have a plan, but stay open to detours. Some of the best moves I made looked like setbacks at the time and ended up changing my life for the better.

Take nothing personally. From The Four Agreements, one of my favorite books: people may not welcome you with open arms, but show up anyway and do your best.

Do not make assumptions. Also from The Four Agreements: assumptions create problems that did not exist yet.

Feel the fear and do it anyway. If you do not read the book, at least print the cover and put it on your desk. It is not a motivational phrase. It is a survival skill.

Follow your gut and listen to the whispers. They are telling you something. My transition from corporate America to entrepreneurship happened because I bet on myself. I wish I had done it sooner, but it is never too late.

What Women Leaders Across Industries Shared

The insights below come from authors, executives, and leaders I deeply admire in the customer experience field and beyond. This article captures many of their ideas, but not all of them. The full conversations, including the stories, the context, and the moments that are better heard than read, are waiting for you in the episode.

Surround Yourself With People Who Can Do Your Job Better Than You

Early in a leadership career, the instinct is to be the most knowledgeable person in the room. Laurie Guest’s advice is to let go of that entirely. When you hire someone who can genuinely cover for you, you can take a vacation without your phone attached to your hand. You can clock out at five and be fully present at home. You can sleep, think clearly, and come back the next day with enough left to actually take care of your customers and your team.

Claim Your Agency Without Asking for Permission

Agency, as Lisa Oswald defines it, means you do not need permission to be who you are or to move things forward. It is your right to speak, to be heard, to be seen, and to be paid what you are worth. For those who never had a model of that growing up, the starting point is simply deciding that you no longer require approval to take it.

Build Your Employee Experience First, Because Your Customer Experience Depends on It

The best advice Brittany Hodak ever received came from her father, a customer service practitioner who told her: always go out of your way for your team, because you are nothing without them. The logic holds directly in CX. When employees feel cared for and equipped, they become advocates. When they do not, customers feel it in every interaction.

Don’t Mimic Other People. Be Authentic in Your Leadership Style

A senior executive, Michelle Musgrove worked with at AARP, gave advice she has never forgotten: whatever you do, be authentic in your leadership style. You always have a voice. You have thoughts. Do not ever sit in a room and keep them to yourself. Say them with confidence and in a way that feels comfortable to you. Because when you stop performing a version of yourself that was never real to begin with, something shifts. You can actually take the weight off.

Michelle adds something very practical: women can get in their heads about being pigeonholed. If you want to plan the office party because it brings you joy, plan it. Do not get too wound up in stereotypical expectations about what ambition is supposed to look like.

Choose to Be Unique, Not Just Better 

Competing on being better keeps you in a comparison trap. Sylvie Di Giusto’s advice is to make an intentional choice to be unique instead. Do something that has not been done before. That decision applies to individual leaders and to the organizations they build.

Bring Your Passion Every Day and Set the Energy of the Room

In large organizations, it is easy to hear “we tried that” or “that will never happen here.” Katie Webb’s advice is to separate yourself from that noise and stay connected to what you are truly passionate about and bring it every day. She holds herself to a simple standard: she wants people to see her passion, because she wants to work for passionate leaders herself.

The flip side of that is energy. Katie always wants to be the energy in the room that she wishes she could walk into. Whether you are a leader or an individual contributor, energy is contagious, negative or positive. If you walk into a room where everyone is frustrated and closed off, it shapes everything that follows. As a leader, you set that starting point.

Believe You Can Do It Before You Ask Anyone Else to Believe It  

My Mom Eileen’s advice starts with what happens in your own mind before you say a word to anyone else. You have to believe you can do it first. Not perform confidence. Actually have it. Then you go to the people who doubt you, and you say: Give me a chance. I know the work. I know what has to be done. Let me prove it. If I fall short, I will know it and so will you.

She frames the choice as two paths. One path is deciding not to try, which ends the conversation before it starts. The other path has a chance. And if you take that path and succeed, she asks you to sit with what that actually means: look at the world that opens up to you. That is what it is about.

Enable Your People to Bring Their Best, Because That Is What CX Leadership Actually Is

Jeanne Bliss reframes what customer experience leadership actually means. It is not a department. It is not a set of metrics. It is about listening to good humans and enabling people to bring the best version of themselves to work. When that does not happen, you end up with an organization of people ticking boxes and showing up because they have to, versus uniting people around a purpose and elevating their soul and their spirit.

Model the Standard You Expect, Because You Cannot Ask for More Than You Give 

The standard you accept becomes the standard everyone else lives up to. Lisa Ford states the leadership lesson so well: you have to be doing the thing, not just saying it. If you want accountability, model it. If you want honesty, practice it first. The ceiling for your team is set by where you are willing to go yourself.

Lead With the Intention to Make a Positive Impact, Not Just a Profit

Jackie Yeaney is direct about what leadership responsibility actually means. We are not in these roles just to make a profit, not for the organization, and not for ourselves. We are here to make a positive impact on the world and on the people around us. When you concentrate on nurturing the people who look up to you so they can achieve more than they ever thought they could, that leaves a lasting impact on the world.

Change the Question Before You Try to Solve the Problem

The problem is not the problem. The problem is how you are thinking about the problem. Wendy Smith’s framework, built around both/and thinking, starts with one shift: stop asking “should we do this or that?” and start asking “how can we accommodate both?” IBM used this to hold customer retention and innovation at the same time. Unilever used it to pursue both social mission and profit growth. The reframe works because it stops the brain from treating competing priorities as a zero-sum choice.

Choose Every Day to Let the Brave Voice Lead, Not the Negative One

Blake Morgan’s message is simple: every day is a choice. You can choose to bring the energy, to be positive, to embrace hardship and change, and to be more positive than you are negative. The negative voice will show up, and that is okay, but do not let the negative voice lead your decision-making. Let the brave one lead. And if you are wondering what the worst that can happen is, Blake puts it plainly: you will probably feel bad or cry, and that is okay. You are not going to die.

Refrain From Emailing Your Team After Hours, Because They Will Feel Compelled to Respond

Marcey Rader’s advice can’t be said enough: when you are in a position of hierarchy, you are the role model people are looking at. It does not matter how many times you say, “I work long hours, I work at night, I work on weekends, but I don’t expect you to.” If they know that you do, they will feel compelled. Most people will feel compelled. So if you choose to work off-hours, good for you, but refrain from communicating with your team during those times. Refrain from emailing on Saturday evening. Because in a position of hierarchy, people will feel compelled to respond.

Do Work You Genuinely Like With People You Actually Care About

Do what you genuinely like and build your work around people you enjoy and respect. Time spent in rooms that drain you is time you cannot get back. I couldn’t agree more with Jacqueline Brassey.

Disseminate Your Purpose to Every Level, Not Just the Top

Sharon Weinstein’s advice comes in two parts that build on each other. The first is something she gives to others: you have the capacity within you to make this happen. Share that across the board so that everyone believes in the same purpose and understands that we are all here for the same reason. The second is advice she received and passes on every chance she gets: make sure you are all singing from the same sheet music. Do not tell one version of the story and have somebody else tell another version. That same value statement that is up on the walls needs to be disseminated at every level of the organization.

Allow for the Fact That Your Way May Not Be the Best

Miya Gray’s approach to leadership is about sitting back, listening, and allowing for the fact that your way may not be the best. And even if your way is the best, it may not be the way the project or the experience goes, because everyone has a say. Being open to that is critical, especially in CX. That is where culture does its real work: making it safe for people to speak up.

Ask for the Raise, the Promotion, and the Opportunity Without Apologizing for It

Be fearless. Don’t fear rejection. Do not worry about appearing too ambitious. Do not worry about looking imperfect. And do not be afraid to ask for a leg up, for that raise, or for that promotion. Too many women sit on what they want because they are concerned about how the ask will land. Catherine Sugarbroad’s point is that staying silent guarantees nothing changes.

Stop Viewing Your Employees as Cogs in the Wheel and Start Caring for Them as Humans

You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make the horse drink. You cannot make people care, but it makes all the difference in the world if they do. Annette Franz has seen what happens when leaders forget that. Remember to view your people as the humans that they are and care for them. Because a leader who sees their team as a means to a business outcome, rather than as people worth investing in, will never get the discretionary effort, loyalty, or care that exceptional customer experience requires.

Define Your Customer Experience Mission, Because It Makes Every Other Decision Easier

Without a clear customer experience mission, every person on your team is working from a different definition of what good looks like. Jeannie Walters identifies this as the single most important starting point. Not a tagline. Not a vision statement written by committee and filed away. A clear, specific mission that every person in the organization can reference when a decision needs to be made. I have seen what happens when that mission does not exist: teams fill the gap with their own assumptions, priorities compete, and the customer experience becomes inconsistent. Those assumptions rarely match, and customers feel it before leadership does.

Go for It, Because All They Can Do Is Say No

Nicole Donnelly’s most influential mentor was a fierce entrepreneur who built her wellness company to over fifty million dollars in annual revenue. The advice she gave Nicole was simple, and she has never forgotten it: all they can do is say no. So just go for it. Do it. Nicole loved that advice because it reframes the entire risk of asking. The no is not the end. It is just an answer, and the only way to find out is to ask. This is one of my personal favorites, as my Mom has said this to me my entire life!

Don’t Build for Us Without Us

Vannessa LeBoss’s guiding principle applies far beyond her industry: don’t build for us without us. Do not design something you think is going to resonate with a community without that community leading the design. Her company is truly deaf-led, which means nothing is built or designed for the deaf community except through the deaf community. Vannessa is one of the only hearing people on her team, which makes her the minority in those conversations. So in the meetings where the community’s experience is being shaped, she does not have a lot of input because it is not her lived experience. Her leadership style in those situations is to take a step back. Recognizing where your experience ends and someone else’s begins is not a weakness. It is how you build something that actually works for the people it is meant to serve.

Train Yourself to See What Is Good, Not Just What Needs Fixing

Monica Amadio’s colleague Deepa, a lead trainer for an international company with more than 160,000 employees, drew a single small dot in the center of a large blank page and held it up to the room. She asked: What do you see? Everyone said the dot. No one mentioned the rest of the page surrounding it. That was her point. When leaders face a problem, they fix their attention on the issue and lose sight of everything that is functioning well around it. Deepa used a wall-sized Post-it note to make this visual, so the contrast was impossible to ignore: one tiny dot, surrounded by an enormous amount of white space. Monica took that image into her leadership practice. The advice is simple: focus on the good. The problem is still there, but it takes its actual size when you stop letting it fill the entire picture.

Leave Silence in the Conversation and Watch What Happens Next

Most leaders fill every pause in a conversation because silence feels uncomfortable. Kate Bradley’s advice is to do the opposite. Leave silence in the conversation. Stop talking and let the quiet sit there. When you do, people lean forward. They fill the space with what they were actually thinking. It is, as Kate puts it, a very sneaky, powerful tool. Try it.

Pay Attention to Your Side Pursuits, Because They Are Telling You Something Worth Hearing

Joanne Lipman makes the case that the phrase “side hustle” is almost a misnomer. It trivializes something that is genuinely a passion, something that matters enough to you that you keep returning to it. Do not give up on it. Think about where it might take you in the future.

I would add this for anyone who says they do not know what their passion is: ask yourself what people consistently come to you for. The answer to that question is usually where your passion lives.

Lead With Your Heart and Coach People in the Moment, Not Weeks Later

Tia Graham was fortunate to go through a leadership program when she was 26 years old, in her first leadership position. Two pieces of advice from that week-long program have stayed with her for over fifteen years. The first: lead with your heart. The second: coach people in the moment. If you see someone doing something that needs to be corrected, do not wait for a meeting. Do not make it a big deal. The process she was taught is simple: address it, keep it from being demotivating, and move on quickly. Both pieces of advice served her very well throughout fifteen years of leading teams.

Never Compromise the Truth of What Really Matters to You

Never compromise the truth of what really matters to you. People do it because they want to be accepted, they want to be seen, they want to be validated, they want to be heard. But when you keep giving up those parts of yourself, you shrink. You withhold. And then everyone feels it, even if no one says it out loud. Thanks for this gem, Cynthia James.

Give Direct Feedback With Compassion, Because Clarity Is Kindness

Early in her career, Jennifer Lee thought she was being kind by not addressing a performance issue with an employee. A mentor corrected her way of thinking: You can be kind and still be clear. In fact, people need to understand specifically what they need to change and why, rather than to sit back and let them believe they are meeting the standard when they are not. That is your job as a leader. Jennifer calls the approach compassionate candor. You underpin the feedback with empathy, kindness, and a true desire to see the other person succeed. Then you give the direct feedback. As she puts it, you can be direct and compassionate at the same time. Both and, not either or.

When the News Is Hard, Say It Anyway

Similar to Jennifer Lee, Leslie O’ Flahavan’s emphasizes that every leader needs to be a person who can say difficult things out loud and put difficult decisions in writing, with candor, courage, and kindness. Here is what that looks like in practice. You have a staff of a hundred people, and starting after Labor Day, they need to be in the office four days a week. They are furious. They do not want to do it. Candor means telling them clearly why it needs to happen. Courage means believing that being honest about the decision will lead somewhere better. Kindness means bringing empathy to how you deliver it. Think of the friend in your life who always knows what to say when someone dies. They never say, “I didn’t speak to you because I didn’t know what to say.” They find the courage, and they say the words that need to be said. That is what leadership asks of you, because the line between workplace communication and human communication is completely tangled, and the leaders who navigate both are the ones people trust.

Give Your Team a Reason to Care That Goes Beyond the Job Description

Focus on the why. In order to really connect with your team members, getting them to feel that deeper sense of purpose is so important. Being able to connect their role to the deeper impact they are making on customers and on the world changes everything. It does not have to be something dramatic. But when an employee can see that they are not just filling out a form, that their work is actually changing someone’s life, that is a pretty different way to show up every day. Great wisdom by Lauren Herring.

Listen Before You Speak, Because Your Customers Are Already Telling You What They Need, Especially On Social Media

Listening is so incredibly important, and many times it is better to listen before you speak. Madalyn Sklar reminds us that too many brands just get out there and talk, talk, talk on social media. But are they really listening to their customers and addressing the issues being brought to them? And it is not always about the negativity. When a customer takes the time to tweet something nice and share it with their community, make them feel really appreciated. It is not just good manners. It is how you build the kind of relationship that keeps people coming back.

Fix Problems Before They Become Emergencies

Whether you fix a problem now or fix it later, you will spend the time. Address it early, and you can involve the right people, test your solution, and communicate the change on your own schedule. Wait until it becomes damage control and you are on a hamster wheel, trying to push through a brick wall, reacting under pressure with everyone watching. The problem does not get smaller by waiting. It just arrives with fewer options and more stress attached to it. Well said, Vicki Brackett.

Stop Treating Employee and Customer Experience as Competing Priorities, Because They Are Not

High-performing organizations do not choose between employee experience and customer experience. They treat them as connected. A decision that benefits customers at the expense of employees creates a gap that closes itself, usually through attrition or inconsistent service. Tiffani Bova’s practical test for any CX leadership meeting: ask who is responsible for keeping the customer experience promise, then ask whether those people have what they need to deliver it. That question surfaces the real conversation.

My Final Leadership Thoughts Within The Customer Experience Industry and Beyond:

Every piece of advice came from a woman leader who learned it through experience, not theory. Some of it came from a parent. Some from a mentor who cared enough to be direct. Some from a mistake that cost something real. And across all of it, the pattern is the same: leadership that produces exceptional customer experience starts with how you treat people, beginning with yourself.

Not one of the 200 women I asked named a framework, a technology, or a budget. They named people. How you see them, how you speak to them, how you show up for them, and how you create the conditions where they can do their best work. That is what Doing CX Right℠ is built on. And it is what separates the organizations that genuinely deliver exceptional customer experience from the ones that only talk about it.

This article covers the highlights, but the full conversations are richer and more personal. Listen to the complete episode of the Doing CX Right℠ podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If it resonates with you, please subscribe and leave a review. It helps more leaders find my content.