As a college graduate and a senior-level executive at Ralph Lauren, Sharonda Weatherspoon quickly realized in her adulthood that she didn’t learn how to be a good leader by going to school or moving up the corporate ladder.

“Every single thing that I learned about leadership, I learned at my grandmother’s table,” she said.

Weatherspoon — the head of retail operations, client development and transformation, North America retail, at Ralph Lauren — gave a keynote at the Women in Retail On the Road event in July, sharing the leadership lessons she learned from her grandmother to attendees in Dallas.

Weatherspoon called her grandmother a “make-it-happen woman”.

“If you wanted something to happen, then you went to Ms. Maxine because you knew that she was going to make it happen,” Weatherspoon said.

Below are five leadership lessons Weatherspoon learned from her grandmother that she still uses today:

1. To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required

Weatherspoon learned this leadership lesson watching her grandmother start a Meals on Wheels chapter in her community. In helping her grandmother deliver these meals, Weatherspoon discovered compassion from the folks who often hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone else all day.

“My grandmother never made it about being transactional,” she said. “She always came in, she always sat down with them. She talked, she listened.”

2. Nothing is Given; Everything is Earned

Weatherspoon played a lot of board games growing up, and her grandfather always let her win a few games of checkers. But her grandmother was ruthless, never letting Weatherspoon win.

“You want it, you better work hard for it,” her grandmother always told her.

3. You Teach People How to Treat You

As a young girl, after telling her grandmother she’d been scolded by a church usher for not having money during the collection, Weatherspoon’s grandmother’s confronted the usher, telling her she needed to be respectful of her granddaughter.

“That in itself showed me, you teach people how to treat you, and you never allow disrespect to go on for a very long time,” Weatherspoon said.

4. You Run Your Mouth While I Run My Business

As the president of her community’s Parent Teacher Organization (PTO), she advocated for getting school bus transportation after noticing there were students who lived more than two miles away from the school and still had to walk to school, and most people in the neighborhood didn’t have a car.

“She was going back and forth with the school district — they could never find the money. So what does my grandmother do? She goes down to the mayor’s office and she starts to plead her case,” Weatherspoon said.

One month later, the school district had a bussing system. Her grandmother would say, “You’re going to run your mouth, I’m going to run my business, but when people are telling me no, you better believe I’m going to figure out how to get this done.”

5. Don’t Let Your Good Looks Take You Where Your Character Can’t Keep You

Weatherspoon’s grandmother would say this every day before leaving the house. As a child, Weatherspoon didn’t know what it meant, especially since it was forbidden in the home to talk about looks. Her grandmother would say things like “Beauty is as beauty does.”

“Her whole focus was, ‘I don’t care what gets you there; you better make sure your character, your integrity, the way you treat people are the only things that people are going to see,'” Weatherspoon said. “It’s going to be your character that people remember.”

Weatherspoon’s full keynote is now available on-demand for Women in Retail members. Not a member? Apply today!