I’ve had a lot of good managers over my 30 years in corporate America. Managers who gave me stretch assignments. Managers who trusted me to figure things out. Managers who saw potential I didn’t know I had yet.

But I’ve also learned from leaders, and at Chase, I learned that leadership and management aren’t the same thing. A leader is someone other people follow. They may not have any staff. They could be entry-level. Title doesn’t matter. What matters is whether people naturally look to them for guidance.

The best leader I ever had (someone who was ALSO my manager) was Janet Wilkinson at Chase Auto Finance.

I always consider myself lucky because Janet came to our site about three months after I became a supervisor in the contact center. It was my first supervisory role in corporate America, and as I always like to tell the story: I Was Failing!

And when I say failing, I mean I wasn’t connecting with my team as real people. I made everything black and white. Rules were rules. There was no room for the human element, no space for us to meet each other as actual people instead of just supervisor and staff.

The ‘Work Michelle’ Problem

I am a very analytical person. Going through supervisor training, learning all the rules, being careful about the transition from peer to boss: those classes made me approach supervision like a checklist. Things were either right or they weren’t. Rules were rules.

Then Janet Showed Up

Janet had us do what was basically a DISC assessment, but Chase had created their own proprietary version using colors instead of letters.

Everybody immediately pegged me as blue: conscientious, perfectionist, all business.

And I got into it. I wanted to understand who I was so I could figure out how others saw me—and then maybe adapt in a way that worked for both of us.

We did the MBTI next. I typed as ISTJ, which I now know was wrong (I’m actually INTJ), but at the time I answered the questions based on what my mom had taught me: follow the rules, do it right, no shortcuts.

What I didn’t realize yet:
My mom taught me to follow the rules.
I naturally optimize for the right results, even if that means adjusting how you get there, as long as the outcome is the same or better.

But in my early 20s, I hadn’t figured that out yet. I was just this straightforward person. Not mean, but absolutely “Work Michelle.” I didn’t bring my whole self to the job.

What Janet Did Differently

Janet took us all in hand (this team of young supervisors, most of us in our first leadership roles) and she made us a team.

We did our assessments. We created presentations on different leadership topics and taught each other at every meeting. We put our hearts into it. PowerPoint decks printed on colored paper, slipped into plastic sleeves, passed around the table like we were publishing textbooks. Each presentation got more elaborate because we couldn’t stop trying to impress each other and her.

We’d stay late because this wasn’t a 24-hour call center and everyone else had gone home, and the supervisors were still there, figuring out how to make the next session better.

We made posters showing our color profiles (mine was blue-green: conscientious + driven, perfectionist + “let’s do this”).
We learned to adapt. Instead of just being ourselves, we adjusted to each other. That made us work better together as we learned how to be leaders.

The Day She Asked About My 401(k)

I was maybe 25 or 26 years old when Janet came to my desk one day and asked:

“Michelle, do you have your 401(k) going? Are you doing that? Because that’s just free money—it’s matched.” I think it was 3% at the time. She told me: every year when you get a raise or a bonus, adjust your 401(k) contribution up. You already live on what you make, so if you put the increase away before you see it, you won’t even miss it.

The conversation changed my life.

Not because of the financial advice (though I’ve followed it at every job since), but because it showed me something I hadn’t understood yet:

You can be a great leader and a great person.
Those aren’t two separate things.
They’re supposed to be the same thing.

Janet cared about us not just as employees, but as people. She wanted us to succeed at work, yes. But she also wanted us to build good lives. To make smart decisions. To take care of ourselves.

She modeled it. And once I saw how she did it (being both a great leader and a great human), I started to understand how to apply what I was learning in the management training program to real life.

What I Learned: Rules vs. Principles

Here’s the thing about leadership training when you’re 25: it’s all very black and white. Very structured. Very, “here are the rules.”

And at first, it’s uncomfortable. It feels stiff. You’re trying to do everything by the book because you don’t want to screw up.

But over time, you realize: it doesn’t have to be that way.
The best leaders I’ve had (whether they were my managers or not) figured out how to blend being a human being who genuinely cares about you while also maintaining the structure and boundaries that make work function.

You learn the book way first. Then, when you go to apply it, you learn how to keep the principles while adapting the rules. You stay within the parameters, but you follow the spirit of the law, not just the letter.

It’s less about “bending the rules” and more about understanding how to apply rules in a human-centric way.

Because people aren’t standardized. You want to be fair, but you also want to be human. And yes, it’s a fine line, but it’s not as sharp as you’d think.

Where It All Came Together

Over time, I realized: the best things I know, I learned from three sources:

1. My mom taught me the foundation: if you’re going to do something, do it with a smile on your face. When we cleaned the house, we had music on, and we danced. You can work hard and still enjoy yourself. That doesn’t make you unprofessional; it makes you human.
2. Formal leadership training taught me the structure: how to give feedback, set expectations, manage performance, and build systems that scale.
3. Leaders I’ve worked with (some who were my managers, some who weren’t) taught me how to blend the two: how to take what I learned from my mom, combine it with what I learned in training, and apply it in a way that treats people like people, not just resources.

Janet was both my manager AND a leader. Shawn was a leader without the title (you’ll hear about him soon). I’ve learned from both kinds throughout my career.

That combination (mom’s wisdom + formal training + learning from leaders at every level) is what made me effective as a manager and individual contributor. And eventually, as a learning and development professional.

I learned it from my mom first. Then I learned the systems.
Then Janet showed me how to bring them together.

And that’s probably the truest sense of how I reach and teach other people to this day.

What Janet’s Leadership Made Possible

I don’t know if Janet knows how wonderful a leader she was.

If I’m remembering correctly, they would send her to different customer service sites all around the U.S. She moved to Texas at some point, leading teams there, and she was just able to get so much out of people.

I’m still best friends with another supervisor I met in that call center. Twenty years later, we still talk about those days. We look back and say: “Did we really do all the things we remember doing?”

Because if you’ve ever worked in a call center, you know: it can be a grind.

You’re talking to customers who are often unhappy because they need something and can’t get it. There are rules you can’t overcome. You have to find ways to help them anyway. Taking call after call after call can wear you down.

It’s often high turnover. We had really stringent tardiness and absence rules. You were constantly onboarding new people. You were always chasing that 80/20 metric: 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds or less.

And yet…

We did things in that call center that I’ve never seen replicated anywhere else.

The color assessment I mentioned earlier. We used it with our teams, not just the leadership team. Everyone had their profiles outside their cubicles so people could understand each other. It wasn’t about being fake or superficial. It was about adapting to get the best out of each other.

That’s vulnerability-based trust.

When someone came to my desk and skipped the small talk and just asked their question, my team knew: that’s not because she’s mean or doesn’t like you. That’s because she’s a numbers person, a perfectionist. That’s just how her brain works.

And when I walked up to someone who was yellow or red on the DISC profile, I learned to ask about their weekend first. Because that’s how they ease into work mode. That’s what makes them feel seen.

We weren’t performing. We were adapting for real.

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The Day We Left Them Alone

We had already done so much work that was then translated from the leadership team to the larger department. The call center had become a completely different place. Our agents got so good at answering calls that we regularly had one or more people off the phones when we weren’t busy.

Think about that in a call center environment where every second of “idle time” is usually scrutinized. Our teams worked so well that they had time to be creative.

Each supervisor had a bulletin board outside the cubicle (this was before whiteboards were everywhere) with pushpins, and teams would create different themes each month: part work metrics, part fun, whatever they wanted.

The creativity was incredible. Seeing what each other had created sparked something—teams kept raising the bar, creating this beautiful spiral of creativity that pushed everyone to be better and better.

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We were all working together. And then came the test.

The entire management team (all the supervisors and managers) went to a hotel for an all-day offsite with a facilitator. We left our staff. The person who was stepping up to be the next supervisor led each team for the day. The whole team reported to them.

We were gone the ENTIRE day. And they were completely fine. They did amazing.

Do you know how rare that is in a call center? Actually, I think it may be beyond rare. I’ve worked in 4-5 different call centers over my career, including a massive one in the Philippines, and I have never seen anything like what we built at Chase ever again.

Not the self-managed day. Not the voluntary supervisor development. Not the bulletin boards with themed decorations. Not agents who answered calls so well and so efficiently that we could regularly pull people off the phones during slower periods to work on other things.

None of it.

That’s what Janet helped us build. She helped us become leaders who could create that kind of culture, even in an environment where most people would say it’s impossible.

The ‘Agree to Disagree’ Lesson

Janet also taught me something I didn’t learn at home: when to stop debating.

I grew up a little differently. My mom allowed us to engage in conversation: real conversation. I’m an INTJ. I like talking things through. My mom and I would have discussions that literally lasted days. We’d go back and forth, present arguments, retreat to our corners to do more research, come back and engage again.

I thought that’s how you worked through things everywhere.

So when I got into a debate with another blue supervisor (also very analytical), we went back and forth via email. Over and over. With all the other supervisors and leaders copied.

I wasn’t upset. I was just doing what I’d always done: keep presenting my case until you exhaust the topic and come to a conclusion.

Janet called us into her office.

She said: “Okay, number one: when you’re going back and forth like this, after the second email, pick up the phone. Get up and go to their cubicle. You need to talk this through face-to-face, because this endless email chain is not okay.”

“Number two: once you do talk, you need to come to a conclusion within a reasonable amount of time. Pick the best option. Even if you don’t fully agree. Agree to disagree. Then move forward.”

She taught me that what worked at home with my mom (the ongoing, multi-day debate) wasn’t how things worked in the corporate world. And that was fine. Different contexts have different rules.

What I appreciated most: she didn’t yell. She didn’t make us feel like bad people. She didn’t step on our necks.

She explained: This is how things need to go. This is what we do here. This is why we do it this way. This is what I expect from you.

Clear. Direct. Human. That’s leadership.

The Ripple Effect

Because of Janet, I went to SDSU Extension for several classes to learn more about coaching. I got into personality assessments: Ocean, Gallup StrengthsFinder, and anything else I could find.

To this day, if I see a new assessment (free or paid), I do it. I want to keep adding layers to understanding who I am so I can show up for people in the way they need and in the way I need.

Janet didn’t just teach me how to be a supervisor. She taught me that leadership is about understanding people (including yourself) and creating environments where everyone can do their best work.

😊And here’s the part that still makes me smile:
Remember Shawn, the leader I developed even though he didn’t have a formal role?
When Janet moved to Texas to lead another call center, Shawn got a job as a supervisor at a call center in Texas.

I don’t know if it was the same center Janet went to, but the timing wasn’t a coincidence. He was ready for that management role because he’d already been leading. I’d helped him prepare for the next step, just like Janet had helped me.

I can honestly say I’ve helped lots of people get ready to move into their next job over my career. Shawn was one of the first. And I learned how to do that by watching Janet.

I don’t know if she realizes what she did for us. But I’ll always thank her for that.

Just like I’ll always thank my mom for the foundation she gave me. And all the other leaders I’ve had over the years who touched my life in different ways.

That’s who you see before you today. A person shaped by:

• A mother who taught me to work with a smile
• Formal training that gave me structure
• A leader who showed me how to blend the two
• Years of iteration, learning, and adapting

The Takeaway

If you’re early in your leadership journey and everything feels too rigid, too by-the-book, too uncomfortable, that’s normal.

But pay attention to the leaders around you (the ones with formal authority AND the ones people follow naturally) who’ve figured out how to be both excellent at their jobs and genuinely kind to their people. Watch how they do it.

And if you’re lucky enough to have a Janet Wilkinson show up three months into your first supervisor role, listen to everything she tells you.

Even the part about the 401(k).

Especially the part about leaving your team alone for a day to see what they can do when you trust them.

And definitely the part about developing people who don’t report to you, because leadership isn’t about titles. It’s about influence.

❤️If you made it this far, thank you for reading.
This is how I think, how I learn, and how I show up in my work and my life.