With Just 8 Words, Melinda French Gates Taught a Powerful Lesson in Emotional Intelligence

A lot of people have given a lot of advice about what it takes to succeed. Follow these five steps and you’ll be on the track to success, or adopt these seven habits and you just can’t lose. And to be completely transparent here, I’ve given a bit of my own success advice too.

But when someone like Melinda French Gates offers her advice on what it takes to succeed, then I can’t help but pay attention. And with just eight words, she taught a remarkably powerful lesson indeed–one that is steeped in emotional intelligence.

In an interview, French Gates offered the eight words of advice that she says her mom always told her:

“Set your own agenda or someone else will.”

The thing is, many of the people we meet and deal with in our work and personal lives want something from us–they want us to do what they have decided we should do. Apply for this job, work on that project, fire this person, do me that favor, and on and on.

It’s easy to simply nod your head and do what the other person wants you to do, and that may be a simple way to avoid conflict. But in almost every case, the emotionally intelligent thing is to decide for yourself what you want to do–what you should do–and then do it.

And while I believe this advice applies to anyone anywhere, French Gates specifically directed her advice to women. She went on to say, “The agenda of our lifetime is making sure that women can take their full power in society.” Ultimately, women can be anything they decide to be, and they can and should make those choices for themselves.

French Gates continued, “So, what I want to say to women is you need to take care of yourself first, and once you do that, then you can give fully to others.”

To help ensure that women are better able to take their full power in society, French Gates, Michelle Obama, and Amal Clooney have pulled together a collaboration of their foundations in an effort to move gender equality forward while ending child marriage.

Remember, you always have a choice. You need to set your own agenda–make the decisions you want to make, do the things you want to do, put yourself first sometimes instead of last–or you can be sure someone else will.