The Five Values That Will Make You a Better Leader
And why the TRICK framework Silicon Valley swears by applies to your life right now
There is a woman who spent four decades in a classroom trusting young people before they had earned it. Her students went on to build some of the most influential companies in the world. Her daughters run YouTube and 23andMe. And the framework she used to raise and teach all of them? It wasn’t a complicated system. It was five words.
Trust. Respect. Independence. Collaboration. Kindness.
Esther Wojcicki — educator, journalist, and the woman Forbes and Fortune call “The Godmother of Silicon Valley” — calls it TRICK.
She built it as a parenting framework. But here’s what nobody told you when you were sitting in class trying to figure out what you wanted to be: the space to test, try, fail, learn and grow is essential to where you’re headed.
You learn as much or more from getting something wrong as you do from getting something right. And the values that raise great humans are the same values that create great leaders.
And you don’t have to be a parent to start practicing them.
Why TRICK matters to you right now
We talk a lot about building careers. We talk about skills, networking, personal branding, getting in the right rooms. But we don’t talk nearly enough about the kind of person you are while you’re doing all of that.
The women who rise — really rise, in a way that lasts — aren’t just competent. They’re trusted. They’re respected. They know how to collaborate without losing themselves. They’re kind in a world that rewards ruthlessness. They’ve found a way to be brave when the pressure is to be perfect. And they’ve learned, usually the hard way, how to be independent thinkers in spaces that pressure them to conform.
Sound familiar? That’s TRICK. And every single one of those values is something you can build right now, in your career, your relationships, and the way you move through the world.
T is for Trust
Trust isn’t something you wait to be given. It’s something you build, consistently, over time, through the smallest actions. Showing up when you say you will. Being honest when it’s uncomfortable. Following through on the thing nobody is checking on.
Esther’s philosophy was radical in education because she extended trust to young people before they had proven themselves. She believed trust given was trust earned. And the result? Students who rose to meet it.
Think about the leaders you admire most. The managers, the mentors, the women who made you feel seen. The common thread is almost always this: they trusted you. They gave you room to figure it out. They didn’t micromanage or second-guess every move.
That’s the kind of leader you’re already deciding to become. And it starts with being trustworthy yourself, first in the small moments, then in the big ones.
R is for Respect
Respect in the TRICK framework isn’t about being polite or deferential. It’s about genuinely seeing people as whole human beings with something valuable to offer, regardless of their title, their background, or how different they are from you.
In a professional context, this shows up in how you listen in meetings. Whether you give credit. How you talk about people when they’re not in the room. Whether you treat the intern the same way you treat the executive.
This matters for your career because people remember how you made them feel long after they’ve forgotten what you said. The woman who respects everyone in the room, not just the most important person in it, is the woman people want to work with, advocate for, and bring into their inner circle.
And someday, if and when you do become a parent, this same principle will shape how your children see themselves — whether they feel respected as people, not just managed as kids.
I is for Independence
This one is personal for a lot of next-gen women, because independence can feel like a luxury when you’re early in your career and feel like you need to prove yourself at every turn.
But independence isn’t about going rogue or ignoring guidance. It’s about trusting your own instincts. Forming your own opinions. Being willing to say “I see it differently” in a room where everyone else is nodding.
Esther built independence into everything she taught because she knew that the world doesn’t need more people who can follow instructions. It needs people who can think for themselves when the instructions run out.
You already know what this feels like. It’s the moment you pitched an idea nobody asked for. The time you said no to something that wasn’t right for you even when it would have looked impressive. The decision you made based on your gut when everyone around you was waiting for permission.
That instinct is worth protecting. It’s worth practicing. Because the leaders who change things — in boardrooms, in communities, in families — are the ones who never fully outsourced their thinking to anyone else.
C is for Collaboration
Here’s the thing about collaboration that nobody says out loud: it’s actually hard. Real collaboration means sharing credit, changing your mind when someone else has a better idea, and holding space for perspectives that challenge your own.
It’s also one of the most irreplaceable human skills in a world that is rapidly automating everything else.
Esther’s framework centers collaboration because she understood early what researchers are confirming now — the problems worth solving are too complex for any one person, and the teams that figure them out are the ones who actually know how to work together.
For you, this means practicing collaboration now, not just as a workplace skill but as a way of being. Choosing to lift other women instead of competing with them. Asking for help without seeing it as weakness. Giving your full attention to someone else’s idea before jumping to your own.
These habits compound. The woman who genuinely collaborates builds a network, a reputation, and a community that carries her further than anything she could have built alone.
K is for Kindness
Kindness gets underestimated in professional spaces because somewhere along the way we confused it with softness. It isn’t soft. It’s one of the most strategic and sustainable things you can bring to any room.
Esther’s version of kindness isn’t passive. It’s active. It’s the choice to be generous when you don’t have to be. To extend grace to someone who is struggling. To lead with warmth in a culture that defaults to armor.
The kindest leaders tend to create the most loyal teams, the most honest feedback loops, and the most resilient cultures. People work harder for leaders who actually care about them. That’s not a soft truth. That’s just true.
And for the next-gen women reading this who are thinking about the kind of home they want to build someday — kindness is the value that creates safety. It’s what makes people feel like they can be honest with you. It’s what makes a house feel like a home and a team feel like a family.
The framework that works in both directions
What Esther understood — and what makes TRICK so quietly powerful — is that the values that raise great children are the same values that make great humans at every stage of life. You don’t suddenly become more trustworthy, more respectful, more collaborative, or kinder when you become a parent, or the boss. You bring whoever you already are into that role.
Which means the work you do now, on yourself, in your career, in your relationships, is not separate from the future you’re building. It’s the foundation of it.
The women in the MELD community are at the beginning of something. Careers that will evolve in ways we can’t fully predict. Relationships that will shape who they become. And for many of them, families they’ll build someday with intention and care.
TRICK isn’t just a parenting framework waiting for the right season of your life to apply. It’s a leadership framework. A relationship framework. A life framework.
And the best time to start living it is now.
Esther Wojcicki’s TRICK method is the backbone of the ParentingTRICK app, which offers personalized, expert-backed guidance for every stage of family life. Learn more at parentingchildren.com.