Sam's Club CEO Latriece Watkins has built a career trajectory most workers could only dream of, rising from an intern at Walmart to the top job at one of America's largest grocery retailers. Sam's Club is the membership-only warehouse club chain owned by Walmart, competing with rivals like Costco and BJ's Wholesale for American shoppers, and the parent company has a long record of elevating leaders who started in entry-level roles—Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, for one, began as an hourly associate. Yet the executive says it is not the titles or career milestones that make her feel powerful. Her greatest source of power, she explained, comes from watching the colleagues she has mentored ultimately succeed.

"When I feel most powerful is when I see the people I've invested in make moves," Watkins told Fortune's Most Powerful Women Editor Emma Hinchliffe onstage at the magazine's annual MPW Summit in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Tuesday. Fortune convenes the summit each year to spotlight prominent women leaders in business and beyond. "When I see them get promoted, I see all of their faces running across memory from very early in my career, or very early in their careers, to where they've moved now."

According to the Fortune 500 executive, focusing solely on one's own advancement leaves opportunities for greater impact on the table. Watkins has racked up plenty of milestones of her own: in 2023, she became the first woman and first person of color to serve as Walmart's chief merchant—the executive who steers the retailer's merchandise strategy and buying—one of the most influential roles in retail. The firsts carried added weight at a company of Walmart's scale: the retailer is the largest private employer in the United States. Over her three-decade career at the $890 billion parent company (Walmart), she has pursued a symbiotic strategy with her peers designed to ensure that everyone succeeds together.

"The contributions we make are more than we could individually do," she continued. "So power for me is the names of all the people that I can say who [have] benefited from my contributions, and I've benefited from being able to either contribute or get feedback from them."

Watkins noted that even from the top role, business leaders will always need people—and that finding the best way to shepherd them can be a challenge for executives with demanding schedules. In her eight months as CEO, the 51-year-old has found that understanding the power of workers and delivering clarity are essential to leadership. Employees, she said, look to the person at the top for transparency and a clear vision.

To achieve that clarity, Watkins recommends deliberately setting aside time to think things through. "People look to you for clarity, which means you have to be clear. You don't think out loud," she said. "When you're the leader, people want to know what you think, and if you haven't cleared it up for yourself and you're thinking out loud, you'll confuse them."

"So take the time—make the time—to create clarity for yourself," Watkins continued. "It's one of the hardest things to find this time for yourself. But it's required, because you can't get clarity it."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.