Cleaner is ahead of mother in personality (8)
I believe the answer is:
charisma
'personality' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'cleaner is ahead of mother' is the wordplay.
'cleaner' becomes 'char' (char can mean a cleaner).
'ahead of' says to put letters next to each other (some letters go in front of others).
'mother' becomes 'ma' (Ma is another word for mother or mum).
'char'+'is'+'ma'='CHARISMA'
'in' is the link.
(Other definitions for charisma that I've seen before include "Person's magnetic charm" , "attractive quality" , "magnetic quality" , "Compelling charm" , "10 (anag)" .)