Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Amy Schulman, executive vice president and general counsel at Pfizer. She says that just as good writers learn to “show, don’t tell” in their essays, she has learned to use real-life anecdotes about herself to convey her style to employees.

To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

http://projects.nytimes.com/corner-office

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A Blueprint for Leadership: Show, Don’t Tell

Bryant: Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss?

Schulman: Well, I’ve been a baby sitter, and a camp counselor and a teacher. And in all of those jobs, you’ve got to get people to do what you want them to do, and not just by bossing them around.

Bryant: I’ve lost count of the number of executives I’ve interviewed who, it turns out, have teaching backgrounds.

Schulman: Actually, I think that’s not surprising. People who are drawn to teaching really like to help people. I think of teaching as teasing out what’s already inside of people, and helping them to get better. Teaching has a lot to do with getting other people enthusiastic about something, and feeling that you want to create that spark. When I was a little kid, about 7 or so, the first present I remember asking for was a blackboard — not the kind of easel kids have for painting and drawing, but a big teacher’s blackboard. I would actually make up assignments, hand them out to imaginary students, grade them and teach classes.

Bryant: What are some of the biggest leadership lessons you’ve learned?

Schulman: One of the biggest lessons I’m learning now is having a better feel for when to step out of a situation and when to step in. I do think that is actually one of the hardest things to balance correctly. People want to hear from you. They want your opinion. And if you don’t ever speak up and weigh in, then I think the people you lead will feel frustrated, wondering why you’re hanging back and not saying what you think. But if you’re constantly giving direction and speaking, then you’re really not encouraging conversation. And no matter how democratic you’d like to think you are as a boss, you learn that your voice is louder than others’. I respond best to people who challenge me, and I like being challenged, and I tend to reward people who are appropriately challenging. I think learning to refrain from speaking — without making people feel that you’re trying to frustrate them by being opaque — has been an inflection point for me. Q. How did you learn that?

Bryant: It was just watching the room, and being puzzled if I thought there should be conversation, and wondering why there wasn’t more conversation. I also saw how quickly people tended to agree with me, so I thought, it can’t be that I’m right all this time. And so I learned to really try to deliberately reward people in a conversation for challenging me. I don’t mean being insubordinate. I mean really following up on other people’s ideas. One of the marks of a good speaker is actually being a great listener.

So I remind myself that no matter how quick I think I am, that I have to show that I’m listening, and show people how I’ve gotten to the endpoint, or else I run the risk of squelching conversation. So I will deliberately slow myself down so that the room catches up to where I am. I know how I feel when I get cut off, and so shame on me if I do that to other people.

Bryant: What else?

Schulman: Another thing is realizing that people impute motives to you if you’re not clear. It’s important not to be ambiguous or vague about what you want, because then people waste a lot of energy trying to figure out, well, what is she thinking? What does she want? Why is she reacting this way? And so there is a certain kind of clarity and an absence of ambiguity about goals that I think is critical. And I think one of the marks of being a more mature boss is finding that perfect balance between clarity about goals and purpose, so that people aren’t wasting time trying to sense what’s in the ether, and not being so direct that you’ve cut off conversation prematurely and your voice is the only voice in the room. How do you get that magic right? I don’t know. But when it happens, that’s a great meeting.

Bryant: What are some other lessons you’ve learned?

Schulman: One of the things that I’ve really come to respect is that everybody who works for me needs something different in terms of how I tease out what’s really on their mind. Are you somebody who is going to get anxious if you haven’t heard from me in a few weeks and therefore you’re going to start sending me a lot of self-serving e-mails telling me every great thing you’ve done? Are you somebody who I have to invite in because otherwise I’m going to miss half of what you’re doing, and could do? And so I think recognizing and deliberately responding to the different things that people need has been something that I’ve learned over time.

Bryant: Do you have the equivalent of a first-day speech you use in new jobs — in effect, these are the rules of the road if you’re going to work with Amy Schulman?

Schulman: I do give people the rules of the road for working with me. But I think one of the things we all have to recognize is that on the first day of any job you can say to people, “Here’s who I am and here’s what I like,” and nobody will absolutely believe you. Have you ever met a leader who doesn’t say, “I want to hear feedback openly. I tend to be very straightforward. I know how to laugh at myself. I’m not afraid of criticism. My door is always open.”

Bryant: Good point.

Schulman: It would almost be funny to say, “Look, my door is closed, don’t bother me.” And so you can say all these things, but the proof is in the pudding. So what I try and do is tell real-world stories about my family, my background. After all, how many times did your English teacher write on your paper, “Show, don’t tell?” And so I always think about that — show, don’t tell.

Bryant: Can you give me an example of one of those stories?

Schulman: A story I often tell is about the first time I took a deposition. I got there early, and I thought that the most important thing was to control the witness. I didn’t realize the first time around that the way you control somebody is not by intimidating them. But I adjusted the chair that I was sitting on so that I’d be really tall, and could look down imposingly on the witness. But I raised it so high that as soon as I sat down, I toppled over and fell backward. I tell that story for a few reasons. I want people to know I’m not afraid to laugh at myself. And the best way to show people that you’re not afraid to laugh at yourself is to actually laugh at yourself and tell a story of a time that you’ve been embarrassed.

Bryant: What else?

Schulman: I think it’s very important as a new leader not to claim things that people might have a reason to believe are not true. There’s nothing worse than a first-day speech that sounds like every other speech that came before it. So I think less is more as a new leader. People are going to hear the content. But what they’re really doing is reading the person. Is she comfortable? Is she having fun? Does she seem like somebody who I want to follow? Is she going to be fair to me? When somebody asks her a question, is she flustered? Does she seem curious? I think those are the things that people take away from a first-day speech.

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Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his new book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.

Those who read Bryant’s interview of Amy Schulman and wish to develop or improve their storytelling skills are urged to check out these outstanding books:

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Random House (2007)

McGraw-Hill (2009)

Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work
Dan Roam
Portfolio/Penguin (2011)

The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative  (Revised and Updated
Stephen Denning
Jossey-Bass (2011)