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 Andy Bryant, the chairman of the technology giant Intel. In his opinion, “You’re better off to take a job you’re excited about than to do the one you think somebody wants you to do.” To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

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Tell me about your early years.

We lived in a small house in the Midwest. My dad was killed in the Berlin Crisis — he was a navigator on a bomber. There was no life insurance. My mom had to raise three boys. We grew up as latchkey kids. We never felt poor, but we always worked hard. I had paper routes, and in high school I actually had a night job in a factory.

What kind of factory?

It was a plastics molding factory. The thing I remember most is making fly swatters. This big press would make them and then it would open and the fly swatters would pop out, and you had to reach in, grab them and get your hand out before it slammed back again to make the next ones.

And where did you go to college?

University of Missouri for undergraduate. When I got out of school, it was 1972, and not particularly the best economic time. I got a job selling tools to stores. As an introvert, I would never have picked being a salesman as a career. I was pretty good at it, but I didn’t like it. Then I went to the University of Kansas to get an M.B.A.

And your career plan then?

I didn’t have a massive plan for my life. I was just going to get a good job and do meaningful work. When I was younger, I would have said maybe I’m going to coach sports in high school or teach, because I always did have a desire to teach. In my wildest dreams during grad school, I wanted to work for the Ford Motor Company. I love cars. But I didn’t think that would happen.

Then, lo and behold, Ford came and interviewed at Kansas that year. It was the first time they’d been there. I was probably the fifth person the guy from Ford interviewed. I walked in and he said, “Will you move to Detroit?” I said, “Of course. Why else would I be here?” And he said, “You’re the only one who’s answered ‘yes’ to that question.” I got the job offer, and so I went to Ford. I joined Intel after five years in Detroit.

What are some leadership lessons you’ve learned?

The first key lesson was to be open and honest with your people. I’d seen many times that wasn’t the case. At a lot of companies, people are told, in effect, “Here’s the company line, and you have to support the company line.” And there were times I thought the company made the wrong decision. You can’t undermine the decision, but I developed an approach with my employees if they thought my way was right, but it was not what the company had decided.

If they asked me about it, I’d say: “I want to give you two answers. I would have gone a different way, and here’s why. On the other hand, I want you to understand why the C.E.O. or whoever made this decision. I don’t know if I’m right and they’re wrong. What I know, though, is that they were empowered to make the decision. It’s a decision that can be defended, and our job now is to optimize that decision.” People always knew that they were going to hear what I really think. It created a good following.

I also believe that you have to help people develop. In typical annual reviews, you say, “Here’s how you did, and do these four things next year.” Mine never did. I would say: “I’m going to talk about how to develop you. And so to help you develop, I have to first know what you want to do with your career. If you tell me, ‘I want to leave Intel at some point and be a C.F.O. at a small company,’ I’ll help you figure that out. We’ll talk about the skills you don’t have and how you can gain them. We can also talk about the skills I need you to develop while you’re still here, to do better work for us.”

So you start with what the person’s looking for and add to it what you need, and then you get better work from the person. The point is to actually help people achieve their goals, and at the same time improve their ability to do their job. It should be about developing people, rather than listing tasks for them accomplish in the coming year.

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

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 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.