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 Anne Williams-Isom, chief executive of the Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit antipoverty organization. As she explains, a mentor [Wilhelmina Holliday, the deputy police commissioner of community affairs in New York] taught her much about authentic leadership, partly by “being really clear about what she was saying and what she needed.”

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

Photo credit: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

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Were you in leadership roles when you were younger?

I have three brothers, who are many years older than me. So when I came along, everybody was superexcited to have me there. And I got to ask a lot of questions and do a lot of different things. I was a little spoiled, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, because the world can throw a lot of crazy things at you as you get older. From the time I was 6, I felt that my voice mattered.

We lived in a small house in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Queens. Across the street there were garden apartments, and I remember being aware that there was a class difference between them and us. But I was always drawn to playing with the kids across the street. We would put on plays in my garage during the summer, and I was always the director. We had refreshments, and we’d invite the people from the neighborhood.

Looking back, any thoughts on why you were drawn to the kids across the street?

I think I was always wondering from a young age about why I had my kind of life and someone else had a different kind of life. Why do differences exist like this? Why do people have certain opportunities? It’s something I’ve always been drawn to.

What about influences of your parents?

My mom is superstrong. And when I look at just about everything I’ve done, I’ve always been connected to really difficult work with people’s lives. There are real tragedies that can happen, but you have to have the ability to be present in those moments and then still be able to go to a board meeting or do fund-raising. I have this way of staying calm through the madness, and I have an extraordinary ability to deal with conflict or things that other people would shy away from.

The first time I noticed that I had a gift for this was when I was about 14, and we were in church one Sunday. There was a girl who stood up in the middle of Mass with a baby and started making a scene, calling people hypocrites.

We were all stunned, and everybody was just sitting there. She was crying and hysterical. The pastor started saying to her: “You need to sit down. This is not the place.” He was just sort of dismissing her.

I don’t know what made me do it, but in the middle of a church filled with probably 200 people, I got up and I walked over to her and I put my arm around her. I didn’t really know her — she was probably about two or three years older than me — but I whispered to her, “I don’t think this is good for the baby. I can take her back in the rectory and then we can wait there, and you can say what you want to say after Mass.”

She was looking at me like, “Who are you?” But then she handed the baby to me and the two of us walked back into the rectory. Not being afraid of conflict or uncertainty or risk is something I’ve had for a long time.

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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 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.

His more recent book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, was also also published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.