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 Aron Ain, chief executive of Kronos, a maker of work force management software. To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo credit: Earl Wilson for The New York Times

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What were your early years like?

I’m one of five kids, and my parents were just phenomenal people.

When you’re No. 4 out of five, you’re always chasing your siblings around and doing things. With my friends, I would take leadership roles where it made sense to do that. I’m not sure why. It just worked out that way, and I never shied away from it. It was something that seemed to come naturally to me, and I liked doing it.

Tell me more about your parents.

My mom grew up in New York City and graduated from high school when she was 14, from Hunter College when she was 17, and from Columbia Law School at 19.

She would say it wasn’t a big deal because, back then, if you did well in school, they would just move you ahead. She passed the bar and had to wait until she was 21 to practice law. She did that until she was about 25, got married and had five kids, and gave it up until she was in her 50s, and then started practicing again until she was 83.

My dad took over a neighborhood plumbing supply on Long Island that my grandfather had started. I stopped going to day camp when I was around 12 to work there over vacation and every summer. It wasn’t a paid job. He just said he needed me to help, so I did.

My parents cared deeply about people, particularly people who needed a little bit of help getting on in life. They were community activists in a very quiet way. They didn’t have a child with developmental disabilities, yet they were involved for more than 50 years with the Association for the Help of Retarded Children. They just weren’t a little bit involved; they were neck-deep involved.

Did you have an idea what you wanted to do for a career when you went to college?
No idea. It was simpler back then. I studied economics and government. If I could do it again, I would have taken more creative courses, like art and music.

And after you graduated?

I went right to work where I work today. This is my 38th year at Kronos. I was one of the first employees, but the company was started by my brother and two other founders. I just worked my way up. In the beginning, I did everything — cleaned the bathrooms, answered the phones, sold what we sold, and installed what we sold.

What are the some important leadership lessons you’ve learned?

I think managing and leading people is a privilege. And I don’t think we always understand the impact that we have as managers on the people on our teams. I talk to our managers all the time about this. Do you really understand the impact you have? And if you really understand the impact, then how do your actions reflect that you understand that?

I believe that people would rather have a lousy job working for a great person than a great job working for a bad manager. And I believe very strongly that the single largest component of a business that adds to shareholder value is great management, and the single largest destroyer of shareholder value is bad management.

Now, being a good manager is really, really difficult. And the sooner people who are managers recognize that, the sooner they’ll start being a good manager. It takes unbelievable courage to be a good manager. It is hard to have difficult conversations with people when they’re not doing well. Who likes to do that? That takes courage. You can’t slide out of the way and hope it’s going to take care of itself.

We’ve also just introduced a new component to annual employee surveys. We’ve added about 15 new questions that are focused specifically around manager effectiveness. How does the staff truly feel about how effective their manager is at creating great teams?

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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 of hundreds of business leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.