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 Avinoam Nowogrodski, the chief executive of Clarizen, a work management software company, says leadership is about asking the right questions. “And once you ask the right questions, the answer just jumps out,” he says. “It’s amazing.”
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times
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Were you in leadership roles early on?
The first time that I went into a leadership role was in the Israeli army. After 18 months, I became an officer. My leadership style from Day 1 was that I was never about command and control. It was always about creating leadership, and not relying on your rank. I stayed in the army for five years.
Where did that approach come from?
Maybe it related to my childhood. I was a terrible student — they threw me out of school three times. I wasn’t paying attention to learning and I didn’t like to be told what to do. I managed to do well in university later on.
Any early lessons as a new manager?
I first started managing people when I was 30. I was a complete idiot. I never listened to anybody until one day the vice president of sales at the company told me, “Listen, Avinoam, you’re very smart, very capable but you have one issue: You are not listening.” And for the first time, I got it. I started forcing myself to listen and to try to understand what other people are trying to say versus what they are saying. Because many people try to say things, and they have good ideas, but they may not be very articulate.
We have a tendency, especially when we are young, to immediately jump to conclusions. There may be, in effect, a small person on your shoulder who tells you when you’re talking to someone: “This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s an idiot.” I just replaced that with a voice that tells me to listen to what the other person has to say. Try to learn, try to understand, try to get out of the meeting with some value.
How else has your leadership style evolved?
The level of uncertainty and the dynamic of everything that happens around us is requiring leaders to change their style — to move from command and control to sense and respond. I think that real leadership is about asking the right questions. Great leaders ask the right questions because they recognize that no single person knows the answers and that a team is much better at figuring out the answers. And once you ask the right questions, the answer just jumps out. It’s amazing. You put a team of people in a room, you ask the right questions, and the right people will offer up ideas.
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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.comthat 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.