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 Helene D. Gayle, president and C.E.O of CARE U.S.A, the anti-poverty group. She says managers have a double-edged duty. “You’ve got to be thinking about your own interests,but also wearing that broader corporate hat.”

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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Bryant: Were you involved in leadership roles when you were younger?

Gayle: I was the middle of five children, and we were five very opinionated siblings. That probably pushed me to learn to speak up for myself. And I got very involved in student leadership when I was in high school and college.

Bryant: What about your parents’ influence?

Gayle: My father had the main barber- and beauty-supply business in the African-American community in Buffalo. All five of us worked there from as early as it was probably feasible. It was a hub of community life, so all of us learned how to deal with a wider range of people from an early age. My mother was also a social worker, involved in community and civic organizations. She would say to us: “Speak up for yourself. You’ve got a good brain, and you’ve got a big mouth — use it.”

Bryant: Any lessons from early management roles?

Gayle: At the Centers for Disease Control, I rose up fairly quickly into management positions. The first team I led there included many people who had been my supervisors in previous roles or were more senior than I was. So it was kind of a daunting challenge.

I know that I didn’t delegate enough, and I got labeled as somebody who didn’t know how to delegate and who felt like they had to do it all themselves. For me, it wasn’t a question of not being willing to delegate; it was switching from being on the technical side as an individual contributor — where the way you prove yourself is to be smart — to focusing on how you actually make a team work and bring out others’ contributions.

Another lesson was learning when the decision is mine and when it is a group decision. A big part of leadership is just being comfortable with the fact that some decisions really are only yours.

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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. To contact him, please click here.