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 Janet Elkin, chief executive of Supplemental Health Care, a health care staffing firm. Named chief executive during the recession, Ms. Elkin had to report poor results to the staff. “But we’d talk about them for only 20 seconds,” she recalls. “Then I’d say: ‘Let’s talk about how we’re going to get better. Let’s get started.’’

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 or doing entrepreneurial things when you were younger?

I was a magician when I was 12, and my parents were my assistants.

How did that come about?

My dad loved magic. He was a court reporter, and he would do tricks to calm down kids if they had to be witnesses. I must have said once to him when he was doing tricks at home, “I like that one,” and the next day he comes home with all these tricks for me.

I started doing shows, and it was a great bonding experience with my parents, and a great way to earn extra money. It teaches you to have presence. I would do mainly birthday parties, but I also did larger events with hundreds of people.

What was your first management role after college?

I started a jewelry business in Texas, doing fund-raisers at hospitals. That grew to about $2 million in annual sales. But then I went through a divorce and basically lost everything. I had to stop traveling to take care of my kids. I had to do something to support myself, so I started working as a headhunter in the health care field. I built up a niche within the firm.

That’s a big transition from jewelry sales.

Yes, but I’m pretty good at getting people to tell me about themselves, and what they really want, as opposed to what they think they want, in a job. I had to connect with people over the telephone, and you can do it. You have to give something of yourself. It makes a difference if you talk a little bit about your own life.

What were some early leadership lessons for you?

I don’t think I was ever a micromanager, but sometimes you can get too involved. It’s about balance. I’m still working on it, but it’s about being able to ask enough questions to really know what’s going on. You develop that intuition. It’s not perfect, but you just get a feeling. Things could be going well, but you can see that train coming with some problem. The hard thing is guiding other people to see what you’re seeing. And you’re not always right.

You jumped from vice president to C.E.O. at your current company. Did the board tell you why it chose you?

When I got the call, I was surprised. They picked an insider during a really difficult time in the recession. They said the reason was that we had lost the spirit in the company, and we lost the focus. One of my favorite expressions — and people are sick of hearing it in the company — is “Don’t let the process overtake the purpose.” We generate thousands of reports, and we were in the middle of a recession when I took over in 2010. So it was about making people feel excited. On my leadership calls with the whole company, we’d talk about the results, which were really bad at the time, but we’d talk about them for only 20 seconds. Then I’d say: “Let’s talk about how we’re going to get better. Let’s get started.”

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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.