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 Jeremy Zimmer, chief executive and co-founder of the United Talent Agency. He is convinced, “Part of being a good C.E.O is not believing that you know best, and being able to assimilate ideas from other people and take the best ideas.”
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
Photo credit: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
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Bryant: When you were a kid, were you in leadership roles?
Zimmer: I started working at gas stations when I was about 14, and was managing them when I was about 16. It was my responsibility to make sure everything was running smoothly.
Bryant: What about your parents? How have they influenced your leadership style?
Zimmer: I would say there are traces of my grandfather. He ran MGM in the ’50s and then was a producer. He was also head of the Anti-Defamation League here in New York. I would spend summers working with him. He had a real interest in people, and that was always really powerful for me. He would engage with everyone he met, and try to learn a little bit about them. He was really curious about the world.
Bryant: And during your college years?
Zimmer: I went to college briefly, but I dropped out. I was always a good worker, but I was never a very good student. I was 19 or so, and I was making a lot of money running a couple of parking valet stations in Boston. Then my grandfather introduced me to somebody at the William Morris Agency and I got a job in the mailroom.
Everything just clicked for me there. I was really good at dealing with people, I was really good at coming up with better ways to do things, and I was in the entertainment business. I loved storytelling. I’d always loved books. I’d always loved movies.
Bryant: You seemed to have been comfortable managing people from a young age.
Zimmer: No matter where I’ve worked, I’ve always felt like the boss. For better or worse, I’ve often felt that I have a sense of how we should be doing this. That confidence has come with a frustration of, one, why isn’t anyone listening to me, and, two, I could do it better.
But part of being a good C.E.O. is not believing that you know best, and being able to assimilate ideas from other people and take the best ideas. Part of growing up for me has been starting to know what I don’t know, and to stop thinking I’m a genius.
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 published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.