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 Kathy Savitt, founder and C.E.O. of Lockerz, a social networking and e-commerce site. She calls cynicism a “first cell, so to speak, that can metastasize within an organization.”

To read the complete interview and Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

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Bryant: You’ve worked at big companies like Amazon and American Eagle, and then you left to run a start-up. Why the switch?

Savitt: I was at a fairly comfortable place in life before deciding to subject myself to 80-hour weeks again.

A large part of it was because I was so passionate about the idea of Lockerz and what we were trying to build for this very disruptive new generation.

But part of it is also because at this time in my life, there are some basic great team practices and ideas that I’ve had in my brain, almost in a lab version, for a long time. And it was time to put them into practice.

Bryant: Such as?

Savitt: Guts is one of them. We talk about having the courage to actually work through failure, the courage to work through tough customer feedback, the courage to confront brutal facts in your business and the courage to change them.

Another one is respect. That notion of respect in business, I think sometimes gets lost. And wit. We laugh a lot. No one takes themselves too seriously at Lockerz. Results — what we call effective innovation. A lot of companies talk about innovation. We talk about innovation that actually drives a top-line or a bottom-line result.

And the final one is optimism. I think it’s easy for people at many companies to become cynical, which then leads to politics, which can create a cancer that can topple even the greatest companies. And I do think cynicism is that first cell, so to speak, that can metastasize within an organization.

Bryant: Give me an example of things that make people cynical.

Savitt: A good example is when a team member has a great idea or has a big issue with a customer experience and no one responds, no one even acknowledges it, no one gets back to them. The idea festers, problems continue to mount, no one listens. How does that person not become cynical? That’s a recipe for cynicism. So you can’t just say, don’t be cynical.

Another cell of cynicism is when you feel a company is not actually living out its core values. And finally, just a lack of overall communication can cause problems. Leaders can have the greatest of intentions and their senior team may feel completely bought into the vision. But if people on the front lines don’t know what’s going on in the company, or don’t know what’s in the heads of the senior leadership team or me, you might have a seed of cynicism that can grow.

Bryant: How do you hire?

Savitt: I put a very high premium on intelligence and a very high premium on wit in general, which is different from intelligence alone. It’s not enough just to have I.Q. You actually have to have active listening skills and to talk to people and really want to communicate with someone.

And Rule No. 1 is no jerks, no divas. Somebody could be the most brilliant, most experienced person in the world. But life is too short, and that kind of person can also plant that first seed of cynicism in a company.

Bryant: What questions do you ask in a job interview?

Savitt: Some of the questions I ask all the time include, what did you love most about the work you just finished doing? And if you could design your life in terms of work, what would that job actually be? If you could take 100 percent of your abilities and create a job description, what would it look like? You learn a lot from people when they answer that question. I like to ask them who’s been the best manager they’ve ever had and who’s been the worst manager they’ve ever had — not their names, of course, but their qualities.

Another question I ask all the time is, if everyone here were a C.E.O. and I was to make you the C.E.O. of something on Day One, what would you be the C.E.O. of? I ask that because I like to get a sense of what you feel so passionately about that you want to own. I also try to ask questions that get at cultural fit. Can you laugh at yourself? I’ll ask them to tell me about their friends or their kids, and say, “Who’s your wackiest friend?” And usually, the response to “who’s your wackiest friend” tells you a lot.

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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 Sunday Business section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. To contact him, please click here.