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 Lori Senecal, global C.E.O. of the ad agency C.P.&B. and C.E.O. of the MDC Partner Network. She is convinced, “You have to strike a balance between the need to strive for excellence but also the need for compassion,” To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times
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What were some early influences for you?
I grew up in Montreal. I’m the fourth of four girls, so my birth order gave me some motivation to carve out my own identity and achievements because my sisters were all very talented and close in age.
Tell me about your parents.
They had a really strong work ethic, so they always instilled in us the desire to work hard and to reach for excellence. They never really imposed any sort of gender expectations on us, either. We all took out the garbage and we all watched “Hockey Night in Canada” with my father.
And what did they do for a living?
My father worked in commercial banking for a while and then he had a retail store. And my mother worked in the education system and did a lot of interesting things, including creating curriculum and working with special-needs children. He had quite a business mind and she was quite creative, so I feel like I inherited a little bit of left brain, right brain. It’s served me well in this industry, where there’s a lot of appreciation for both art and commerce.
What did you do outside of classes during school?
I was really into gymnastics growing up, and then when I was about 15, I became too tall to compete, so I started coaching. That was my part-time job during high school and college.
It was also the source of early leadership lessons. Gymnastics is both an individual sport as well as a team sport, so you have to discover the unique and full potential of each athlete, but you also have to make sure everyone succeeds as a team.
It was really motivating to see them start with very few skills and end up becoming incredibly proficient and confident. To this day, I like seeing that development trajectory. If you can help someone become more confident and achieve their ambitions, that’s something that you can always feel good about.
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To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
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.