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 Michael Gould, the chief executive of Bloomingdale’s, who says that while it’s always important to have passion for your work, “I don’t know how you can be a great leader without warmth and humility.”
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
Photo credit: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
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Bryant: Did you always have an interest in retail?
Gould: No. I went to business school because I wasn’t sure about going to law school. After graduation, I was turned down for a job in the research department at Goldman Sachs and I ended up at Abraham & Straus. Like most things in life, it was very serendipitous.
Bryant: Any leadership lessons you learned while you were growing up?
Gould: My father was a biochemistry professor at M.I.T. He was also the faculty adviser for biology and pre-med majors. It’s funny what you remember: I was in grade school, and the phone rings during dinner. There were no answering machines in those days, of course. My father starts getting up and my mother says: “Bernie, sit. Let it ring.” And my father says: “Sophie, it could be a student. And if a student has the courage to call his professor, the professor should always be there.”
What it said to me was that we’re in the people business. I believe the business I’m in is giving people an opportunity to grow. At the end of the day, no one remembers anyone’s numbers, no matter how good they were at any moment in time. All anyone’s going to remember is, did they give me an opportunity to be more than I thought I could be? What people want is a sense of recognition. They want a sense of belonging. People want to sense that what they’re doing makes a difference.
Bryant: Other overarching thoughts about leadership?
Gould: To me, the fundamental basis of leadership is trust. If you don’t have trust, you have no leadership. I’ve also always believed that you have to be passionate about what you do, and have compassion for people. I don’t think you can teach passion. You know it when you see it. You can just look in somebody’s eyes.
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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 next book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, will also be published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.