Noreen Beaman (chief executive, Brinker Capital) in “The Corner Office”

BeamanAdam 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 Noreen D. Beaman, chief executive of Brinker Capital, based in Berwyn, Pa. She observes, “Sometimes you’ll make a mistake. Life happens. But let’s not do it again. One of our mantras is, ‘Find it, fix it, prevent it.’”

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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Bryant: When you were growing up, were you in leadership roles?

Beaman: I’m the oldest of four girls, and being the oldest, I was the bossiest. I was the fixer, and I organized stuff. I did student government, I was the class representative every year, and I was a student body president senior year. But I also learned about navigating those dynamics of who doesn’t like the fact that you won the election and who’s not being heard.

Bryant: What were the lessons?

Beaman: No one really likes it when you win all the time and get all the credit. So I learned you can’t be the president of every club. Maybe you pick one and then let someone else be the president, and you take a secondary role. Then it becomes more collaborative.

Bryant: How did you figure that out?

Beaman: so they were some of my best informants in high school. They would say: “Really? That wasn’t a great idea. Maybe if you stopped and listened, you would’ve heard what someone was saying.”

Bryant: What were some important lessons you’ve learned over the course of your career?

Beaman: Failure is probably the best gift someone can give you. I was about 35 and Brinker’s C.F.O., but I went into sales to get that experience. And I went out and I made a deal on a handshake. Because I was C.F.O. and had been so careful for the 10 years before, the people I worked for thought, “She’ll never do anything foolish.” So of course I did. I closed a big deal on a handshake, and it blew up. I should have been fired.

I lost all my political capital at Brinker. I had been there for more than 12 years, and now I was in the penalty box. But I worked really hard at sales and became the No. 1 salesperson — only because I worked hard, not because I’m a natural salesperson. I had to really dig in and do something I wasn’t good at.

But it made me more accessible to people I worked with. They still joke about it today, though it was 20 years ago. They’ll say, “Oh, remember when you did that?” And I’ll say, “Yes, I remember when I did that.” It made me have more humility.

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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.comthat 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.

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