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 Paulett Eberhart, president and C.E.O. of CDI, an engineering and technology professional services firm. She wants her team to be brutally honest with her. If the issue is important, she says, “You’ve got to come into my office and shut the door.”
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: Were you in leadership roles early on?
Eberhart: After I graduated from college, I was hired as a billing office supervisor of about 30 people.
Eberhart: That’s a big step for a first management role.
Bryant: It’s one of those moments where you show up at the right time and they needed someone, and I think my college education was important to them. I had the good fortune of working for a woman who taught me a lot. Most of the people who worked there were older than me and they certainly had a lot more experience.
Eberhart: So how do you deal with that? You have to learn to become very humble, and you have to recognize that they know a lot more than you do. I spent a lot of time walking around getting to know them, spending time sitting with them, learning what they were doing, how they were doing it. I think they appreciated that.
Bryant: You said your boss at the time was a good mentor. How so?
Eberhart: She knew that I really wanted to learn, I was dedicated, and I was working really hard. I have found that if people think you’re working really hard and trying, then they’ll spend extra time with you. I learned very early that you’ve got to ask for help, you’ve got to go in and say: “Look, I’ve got this situation and I’m not sure what to do. I want to run it by you.” If people think you’re really trying, they’ll go the extra mile to help you.
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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. To contact him, please click here.