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 Tracey Matura. She is the general manager for the Smart car unit at Mercedes-Benz USA. “If you’re going to tell me you’ve never failed,” she says of job candidates, “then it makes me wonder if you always hide your failures.”

Photo credit: Librado Romero/The New York Times

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

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Can’t Acknowledge Failure? Don’t Apply

Bryant: What were some important leadership lessons for you?

Matura: I had a great mentor early on, so I asked a lot of questions, which doesn’t necessarily come easily because you want to show that you know it all. But I was not afraid to ask questions, and I watched the right type of managers and recognized the wrong type of managers. You can make a fatal mistake if you watch the person who you perceive as being the most successful, but you’re not necessarily watching the right leadership skills.

Bryant:  Can you elaborate?

Matura: In one of my jobs, the people who seemed to be the most successful, in hindsight, were successful at the expense of other people. If you just looked from the outside, you would say that the person must be a fantastic manager, because they’ve built a great team, been successful, and they have a winning record. If you didn’t peel back the skin and look closely, you would have thought, “That’s who I should follow.” And I would have learned some inappropriate lessons.

I watched a lot of people, and then I started to realize that some people had their team behind them. So I started to notice those little things and then said, “O.K., what can I pick and choose from them that’s most important?” I think the one that bubbled up to me was that the people who took the most time with their team might not have had the greatest people, but they had the most passionate people or the people who were the most thought-provoking.

I’m thankful I recognized that. I’m an observer, which I think helped me. If I hadn’t been an observer, I probably would have followed the wrong path. I don’t know where that would have taken me, to be honest, but I probably would have developed into a not-so-nice leader with more of an authoritative, do-it-my-way style. Instead, I use a mix of a collaborative approach and letting people just fly on their own.

Bryant:  Have you always been an observer?

Matura:  I’m the youngest of four. The other three are very close in age, and then there’s a big gap to me. I never wanted to be the little sister who nobody wants to bring around, so I think it started there. I would watch them to figure out: “O.K., what do they do? How can I be a little bit more grown up so that I fit into their world?” So I’m naturally one who listens more and talks less. It was a plus in terms of watching people’s leadership skills.

Bryant:  What other lessons?

Matura:  I’ve learned the importance of building the right team, and I’ve also learned I have to open up about who I am, and understand how people on my team like to work. Some people need you to talk to them for the first five minutes of their day about what they did over the weekend, and you can’t undervalue how important that is. I make it a point now, which I probably didn’t do early on as a leader, to know what everybody’s about. Mary needs me to have the five-minute conversation, and Joe needs me to just let him run because he’s more like me — he’s been up since 6 a.m. and cleared out all his e-mails so that he can hit the ground running when he gets to the office.

I think I’ve developed that skill to let them know me, and for me to get to know them better. It doesn’t seem like you should have to be taught that or learn that, but we’re all human. So if I’m the kind of person who just hits the ground running, it’s not because I mean to be exclusionary or rude; it’s just that that’s kind of how I am. But as the leader, I need to understand how everybody else likes to work. So I think knowing your team and letting your team get to know you is really important.

For me, I’ve had to explain that if I’m running at 1,000 miles an hour, it doesn’t mean everybody has to run at 1,000 miles an hour. It’s just who I am, and people need to feel free to say to me, “Hey, can you slow down because I go at 100 miles an hour and you’re kind of driving me crazy?” And I’ve had those conversations. People have said: “Remember when you told me I could tell you things? I’m telling you now you need to slow down.”

Bryant:  And you’ve said this to everybody?

Matura:  At Smart, I built the team from the beginning, and I had that conversation with each new person who came on the team, and I reiterate it so that everybody understands me. I think sometimes leaders don’t explain themselves, and we don’t necessarily know that we should.

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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 new 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.