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 Tricia Clarke-Stone, C.E.O. of Narrative, a marketing and technology firm. 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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Tell me about your early years.

I grew up in Brooklyn, and I have a twin sister. My parents divorced when we were young. Early on, I was exposed to my mom being super determined to make sure she could provide for us. She was like a Swiss Army knife. She did everything by any means necessary.

That really instilled a characteristic in me — I believe you can always achieve, no matter what. It might seem like nothing is going in your direction, but there’s always a way to take control of the situation.

My sister and I had a strong bond growing up. So I always had someone by my side to pressure-test ideas with. I had this external barometer who was always with me. Having a partner in crime early on instilled a level of confidence that stayed with me.

How has your mother influenced your leadership style today?

She always had high expectations for us. And when I’m managing my team today, I go in with really high expectations. Some might say that could be a negative, because then you’re putting a lot of pressure on them. But I think it helps everyone know where the bar is set. They know what that North Star is.

What were some early leadership lessons for you?

A mentor told me early on that because I was so invested in the work, people sometimes had the perception that I could fly off the handle. They knew it was not coming from a bad place, but she said that I didn’t want people to have that perception, because perception is reality.

So I created a process for myself. Instead of reacting right away, I would type out a response instead of calling someone to get it off my chest quickly. Then I would step away, come back after an hour, and look at it again, and say, “Now that my emotions are down and I’m not as heated, does this still make sense? Should I go this route?”

Two-thirds of the time it was probably still the way to go. But with the other third, it wasn’t.

What lessons have you learned since you started your own company?

There was a period when I was looking to hire people with a certain pedigree. I wasn’t looking for people with the drive and passion that I have, and that was wrong. So I started looking at who they were inherently as people.

And so how do you hire now?

I’m looking for people like the MacGyver TV character. Not everybody knows who that is, so I’ll actually send job candidates YouTube clips from the show before they come in for a follow-up interview.

And I’ll say, “This is the type of person that I’m looking for — someone who’s resourceful and basically relishes the moment of being able to really solve a problem.” I need that at our company, especially because we don’t have a rigid structure.

A lot of people will tell me, “I have such an entrepreneurial spirit.” They’ve worked in a department of 500 people, and they think they could be an entrepreneur. I’ve hired some of these people, and there’s a big difference between having an entrepreneurial spirit when you’re part of a 500-person team and being at a company like mine, where you’re part of a 20-person team. There’s a much greater level of accountability, because each person plays such an integral role, and you have to translate that entrepreneurial spirit into action and something tangible.

I like to hear that people played on teams when they were younger, because they know that they play a role and that it’s for the greater good of the task or the team.

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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 of hundreds of business leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.