An interview with Wal-Mart’s Vice Chairman, Eduardo Castro-Wright, was featured in the New York Times’ Corner Office section a few days ago. In challenging times, as I’ve said before, it’s important for managers and senior level executives to be able to properly lead their troops. Here are a few excerpts from the insightful Q & A.

On Leadership

Q. What is the most important leadership lesson you’ve learned?

A. Walking the talk is the most important lesson I’ve learned. There’s nothing that destroys credibility more than not being able to look someone in the eye and have them know that they can trust you. Leadership is about trust. It’s about being able to get people to go to places they never thought they could go. They can’t do that if they don’t trust you.

Q. What have you learned to do more of, or less of, over time?

A. I read something early on when I was in my first or second management role that you can accomplish almost anything in life if you do not care who takes credit for it. So I’ve tried to do more of that. And I’ve tried to do less of the things that make business more complex. I really like simplicity. At the end of the day, retailing – but you could apply this to many other businesses – is not as complicated as we would like to make it. It is pretty logical and simple, if you think about the way that you yourself would act, or do act, as a customer.

On Career Advice

Q. What was the best advice you were given about your career?A. Someone I trusted when I was working for Nabisco convinced me that if I really wanted to have bigger and more impactful opportunities, then I probably needed to become broader in my knowledge. And I’ve changed industries twice since then, completely different industries.

On Interviewing & Hiring

Q. What do you look for in job candidates?

A. People I interview today are most likely going to be in a senior leadership role. And leadership roles in business require enormous energy – both physical and, very importantly, emotional energy. And so I try to find out whether they have the enormous amount of energy it takes to lead and manage. You’re exposed so often to decisions that are emotionally charged; you have to have the balance and the energy, the emotional strength to actually do it.

Q. What kind of questions do you ask to get at that?

A. I ask them to share how they have dealt in the past with major issues, like a reduction in force, and major changes in the business environment. An interview is not a perfect process, right? You can’t learn about people in one hour, but it is helpful.

On Better Business Education

Q. What would you like business schools to teach more, or less?

A. I’ve done this quiz several times when we have gone to talk at business schools. I always ask people, “So who’s taking accounting?” And everybody raises their hand. And, “Who’s taking strategy?” And everybody raises their hand – and you go on with your typical curriculum about the business school. Mostly they are very good at teaching strategy, operations, management, finance, accounting.

But then I ask, “O.K., how many courses have you taken on how you talk with an employee you’re firing?” Or, “How do you talk with the person who comes to your office late at night to tell you that her daughter is sick and she might not be able to come in the following day?” Or, “What do you say when they come in with issues in their marriage that are impacting their job?”

As managers and leaders of people, those are the kinds of questions that one deals with probably 80 percent of the time. I think that business schools could do more to prepare kids to deal with the often more difficult side of business management and leadership. The balance of courses is probably weighted to the numeric side of business as opposed to the people side of business.

Q. And you obviously think such things can be taught?

A. I think they can. You can guide people to get them to understand the implications of decisions they make.

Photo credit: Spencer Tirey for The New York Times