For the past several weeks, I’ve been keeping up with the New York Times’ Corner Office column (which I have published onto my Netvibes start page), and I must say that I’m hooked.

Reiterating my need for a career coach/mentor (which I’ve had no luck in finding), this column has really given me some great insight into how some of todays CEOs think and operate. What’s also great about these articles is that the interviewer regularly asks the CEO how they got to their current position, what they look for in a job candidate, and what their favorite piece of advice was.

Here are some of the highlights from my readings over the past weeks:

From Robert Iger, CEO of Disney:

“Optimism is a very, very important part of leadership. However, you need a dose of realism with it.”

“…if you’re not good at one thing, try something else. Don’t stick with something you’re not good at unless you think you could turn yourself into someone who’s good at that.”

“Just when you think that nothing’s going to change, everything changes.”

1.) Be patient. 2.) Be accessible. 3.) Be optimistic

From Greg Brenneman, Chairman of CCMP Capital:

“In any interaction, you either gain share or lose share.”

“It takes you just as long to respond quickly as it does slowly.”

“Think about the ’shadow of the leader’.”

“…socioeconomic wealth is not the only, or even the most important metric of personal happiness.”

From Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines:

“Learn to be patient and not lose your temper. Everything you do is an example, and people look at everything you do and take a signal from everything you do.”

“Be thankful to the people who get the work done; be thankful to your customers.”

“If you can just focus on getting your job done and being a good colleague and a team player in an organization, and not focused about being overly ambitious and wanting pay raises and promotions and the like, and just doing your job and being part of a team, the rest will take care of itself.”

1.) Only touch paper once. 2.) Always have your homework done. 3.) Return your calls very promptly. 4.) Stick to your schedule.

From John Donahoe, CEO of eBay:

John shares some advice from an old boss:

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I was suffering from a real fear of failure. Kent [John's old boss] said, “You know, John, your challenge is that you’re trying to bat .900.” And he said, “When you were first in college, you got a lot of A’s. You could get 90, 95 percent right. When you took your first job as an analyst, you were really successful and felt like you were batting .900.” But he said, and this is probably five years into my career, “Now you’ve moved from the minor leagues. You’re playing in the major leagues, and if you expect to bat .900, what happens is, either you come up to bat and you freeze because you’re so afraid of swinging and missing, or you’re a little afraid to step into the batters box.”"

“He said, “Best I can tell, the best hitters in MLB, world-class, they can strike out 6 times out of 10 and still be the greatest hitter of all time.”"

“And he said, “…that’s my philosophy- the key is to get up in that batter’s box and take a swing. And all you have to do is hit one single, a couple of doubles, and an occasional home run out of every 10 at-bats, and you’re going to be the best hitter or the best business leader around.”"

“You can’t play in the major leagues without having a lot of failures.”

The New York Times’ Corner Office column is published weekly, and is written by Adam Bryant.