Maria Shriver Returning to NBC as a ‘Special Anchor’

The announcement, made on the “Today” show on Tuesday morning, is a significant moment in Ms. Shriver’s move away from political life. Ms. Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family, was the first lady of California while her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was governor from 2003 to 2011. She and Mr. Schwarzenegger separated in 2011 after he admitted that he had fathered a child with a member of their household staff a decade earlier.

Until Mr. Schwarzenegger ran for governor, Ms. Shriver was a familiar face on NBC as a correspondent on the network newsmagazine “Dateline.” Her formal homecoming was foreshadowed last month when she contributed to NBC’s coverage of the selection of the new pope.

“Through her reports, her books, her events, her activism and the powerful social community that she has built, Maria Shriver has become a leading voice for empowering women and inspiring all of us to be architects of change in our lives,” said Pat Fili-Krushel, the NBCUniversal News Group chairwoman, in a statement on Tuesday. “We are delighted that Maria will play such a key role in our efforts to examine this important topic, and all of us at the NBC family are excited to welcome her home.”

In Ms. Shriver’s new role, she will not appear regularly on any one NBC program, but will be on a variety of them and will produce and anchor prime-time special reports. Her appearances will not be limited to NBC’s network news programs; they could also come on the cable channels MSNBC and CNBC and on the company’s sports shows. Her other title will be editor at large for women’s issues for the Web sites owned by NBC News, indicating that she will contribute to those as well.

Responding to questions via e-mail on Tuesday, Ms. Shriver said she worked with Ms. Fili-Krushel “and the NBC News team to create a new role that supported the work I’ve been doing and allowed me to take it all forward.”

NBC briefly partnered with Ms. Shriver in 2009 when she published a study titled “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything,” about the increase of women in the workplace and its effects. When the next such report is released next year, NBC will have “exclusive broadcast access” to it, the network said in a news release.

Ms. Shriver will remain in Los Angeles, and she said that she would not give up any of her outside work.

While the NBC positions are not full time, Ms. Shriver said, “knowing me and my love of reporting, I imagine it will fully occupy my mind.”

She added: “I see it as a partnership that will evolve over time and give me an ongoing outlet for many of the stories I want to tell. Like so many women, I’m trying to craft a life that allows me to do meaningful work and keep a focus on my family, which will always be my No. 1 job.”

Corner Office | Maria K. Mitchell: Maria Mitchell of Amdec on Hiring With a Nurse’s Intuition

Q. Have you always been interested in leadership roles?

A. I think some of it is who I am. My mother told a story about me that’s sort of a predictor of how I would be very different from everybody else in my family. When I was in kindergarten, the bus stop was down the street past my house. So I asked the bus driver to stop at my house, because why should he go to the corner when my house was here? I talked them into changing the bus stop to my house because I thought it didn’t make sense. My mother said she just couldn’t believe that in kindergarten I was having this argument with the driver about where to go. So I think some of it is a little bit genetic.

I also discovered over the years that I’m good at taking complex problems and simplifying them and figuring out a path to a solution. I was always very goal-oriented. I would watch people in meetings sit and talk in a lot of disarray and never get anywhere, and I just found that I would naturally take charge and try to get to a place where there was a solution.

I also found I was pretty intolerant of people not quickly getting to where they needed to get to. I still don’t have a lot of tolerance for people not getting to the point, or not coming to a solution. I’m a doer.

Q. How has your leadership style evolved?

A. A colleague once told me that I was overprincipled. I remember saying to him: “That’s ridiculous. How can you be overprincipled?” I didn’t quite understand what that meant at first, but I think I was too black-and-white about people’s work ethic early on, without taking into consideration a lot of the gray. I now think it’s O.K. to manage within more of those gray areas. I’ve also learned to listen better to other people’s ideas and take them, not just listen to them. I’ve learned to be more flexible.

I also think you need to know who’s working for you and working with you. By virtue of being together all day, you learn about people’s lives. If there are things that need understanding, you make it clear that you do understand, and if there are things that people need, time or whatever, you give it to them. But clearly there are people who might take advantage of that and — this is another aspect of myself — I tell people when I hire them exactly who I am. I’m informal. I’m nice. Everything looks friendly, but don’t ever mistake that for not getting the job done.

Q. And you will say that?

A. I will say exactly that. I give people a lot of leeway, but once the line gets crossed, the line gets crossed, and if the line is getting crossed, then it’s a different story. I don’t have a hard-and-fast rule about it. When I see it I know it, and I haven’t had too many people take advantage of that.

Q. Other ways your leadership style has developed?

A. Early on, I did get feedback from people who worked for me that I didn’t delegate enough. I realized that I was striving for perfection, and that’s not fair to the people I worked with and it wasn’t fair to me or the organization because one person can’t do everything.

People need to take credit for things and own things, and it’s important to be proud of the people who work for you and hire good people. People often judge people by the people they have around them. If they have good, strong people around them, I think it says something about them, as opposed to just having a bunch of people around who do what you tell them to do.

I am delegating better with trust over time, especially as I see more work that I trust. I’ve realized I can’t do everything, and everything isn’t going to be the way I want it to be. It’s made my life easier to trust other people to do the right thing.

Q. What about hiring? How do you interview people?

A. When I see the person, I kind of figure out what I’m going to say. I’ll assess whether a person is comfortable or uncomfortable and then proceed in different ways. I often start just by asking, “Tell me about yourself.”

So I try to put the person at ease a bit before I launch in, and then focus on what they think they bring to the organization. If I feel like I’m getting pat answers or something that just doesn’t sound sincere, I try to shift gears to something different like: “What’s your favorite movie? What book are you reading? Why do you like it?” That will often make them feel more comfortable and you can go back to conversation about work.

Q. And what’s your favorite movie?

A. “Cabaret.”

Q. Why?

A. I love the dancing, I love the singing, and I love the acting. And it’s an incredibly important story, and they found a way to tell it and help people understand without hitting them over the head.

Q. When you’re interviewing candidates, what qualities are you looking for?

A. First and foremost: smart. Smart, smart, smart. I also want somebody who has a good personality and seems happy. I look for a good, strong work ethic and somebody who seems to really want the job, cares about our mission and cares about what we’re doing. I would say those are the main things.

Q. Your bio says you started out as a nurse. Do you find that experience comes into play when sizing up job candidates?

A. Yes, I do. I was also a nurse practitioner, and you’re taught that 90 percent of medical history is communication and body language. I was a very good diagnostician. I’m very intuitive. I can get a sense of somebody pretty quickly.

Q. Give me an example of how you do that.

A. You can see in somebody’s face if they’re nice, and if they have nice eyes. I think eyes tell you a lot about a person, and their kindness. And when they speak, do they speak with sincerity in their voice? That’s not about body language, but you can just tell when somebody’s sincere or not sincere.