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 Tiger Tyagarajan, chief executive of Genpact, a business process and technology management company. He says, “Curiosity opens up so many other windows. You’re more inclusive. You question more, and you listen. In today’s world, if you’re not curious, you’re dead, because every day is so different from yesterday.”

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

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

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Were you in leadership roles or doing entrepreneurial things as a child?

No. I was a nerd. In my family, education was all that mattered, and being No. 1 in your class was the only thing that mattered. If you were No. 2, then the question was, why aren’t you No. 1? I grew up in India, and in that culture, math and science were all that mattered.

And were you No. 1?

I was for many years. But at some point in college, I changed my view of what’s important to be successful. You have to be able to work in a team and communicate. Just knowing the answer is not good enough. That was a big transformation.

How did you learn that?

A group of us would work on projects together and then we would go around the room and decide who’s going to present. Invariably everyone would say, “I’m not presenting,” because they figured that having the answer was the most important thing. None of us realized that presenting is equally important. So I would raise my hand to present, and I enjoyed it.

Tell me about your first job out of college.

I joined Chesebrough-Pond’s as a management trainee in sales in charge of a regional territory. I had about 10 people on my team. I was about 24, had no work experience, and the oldest person in the group had 35 years of experience.

So what did you do?

I started by saying I didn’t know anything. There was no reason for my team to listen to me, and I didn’t even know what to tell them. So I quickly decided that I needed them to teach me. I gravitated to the most senior person in the group and had him coach me. I was also completely open and transparent with him. That helped build trust.

Other lessons you learned about leadership over the years?

I’m a big believer that you have to have incentives that drive behavior, and to align everyone around them you must make them easily understandable. Metrics that show progress, and that make it possible for everyone to know where they are going, are even more important than trying to be the fastest or the first. You’ve got to find a way to measure progress, because if you don’t, you might end up with a person spending a year thinking that they’ve done a great job, but actually they haven’t.

How do you hire? What qualities are you looking for?

The single biggest quality I look for is the ability and desire to learn. Are you a really curious person? If you are, then you learn. If you’re not, then you won’t learn. And curiosity opens up so many other windows. You’re more inclusive. You question more, and you listen. In today’s world, if you’re not curious, you’re dead, because every day is so different from yesterday. In an interview, I want to know whether you exhibit all the qualities to learn, and are you willing to spend the blood, sweat and tears to learn?

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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.comthat 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 with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here.

His more recent book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, was also also published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.