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 Vivek Gupta, C.E.O. of Zensar Technologies, a global software services company based in Pune, India. “I want to hire people who are very different from me or better than me in certain areas so that one plus one equals more than two.”

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

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

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Were you in leadership roles or doing entrepreneurial things when you were younger?

No. I was just an ordinary kid. I grew up in India. My father used to get transferred often, so by the time I was in high school, I was in my sixth or seventh school. Leadership came to me much later.

But throughout my childhood, I would always latch onto a friend or a group of friends who were better than me in something, and I would then pace myself with them and learn from them and feed off of them. I always liked that challenge. That continued even in college.

Tell me about your parents. How have they influenced your leadership style?

My mother was a homemaker, and my father worked in the public sector. We lost him when I was in college, but he was my role model. My father was always revered by the people who reported to him. Even 20 or 30 years later, I would meet people who would say, “Your father was such a wonderful manager. He was tough on us, but he was great.”

When we went out, we would have fun, but he would not allow that rapport to be used for leverage against him. He could be a coach, and a friend, but there would be a line you could not cross.

So when I became a manager, I said to myself, “Can I be what my father was? Will people say 20 years after they stop working for me that I was a great manager and that they enjoyed their time working with me?” That’s what I really wanted to achieve.

So what were some early lessons for you as a young manager?

There was a young girl, straight out of college, who walked into my office and said, “I’d like to talk to you. I want to be in sales.” I talked to her, and I was quite nervous that she could handle the job. I had spent a rough five years doing sales, traveling all over the country. How would she be able to do that?

I went home and told my wife about the interview, and that she didn’t fit the role. She stopped me and said, “ What are your requirements?” My wife told me to give her a chance.

So the next day I laid it all out for her, and told her what the job involved, and that there will be days when she hates the job. I was actually very uncomfortable with the whole thing, and I told her: “Listen, this is a tough job in my mind. Are you prepared to do this?” She said yes. I gave the job to her, and she turned out to be the best salesperson of the company.

I had been a biased 25-year-old who grew up in a world that gave more status to men than women. That day, I realized that women don’t get enough opportunities in the business world, and from then on I have been an advocate for equal opportunities.

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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.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 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.