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For Lalit Dhingra, coming to the United States in 25 years ago was not a clear-cut choice.
In 1997, before the new millennium, the path to the U.S. for Indian tech executives was not nearly as well-trodden, and especially in a place like Atlanta, the hurdles for expatriates — such as getting a driver’s license, finding schools and purchasing a home — were even more daunting than they remain today.
Then there was Mr. Dhingra’s personal situation: A well-established tech executive working for NIIT Technologies, he was happily married with young children and coping with the recent death of his father, an event that plagued him with guilt that he hadn’t done enough to help.
But ultimately, the allure of building a business in the world’s largest technology market joined with his desire to honor parents who had always wanted a doctor and an engineer in the family. With his brother already working as a physician in Boston, Mr. Dhingra saw his chance to fulfill even more completely his father’s dream for his education.
“This was a big opportunity leading U.S. operations for a company. To grow it was a great challenge, because I was a technocrat and moving into the business was a big thing for me,” Mr. Dhingra said during an author talk on his 2020 book “Driven: A Journey to Leadership” held at the law firm of Arnall Golden Gregory LLP. The program was the latest interview in Global Atlanta’s Authors Amplified series sponsored by the Atlanta Global Studies Center.
Watch the full interview:
“Driven” is the story of Mr. Dhingra’s dogged persistence in the face of many challenges that threatened to derail — or at least delay — his path to success. It also recounts lessons learned through a 40-year career building and managing teams in settings blending entrepreneurial initiative with corporate strategy. For 28 year, this was carried out mainly within a company — NIIT — that was both internationally connected and locally committed to Atlanta and the broader U.S. market.
The son of a teacher and a postal-service employee, Mr. Dhingra grew up in Delhi with a strong sense of social responsibility. In addition to his day job, Mr. Dhingra’s father worked as a volunteer for a nonprofit that helped poorer people gain access to housing. That left an impression on the young Lalit, who was born in 1957, just 10 years after India gained independence.
His winding career path included many obstacles. After passing a written exam to become an Air Force pilot, he found out that he wasn’t tall enough to enlist.
“It was not about my total height, it was about my leg length,” he said. “They had specifics — so maybe I was not proportionate enough.”
Mr. Dhingra was a bit perturbed when a teacher consoled him with what he felt was a trite saying: when one door closes, another opens.
“I was very disappointed. I said, ‘What are you saying? What does it mean? To me, one door closing means it’s closed as far as I’m concerned,’ but that stuck in my head.”
He realized the wisdom of the sentiment as life wore on.
“If I look back 44 years, the fact that I didn’t get it — what I am today, maybe that was the destiny I had,” he said during the wide-ranging interview.
Soon after that, Mr. Dhingra saw another door close. Forced to decline an offer to a prestigious technology institute because his family couldn’t afford the fees; he settled on the Delhi College of Engineering, where he could also work at his uncle’s restaurant early in the mornings and later in the evening to earn money to help the family. The work at the restaurant led to a tutoring gig in math, in which he excelled. He eventually delved into operational research, a field where he had such promise that a professor encouraged him to apply to the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi — an even longer shot than the previous school.
When he saw 1,000 applicants for 15 open slots, Mr. Dhingra told his professor, Dr. M.C. Puri, that he was deflated by the low odds he faced.
“He spent a lot of time with me, and he said, ‘You should look at your positives. Don’t look at the outside world, because you can’t control that,’” Mr. Dhingra said.
After somehow placing in the top 60 on the written exam, he caught a break: During the in-person interview with a panel of professors, he was asked to explain in-depth on the blackboard a topic he’d just spent months working on. He ended up topping the list of 15 selected candidates.
While Mr. Dhingra considers this to be luck, he also set the stage by working hard and embracing the so-called “soft skills” that he says are lacking in today’s educational environment: communication, collaboration, empathy, respect and transparency.
In the book, Mr. Dhingra takes a Socratic approach to explaining how leaders can embrace these qualities, recounting past conversations and real-world examples — some of them personal failures and others resounding successes — where lessons were drilled into him through cold, hard experience that can’t be replicated in the classroom.
With industry often disconnected from academia, students can find themselves armed with subject-matter knowledge but unprepared to transition from college to professional life, he said.
“We’re not preparing people for the jobs, we are preparing people for the entry to a job,” said Mr. Dhingra, an advisor to the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Scheller College of Business.
He wrote “Driven” as a collection of personal stories and dialogues partly to swim agains the current of business and leadership books, which wax eloquently about concepts he feels are hard to master just in the classroom.
“All leadership courses, all leadership books, are trying to preach to you and tell you what you need. But nobody tells you how to get it,” he said, noting that his best leaders were those who showed support while encouraging him to find answers on his own.
Through stories, Mr. Dhingra shares how empathic listening is key to sales success, how empowering employees is different from just delegating to them and how personal biases can be overcome through the simple, humanizing act of social engagement. He stresses that leaders must lead with integrity, balancing authority with approachability. And they should always ensure their values are aligned with the company they’re leading.
Perhaps most importantly for an executive who launched digital transformation consultancy EnSignis Digital in his 60s and recently embarked on a new venture, the technology collaboration platform MatchupIT, Mr. Dhingra says his leadership experience has left him optimistic that there is hope for conquering intergenerational biases within companies.
“I don’t call them older people; I call them experienced people,” he said. A disconnect occurs when this experience butts heads with the knowledge and tools enjoyed by the younger.
“The only thing (the older generation) has to say is, ‘The tool you have today, I built it. The previous generation built the tools for the next generation, and you’re going to build for the next generation.’”
This puts the parties on the same side of the problem, setting their egos aside in service of the company’s broader objectives.
“The more dialogues you have, the biases will go away, and there is a respect for each other.”
Buy signed and reduced-price unsigned copies of Driven on the Global Atlanta store.
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