I was having a chat earlier this week with my brother who is working in the US. We talked a bit about the current corporate ecosystem and how it feels to be an Indian working in the US.
He mentioned that “Indians, especially South Indians, are usually too humble in a corporate environment and do not like to show off their work”.
This statement felt a bit paradoxical to me. True, South Indians very much like to keep a low tone when in a foreign environment.
Culturally, we are still in a Gerontocracy society were age becomes a crucial factor in how we speak, behave, and position ourselves in groups. Many South Indians grow up learning to respect hierarchy without openly challenging authority, especially in public settings.
But then how is it that South Indians like Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Shantanu Narayen, were able to consolidate the top position in one of the top 10 companies in the world?
And their performance as CEOs is impressive to say the least.
Pichai has navigated Google from being a pure ad company to a more balanced technology infrastructure + AI company.
Nadella and Narayen are widely regarded as the most transformative CEOs in Microsoft and Adobe respectively, taking their companies into the cloud era successfully, shifting culture, and driving strong financial performance.
It is easy to categorize their rise to leadership as something that was possible at a time when Silicon Valley and the broader US immigration ecosystem was more accommodating of Indian Tech talent.
The mental toil of instability that comes with new immigration policies, rising nationalism sentiments and the threat of AI replacing their jobs impacts massively on the performance of current immigrants.
While this mental stability surrounding their job might have allowed the previous generation of tech immigrants to focus on their performance, it did not guarantee their rise to the top.
None of the above mentioned CEOs lobbied for their role to become a CEO. All three men were recognized internally for the deep understanding of the products they make.
In Nadella’s case, on the day Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft decided to step down, one of the board members asked Nadella “Do you want to be the CEO?”. His reply, “Only if you want me to be the CEO”.
At this point, Ballmer and the board has already made the decision and the advise he gave to Nadella was “Just be yourself and see what happens”.
Growing up in a culture where you don’t overstate yourself creates a kind of internal baseline:
“I am not the hero of the room, the work is.”
This humility makes South Indians easy to trust in leadership. They don’t signal dominance; they signal dependability.
When I was doing an internship in France, one of the managers in the company specifically hires Indians for this exact reason - Dependability.
What compliments humility is Self-awareness. Humility without awareness becomes self-erasure.
Self Awareness is the ability to see three things clearly:
- What you’re already good at.
- What you could become if you truly stretched yourself.
- And what it would cost you if you never closed that gap.
When Satya Nadella took over as Microsoft CEO from Steve Ballmer in 2014, the company was suffering from a dysfunctional, political culture that had missed every significant high-tech innovation in the past decade, including internet search, mobile phones, e-commerce, social media, and the cloud.
Microsoft’s culture had become dogmatic, because everyone had to prove they knew it all and were the smartest people in the room.
Nadella committed to change Microsoft’s culture from “know-it-alls” to “learn-it-alls.”
He went on a “listening tour,” meeting with managers throughout the firm and quickly implementing some of the bottom-up requests. After a gaffe in responding to a question at a tech conference about gender discrimination, Nadella went out of his way to apologize, drawing attention to his mistake and publicly meeting with women in tech groups to learn more.
He sees the CEO’s chief job is being the curator of the organization’s culture.
And when Humility and Self-awareness combine, both personally and within the wider organization, it creates something called as constructive tension. It is the internal pull that makes you bridge the Gap from who you are today to who you know you can become.
This constructive tension is what builds the resilience to navigate uncertainty. It does not create fear when faced with an unstable immigration policy. You understand the way which will make you invaluable in this system and work towards it.
But constructive tension only emerges after humility and self-awareness are in place. You need to know where you are and where you want to be before you decide which path to take.
Humility grounds you, self-awareness shows the path ahead, and constructive tension is what moves you forward.
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