In 2006 Optus Communications asked Div Pillay, then a recently arrived immigrant from South Africa, to help set up call centres in Mumbai, Delhi and the Philippines.
Her South Indian community had maintained a strong cultural awareness over five generations, partly because it had been forced to stick together under South Africa's notorious apartheid era group Areas Act. 
Thirteen years after Mrs Pillay came to Australia, her nine-year-old daughter learns Bharata Natyam dance.
But when she stepped back into the Indian environment to teach Indian people how to answer calls from Australian customers, Mrs Pillay realised how Western her leadership style had become.
"I had to step back and say, 'I have got to lead quite differently'. I had to lead from an Indian perspective," she told The Australian Financial Review. "I had to rewire myself."
Now, as the managing director of MindTribes, a company she founded to teach cross-cultural awareness, Mrs Pillay helps the employees of Australian companies to rewire themselves to deal with colleagues, customers and negotiating partners in India, Sri Lanka, south-east Asia, Fiji, Britain and South Africa.
Mrs Pillay is part of a 1.7 million strong Chinese and Indian diaspora that the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) says in a new report is brimming with entrepreneurial zeal and the potential to help local firms do business more effectively in Asia, but under-utilised and under-represented in senior roles.
She participated in the study and the findings struck a chord with her. "It's an emerging concept that Western leadership is just awakening to the realisation that we do have a diaspora here and we should put it to good use," she said.
"I think they are unsure of how to utilise the talent. They are aware that they should but I think the road map of how to do it is quite up in the air."
MindTribes' clients include National Australia Bank, where Mrs Pillay helps senior leaders to better engage with Indian teams, and American Express, where she helps Filipino employees adjust to selling to Australian mid-market financial leaders.
Her key lesson is that Australian managers, team leaders and negotiators can't just translate their brusque, straight-to-the-point approach to an Asian context where relationship building, saving face and avoiding "shaming" are paramount.
"India is highly relationship based and Western culture is highly task oriented," she said. "A lot of these deals fail because there is no relationship built."
Key points
MindTribes assists cross-cultural business understandings.
Chinese and Indian diaspora "brimming" with potential.