When I first left Seremban for Dubai in 1998, I was convinced I was heading out to discover the world. In many ways, I was.
At the time, Dubai was very different from the global city we know today. There seemed to be more sand than skyscrapers. Sheikh Zayed Road, now famous for its towering skyline, was little more than a narrow two-way road cutting through the desert.
I did not speak a word of Arabic. In those early days, my survival strategy involved some variation of “Habibi, mafi Arabi… speak English?”, delivered with equal parts hope and desperation. Thankfully, Dubai has always been a city where people from different backgrounds find a way to communicate.
I did not have a job waiting for me in Dubai. What I did have was determination, resilience and perhaps a slightly unrealistic level of optimism.
Armed with a stack of CVs and a great deal of persistence, I went searching for opportunities.
For younger readers, this was long before LinkedIn, JobStreet, online applications or one-click job alerts. Back then, finding a job often began with the classified section of the daily newspaper. We would circle promising advertisements, jot down the addresses and make our way from office to office, CVs in hand, hoping to secure an interview.
Applying for jobs required far more determination, footwork and patience than it does today.
After countless conversations, rejections and more than a few moments of self-doubt, I eventually secured a junior role with a global fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company.
Twenty years later, that journey would take me into senior leadership positions across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, working closely with global headquarters and leadership teams around the world.
Not bad for a girl from small-town Seremban. But what surprises me most is not where that journey took me. It is what it taught me about leadership.
The Leadership Secret I Was Looking For
Throughout my career, I had a front-row seat to leadership in action. I worked with leaders from different countries, cultures, industries and economic environments, watching organisations navigate growth, disruption, transformation and uncertainty.
Like many HR professionals, I spent years searching for the secret formula. Surely leadership excellence had to come from somewhere: a framework from Europe, a management philosophy from the United States or a breakthrough model emerging from Asia.
Instead, I discovered something much simpler. The best leaders were rarely the loudest people in the room. They were not necessarily the most charismatic, the most credentialed or the most technically brilliant.
They understood people. They listened before they spoke, built trust, adapted and stayed calm when things became uncertain. Most importantly, they knew how to bring different people together around a common purpose.
Over the years, I sat in leadership team meetings across Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The dynamics varied. Some leaders preferred direct debate; others valued consensus.
One of my strengths was learning to read the room, adapt my approach and communicate with clarity and diplomacy across different cultures and perspectives. Working across continents sharpened these capabilities, but their foundations were laid much earlier. They were shaped by my experiences growing up and building my early career in Malaysia, long before I stepped into an international boardroom.
Today, consultants and academics have names for these qualities: emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence and inclusive leadership.
But long before they became leadership buzzwords, many Malaysians were already practising them. For many of us, they are simply part of everyday life.
Malaysia’s Hidden Leadership Advantage
Malaysia is often underestimated, even by Malaysians themselves. We spend so much time comparing ourselves with larger economies that we sometimes overlook our own strengths.
Think about how we grow up. We navigate different cultures, languages, traditions and perspectives almost every day. We learn that relationships matter, that influence often works better than authority, and that understanding differences is not a leadership skill reserved for executives. It is part of daily life.
In many countries, organisations spend thousands trying to teach these skills through leadership programmes. In Malaysia, many of these lessons begin long before people enter the workplace.
None of this means we have perfected leadership. Far from it.
But we may be taking for granted capabilities that the modern world increasingly values. As organisations become more diverse, interconnected and global, leaders must learn to navigate complexity rather than avoid it. That is something Malaysians already understand.
Why This Matters for Women Leaders
One lesson stands out from more than two decades of working across Asia, Africa and the Middle East: women do not lack leadership potential.
Too often, they operate within systems that were never intentionally designed to support diverse leadership journeys.
For years, leadership programmes have focused on “developing women”. Build confidence. Improve communication. Strengthen executive presence. Expand networks. These are all worthwhile.
But perhaps the bigger question is whether we are developing the environments around them.
Leadership development should not be about changing women to fit existing systems. It should be about creating environments in which talented women can thrive.
Perhaps this is why many successful women leaders from the Global South develop an extraordinary ability to adapt, connect and lead through complexity. They have often been navigating multiple worlds long before entering the boardroom.
That is where Malaysia has an opportunity to lead. Malaysians understand diversity, community and resilience. These are not merely social strengths; they are leadership strengths.
I now realise that many of the qualities the world calls future-ready leadership had been taking shape long before I left Malaysia. They include the ability to adapt, connect across cultures, navigate uncertainty and bring people together despite their differences.
These are not simply leadership competencies. They are strengths deeply embedded within Malaysian society.
As countries across the Global South search for leadership models that reflect their own realities, Malaysia has an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to that conversation.
We live with diversity and have learned how to grow across differences. Malaysia has the talent, experience and perspective to offer.
What is needed now is the confidence to recognise that we have something valuable to contribute. Malaysia should stop viewing itself as merely a participant in the global leadership conversation and start recognising its potential to help shape it.
The real question is not whether Malaysia has something valuable to contribute, but whether we are ready to recognise that ourselves.
Malaysia has spent decades learning how to live, work and grow across differences. In a world increasingly defined by complexity, that may be one of the most valuable leadership lessons we have to offer the Global South.
Mary Ratnam is the founder and principal consultant of Aspira Consultancy, a leadership and organisational development firm focused on leadership capability, talent transformation and inclusive workplace cultures.
The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not represent those of Twentytwo13.