by Erin Meyer
If you are working with someone from a relationship-based culture and opportunities for a personal connection don’t jump out at you, it is worth the investment to look a little harder—as Italian Alberto Gaiani found when he worked with a team of young software engineers based in Mumbai, India.
“I couldn’t imagine what we could possibly have in common,” Gaiani told me. “I was well aware from past experiences that, in order to manage a team of Indians effectively, it is absolutely critical to develop a good relationship with them.” But Gaiani had two challenges. The bigger challenge was the fact that he couldn’t travel because of budget cuts. The smaller was his personal background, so strikingly different from that of his Indian team members. As Gaiani explained,
I am forty-six years old with four children. My life is homework and diapers and weekend trips to grandma’s house. But one thing I do love is music. I listen to music in the car, in the shower, while I’m working. Classical, rock, you name it. So then it occurred to me, why not use Indian pop music to make a connection?
I Googled “Indian pop music what’s hot.” Then I spent two hours listening to the top songs that came up on YouTube and getting a feel for the rhythms and beats. For the song I liked the best, I sent my Indian staff a link. “Do you know this song?” I asked them. “Do you love it like I do?” They responded with a resounding “NO, we don’t like that song—are you kidding?” “This is my twelve-year-old sister’s favorite song! You can do better than that!” one of them told me. And then they sent me links to the songs they liked. I created a great dialogue with them over something that was very interesting to all of us personally.
The time it took for Gaiani to investigate which songs were hot in Mumbai paid off in myriad intangible ways. As he says, “In the past I have often had the experience with Indian employees such that, if you don’t develop a good personal relationship with them, they will tell you everything is okay even if the entire project has gone up in flames. Once the relationship is built, loyalty and openness comes with it.”
What makes Gaiani’s example particularly powerful is that he managed to do all this relationship building without ever meeting with his staff face-to-face. This, of course, is the reality that many of us face today. We work with people in countries on the opposite side of the planet, knowing very little about their cultural context. This makes relationship building more difficult, but no less important.
SHOWING YOUR TRUE SELF: THE RELATIONSHIP IS THE CONTRACT
Picture this situation: You are on a business trip, and after a full day of formal meetings, a potential client has invited you out to dinner. As drinks are served and delicious smells roll out of the kitchen, how do you feel?
Careful to maintain your professional composure. You want to be certain that you don’t drink too much or let down your guard and make a bad impression. You are friendly, attentive, and trying to connect with the client, but careful to put your best foot forward at all times.
Or
Ready to let go. You have been focused on business all day long—now is the time to have some fun, develop friendships, show who you are outside of a business setting, and get to know others beyond their work personas. You share drinks, open up, and relax without concern.
As my roots are in a task-based culture and I worked for the first several years of my career in the United States, my assumption was that the first scenario—caution—is the most proper answer. My strong belief was that when among people who could have any impact on my business success—not just clients but colleagues and other associates—I should always show the best “me” possible. The ditzy, forgetful “me” who loses her keys and forgets her purse at restaurants—not to mention the fun-loving, noisy “me” who often talks more than she listens and has lots of accidental-bad-mother stories to report—should be reserved for family and friends.
But time and experience have taught me that the second scenario, show your nonprofessional self, is often the better approach when working with relationship-based cultures. I initially learned this lesson when working with Repsol, the Spanish oil giant. Ricardo Bartolome, who worked on a global team in the company’s Texas office, gave me this valuable insight:
One of the aspects I find so difficult about working with Americans is that, although they are very friendly, sometimes surprisingly so, they don’t show you who they really are in a business relationship. They are so politically correct. They don’t dare complain or show negative emotion.
In Spanish culture, we put a strong value on the importance of being authentico, and we perceive Americans as not authentic. You can work with an American supplier for years and hear all about his family, his weekends, his children, but everything is wrapped up in a package of positivity that we Europeans feel is impenetrable.
My colleagues call Americans superficial and fake, but I don’t see it that way. I think they are just very, very careful to not show business counterparts who they really are. In either case, it makes it hard for us to trust them.
Bartolome’s comments got me thinking about the downside of maintaining a “professional” demeanor in all my interactions with business acquaintances. Another mind-shifter for me was a conversation with Ted Krooner, an American whose work brought him frequently to Latin America. Krooner complained:
I just get so exhausted on those trips to Mexico. After a long day of meetings, we go out to a restaurant and then out for more drinks. I can hang on for an hour, or an hour and a half. But the evenings drag on and on. They are drinking and laughing, really having a great time . . . but I feel like my head is about to hit the table. I just can’t concentrate any longer.
I sympathized with Krooner, having felt the same way during my own evenings with business associates in Latin America. But as I reflected on his words, I began to recognize in Krooner what I hadn’t really understood about myself. Krooner felt exhausted after a night of partying because “he couldn’t concentrate any longer.” But his relationship-based colleagues had left concentration behind when they entered the restaurant.
The best strategy in this situation is to join the crowd. When working in a relationship-based culture such as Mexico, the moment you switch from boardroom to restaurant or bar is the moment you need to begin acting as if you are out on the town with your best friends. Don’t worry about saying or doing the wrong thing. Be yourself—your personal self, not your business self. Dare to show that you have nothing to hide, and the trust—and likely the business—will follow.
Of course, a focus on keeping a professional persona isn’t the only reason task-based people find it hard to adjust to relationship-based cultures. Investing hours in building affective trust can seem time-consuming and wasteful. In the words of a Danish oil executive who had recently moved to Lagos, Nigeria, “Who has time? Of course we all know that relationship building is key in Nigeria, but I’m very busy. If I spend the time and energy necessary to build affective trust with my Nigerian suppliers, I simply won’t have time to get my job done.”
It’s an understandable complaint—and it raises an obvious question: Why do people in cultures like Nigeria, India, or Argentina invest so much time in relationship building? Is it simply that they are inefficient or prefer socializing to working?
There is, in fact, a very clear, practical benefit to investing in affective relationship building—especially when working in emerging markets. This brings us back to the business value of trust.
Suppose you are the Danish owner of a business that designs women’s purses. You sell two hundred purses wholesale to a shop that has just opened on the other side of Copenhagen. You give the retailer the purses, and he promises to pay you next week. How do you know you are going to get your money?
The answer, of course, is that the shop owner signed a contract promising to pay you. If he doesn’t pay, you can take him to court. Having a signed agreement in a culture with a consistently reliable legal system makes it possible to do business easily with people you don’t trust o
r even know.
Now imagine the same situation—only this time you are Nigerian and designing women’s purses in Lagos. The legal system in Nigeria is less reliable than the one found in countries such as Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States. You can sign a contract, but there is no way of enforcing it if the payment doesn’t come through.
The only way you feel assured that you’ll be paid in countries like Nigeria is the trust you have in the other person. Perhaps he has done business with your brother for years and your brother vouches for him; perhaps you’ve worked with his cousins or close friends on other projects; or perhaps you’ve had time to get to know him personally and you’ve concluded that he is trustworthy. You believe you can do business with the shopkeeper because your relationship with him (direct or indirect) provides a safety net that replaces the role of the legal system in more developed countries.
For this reason, investing time in establishing trust will often save time (and many other resources) in the long run. And a similar way of thinking continues to exist in relationship-based cultures that are also blessed with solidly reliable legal structures, such as Japan and France.
So if you find yourself wondering in exasperation, “Why do I have to spend so much time dining and socializing with potential clients? Why can’t we just get down to business and sign a contract?” remember—in many cultures, the relationship is your contract. You can’t have one without the other.
CONSIDER MEALS CAREFULLY: LUNCH MAY BE YOUR TICKET
How you organize and conduct your lunches and dinners when collaborating with people from other cultures can communicate volumes—often unintentionally, as I found out from an e-mail I received from Guillermo Nuñez, an Argentine executive with a global wine distributor:
Last year, I had a strange experience when some of my colleagues and I visited one of our bulk wine customers in Norway. I was giving a presentation to these Norwegians about our Argentinean office, and explaining the challenges that we had crossing the fjords with our container boats. Up until that point, I thought that the presentation was going well.
Then one of the Norwegians interrupted me, in a very polite way, just to inform me that they had ordered some sandwiches and drinks to have during the meeting. I was really surprised. This signaled to me that they were not interested in what I was saying. Never in my thirty years of working across Latin America had something like this happened to me.
I was confused about what to do. Should I continue to talk although they clearly were interested in eating their sandwiches? I did finish my presentation, but I felt completely stupid speaking while they were eating their lunch.
After the meeting, I spoke to my Norwegian-based colleague about what I’d felt had been a disastrous hour. He told me that I had misunderstood and that the situation was very normal. He explained that Norwegians often do this just to optimize time. He said it was a sign of respect for our time, which they would like to invest wisely.
Nuñez actually assumed that his colleague from Norway was simply trying to spare his feelings. Not until he attended a program I conducted and spoke about cross-cultural trust building did he discover that his lunchtime “disaster” was really just a case of crossed signals.
The good news is that strategies for improving trust are quite simple, often requiring only a few minor adjustments in your expectations and behaviors.
The first strategy is easy. If you are from a task-based society and are hosting people from a more relationship-based society, put more time and effort into organizing meals to be shared. During these meals, spend time getting to know your collaborators personally rather than discussing business. And if you are visiting a relationship-based culture, don’t mistake a long lunch for a waste of time. If you use this time to develop a personal connection and a little affective trust, it may end up being the most important part of the business trip.
For those from relationship-based societies who are hosting task-based guests, don’t throw out the socializing altogether. Go ahead and organize a one-hour lunch, which they will most certainly appreciate. But if the meal is likely to stretch on to ninety minutes or longer, explain this in advance. And feel free to invite your task-based colleagues out in the evening—but if one of them chooses to go back to the hotel to get some rest or catch up on e-mails, don’t take offense. This is a normal and appropriate response in a task-based culture.
Sharing meals is a meaningful tool for trust building in nearly all cultures. But in some cultures, sharing drinks—particularly alcoholic drinks—is equally important.
I once conducted a training program for a German couple moving to Japan, assisted by Hiroki, a wise and entertaining Japanese culture specialist. The German asked Hiroki how to get his Japanese colleagues to tell him what was really going on: “They are so formal and quiet. I worry if I am not able to build the necessary trust, I won’t get the information I need from them.”
Hiroki thought quietly for a moment and then responded with only a small trace of humor in his eyes: “Best strategy is to drink with them.”
“To drink?” the German client questioned.
“Yes, drink until you fall down.”
When Hiroki said this, I thought back to my first-ever ride in the Tokyo metro, when I saw several groups of Japanese businessmen stumbling through the station as they traveled home after a long evening of well-lubricated socializing. I now realized they were following Hiroki’s advice—quite literally.
If you look at Japan on the Trusting scale, you will see that it is a relationship-based culture, though not as far to the right as China or India. During the day, the Japanese generally take a task-based approach—but the relationship building that happens in the evening can be critical to business success.
In Japanese culture, where group harmony and avoiding open conflict are overriding goals, drinking provides an opportunity to let down your hair and express your real thoughts. Drinking is a great platform for sharing your true inner feelings (what are called honne rather than tatemae feelings) as well as for recognizing where bad feelings or conflict might be brewing and to strive to address them before they turn into problems. Under no circumstances should the discussions of the night before be mentioned the next day. Drinking alcohol is therefore an important Japanese bonding ritual not only with clients, but also within one’s own team.
Many Japanese use drinking to forge connections, as captured by the bilingual expression nomunication, stemming from the Japanese verb nomu (“to drink”). Japanese salespeople frequently woo their clients over drinks, knowing that although explicit deal making is never done during this type of socializing, a deal is rarely won without it. Of course, drinking to build trust is not just a Japanese custom. Across East Asia, whether you are working in China, Thailand, or Korea, doing a substantial amount of drinking with customers and collaborators is a common step in the trust-building process.
Many people from task-based cultures don’t get it. “Why would I risk making a fool of myself in front of the very people I need to impress?” they wonder. But that is exactly the point. When you share a round of drinks with a business partner, you show that person you have nothing to hide. And when they “drink until they fall down” with you, they show you that they are willing to let their guard down completely. “Don’t worry about looking stupid,” Hiroki reassured our German manager, who had begun wringing his hands nervously. “The more you are willing to remove social barriers in the evening, the more they will see you as trustworthy.”
Alcohol is not the only way to build a business relationship. If you don’t drink, you can certainly find other ways to partake in the fun; in Japan, a round of karaoke or a trip to the spa can do wonders. And in Arab cultures, where alcohol is avoided, you can forget beer and relax instead over a cup of tea.
CHOOSE YOUR COMMUNICATION MEDIUM: PHONE, E-MAIL, OR WASTA
Of course, in today’s global business world, not all relationships provide the opportunity for face-to-face sharing
over a meal or a drink. A lot of trust building must take place long-distance. Most of us send an e-mail or pick up the telephone without giving culture much thought. However, putting a little effort into the choice can help tremendously when you need to build trust with your globally-dispersed colleagues.
If you are working with people from a task-based society, go ahead and choose the medium that is the most efficient, if that is your preference. E-mail, telephone, face-to-face meetings—all are acceptable, so long as the message is communicated clearly and succinctly.
But when starting to work with those from a relationship-based society, begin by choosing a communication medium that is as relationship-based as possible. Instead of sending an e-mail, make the extra effort to pick up the phone. Better still, if you have the budget as well as the time, take the trip. And don’t pack your day with task-based meetings and expect to escape to your hotel in the evening. Organize your time in order to communicate as much as possible in informal settings. Once you have built a good trusting relationship, you can move to a more task-based medium like e-mail.
E-mail can be particularly problematic when you are trying to make a connection with a person you don’t know. In task-based cultures, it is quite common to e-mail people you’ve never met. However, in relationship-based cultures, people often don’t respond to e-mails from someone with whom they have no prior relationship.
One strategy, if you need to contact someone you don’t know, is to use what in Arabic is called wasta, which translates loosely to mean something like “connections that create preference,” “relationships that give you influence,” or “who you know.” Dana Al-Hussein, a Jordanian manager working for L’Oréal, explains the concept:
A good personal relationship is the single most important factor when doing business with people from the Arab world. If you don’t have a relationship, don’t resort to e-mailing strangers out of the blue. Use your network to find a wasta—someone who has a relationship with the person you need to contact, and ask that person to make a quick call introducing you personally. A friend of a friend can work wonders in establishing a first step to a personal connection.