Webinar: Building Trust Across Cultures

On the 25 th of June Alette Vonk held a webinar for the GNBCC around the topic how to build trust in different cultural environments. Trust is one of the most basic ingredients for doing good business and finding solutions that benefit all. If this trust is built in very different ways, it may lead to quite some failures or loss. Therefore it’s always nice to look at it and look at yourself: how do you preferably build trusting partnerships?

During the webinar Vonk explained that in some cultures you find more reliance on building personal relationships with people (we have good contact, so I trust you), while in other cultures people look for capacity and following up on agreements (you deliver on your task, so I trust you). In reality there’s always a combination of these two aspects; it’s just that you perceive a bit more preference for one or the other in various cultures.

During the webinar two other basic cultural differences were discussed: between different forms of communication (high and low context); and between tough and tender cultures. For instance, when a potential partner asks you to sign a contract, does you trust in the person diminish or increase? Do you prefer long meetings where you have the ability to voice your ideas and listen to others, or would you rather attend short meetings with high levels of decisiveness? Recognizing the features of such cultural differences, between African cultures and the rest of the world and among African cultures, will support you very much to navigate professionally, to find good strategies, build trust and do business!

Alette Vonk is a freelance consultant intercultural management and change facilitation. Her company is called De Vonk; she is the chair of the Cooperative Cultural Insights and one of the Friends of Hofstede, a network that is internationally known for in depth cultural consultancy.

She is also a lecturer Intercultural Management at the University of Leiden. Vonk is the co-author of the book: ‘Cultural Confluence in organizational change: A Portuguese venture in Angola’ (Springer, 2024). It is a very interesting case study about the merger of Portuguese and Angolan culture within a new organizational culture, and of (contemporary) traditional and modern forms of leadership.

You can reach Alette Vonk at [email protected] and +31622151182. She will be available in Accra from the 23rd of August – 1st of September this year.