Building trust across cultures may be a challenge in many executive roles that include frequent communication with personnel from all around the world. While this may seem inconsequential, it is crucial; when people trust one another, they can work together efficiently across cultures. This confidence needs to be established in both directions.
There are three things that high-level executives do to build trust: they start with the right mindset, they learn about their colleagues’ backgrounds, and they understand the importance of results and character. These findings come from focus groups with over 400 managers and executives worldwide, including those in the Middle East.
What is the proper frame of mind?
It is critical to begin with a positive frame of mind. According to the CEOs we spoke with, establishing trust may require various approaches, different periods of time, and different criteria depending on who you’re working with and where you’re located.
Understanding and patience are essential. Additionally, they had taken the effort to learn about their own trust culture, regardless of whether they were from a high or low trust culture. This is critical, since people from cultures that place a high value on trust may get upset if they find that establishing trust with coworkers proves to be more difficult than they anticipated.
When interacting with others, individuals who are less trusting or who come from cultures that are more suspicious will be able to identify with their colleagues’ cautious approach. Because they are so distrustful of others, they may not be able to interact with coworkers who are more trustworthy.
Those who were most successful in establishing trust with their foreign coworkers did so by spending a significant amount of time learning about the cultures of their personnel. They were able to do this by posing the following culturally significant questions: How reliant are you on it?
Who was the most effective in fostering intercultural understanding and mutual respect?
Successful cross-cultural trust builders acknowledged the value of both outcomes and character in establishing trust. When it comes to creating trust, cultures tend to focus on one or the other.
- The foundation of trust in different cultures is character. An individual’s integrity (regardless of their level of skill) may go a long way in establishing confidence in the Middle East, for example.
- There are a lot of family-owned businesses in Arab nations that prefer hiring people who have a personal connection to their families since this is the greatest way to gauge reliability.
- Managers who wanted to win their employees’ confidence by delivering results highlighted the importance of interdependence and demonstrated through their words and actions that the team would be more successful in reaching its goals if everyone worked together as a unit. In doing so, they demonstrated that trusting one another and working together would benefit everyone.
- Finally, they put a lot of emphasis on the long term and urged people to think about the future. Any short-term expenditures spent by them, such as skipping vacation to participate in a training exercise, would be quickly recovered, such as through a promotion.
That person who quit was, of course, who?
Trust in managers was built by demonstrating their willingness to spend their own money, time, and emotions in the success of the company as a whole. In the United States, a dedicated leader gives resources, guidance, and support to get the job done; in many Asian and Latin American nations, leaders may need to get to know, and show support for, employees’ family members.
Paternalistic leadership is the norm in China, while in Brazil, employees want their bosses to spend social time with them and be interested in the lives they lead outside of the workplace as well.
By making little promises and keeping them, managers in character-driven workplaces enhanced their reputation and displayed their dedication. Especially in connection to an employee’s personal life. Moreover, it demonstrated the manager’s generosity and genuine concern for the well-being of his staff.
What are the trust building behaviors?
Two more character-driven trust-building behaviors were observed: connecting over shared interests and displaying trust. If you work in a character-driven workplace, it’s anticipated that coworkers would look for commonalities when they meet.
- Many nations have a tendency to be more interested about each other than the United States, so even casual conversations like sports and movies are typically more in-depth in other countries.
- If similarities are discovered, they can lead to actions that benefit both parties. They both attended the same university’s MBA programme, a fact that a Middle Eastern businessman learned when he was contacted by an American CEO.
- His outlook on life had completely shifted. In time, he and the American executive became like long-lost brothers. In the end, we saw managers take the first step in building trust by demonstrating trust in their staff by acting in a trusting manner.
- · They anticipated trust to develop and expand over time through pleasant encounters in a virtuous cycle of ever-increasing levels of trust, despite the fact that they understood that all trust carries some risk.