Webinar Trust across cultures

When a potential partner asks you to sign a contract, does your trust in the person diminish or increase? Or, on another note, 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 will support you to navigate professionally, to find good strategies and to build trust.

On the 25th of June 2025 Alette Vonk held a webinar for the GNBCC (Ghana Netherlands Business and Culture Council) around the topic of building 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 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. Yet, it is a fact that you perceive a bit more preference for one or the other in various cultures.

Two other basic cultural differences that may have an influence on trust were discussed as well: between different forms of communication (high and low context); and between tough and tender cultures. 

Watch the webinar on YouTube!