Cultural Dimensions

TRUSTING

Two Types of Trust:

Relationship-Based or Task-Based?

Erin Meyer describes the dimension of trust as cognitive trust vs. affective trust. Cognitive trust is based on the confidence you feel in another person’s accomplishments, skills, and reliability. This is trust from the head. Affective trust arises from feelings of emotional closeness, empathy or friendship. This is trust from the heart.

For task-based cultures, trust is built through business-related activities. Work relationships are built and dropped easily based on the practical needs of the situation, and trust grows when deadlines are met and goals are achieved. In relationship-based cultures, there is greater emphasis on building trust through sharing meals, engaging in meaningful conversations, sharing personal interests and concerns, etc. Work relationships build slowly over the long term.

Key Characteristics

TASK-BASED	RELATIONSHIP-BASED
Trust is built through business-related activities. Work relationships are built and dropped easily, based on the practicality of the situation. Friendliness does not equal friendship ! You do good work consistently, you are reliable, I enjoy working with you, I trust you.	Trust is built through sharing meals, evening drinks, and visits at coffee machines. Work relationships build up slowly over the long term. I’ve seen who you are at a deep level, I’ve shared personal time with you, I know others well who trust you, I trust you.

COUNTRY COMPARISON

The chart shows examples of where certain countries fall on the trusting dimension

EXAMPLE NR. 1

Karl Morel, an acquisitions manager from Nestlé, found himself in a challenging situation when he was negotiating a joint venture in China. The initial meetings in Shanghai with eight Chinese executives had him baffled. Morel and his team tried to be friendly and transparent, providing all of the details the Chinese wanted. “But they were impenetrable and unwilling to budge on any of their demands,” Morel said.

After a frustrating week, Morel and his colleagues met with a Chinese business consultant to figure out how they should adjust their approach. “The consultant told us that our approach was wrong, that we were going too fast.” Morel reported. He said they weren’t going to get what they wanted from the Chinese executives until they developed guanxi with them.

Guanxi is a Chinese term used to describe relationships that may benefit both parties. As the consultant explained, to develop good guanxi, one must build trust from the heart. “Forget the deal for a while,” he said. “Open up personally. Make a friend. A real one.”

Morel took the consultant’s advice, inviting his Chinese counterparts out for dinner, and including people from different levels of the company. It was an excellent dinner, and there was plenty of socialising. After restarting the meetings the following Monday, the Chinese were much more willing to cooperate and the teams made excellent progress during their second week together.

EXAMPLE Nr. 2

A similar challenge happened between a Brazilian and an American team negotiating a new business deal. The American team was led by Jim Powly and the Brazilian team by Maria Gomez. When the Brazilian team arrived in Jacksonville, Mississippi, Jim’s group gave them a warm welcome. “We got right down to business that morning,” Morez recounts; for three days the teams engaged in intense, sometimes difficult negotiations, ordering sandwiches for lunch and only taking short pauses throughout the day. At the end of two days, the Americans felt great about what they’d accomplished. They also felt that the short breaks and tight schedules were a sign of respect for the time their guests had taken out of their busy schedule to visit. But the Brazilians were less upbeat. “Despite having spent two days together, we didn’t know whether we could trust them.” explained Morez.

The Brazilians were expecting long lunches and dinners. “This is supposed to send a clear message”, Morez explained: “Dear colleagues, who have come such a long distance to work with us, we would like to show you that we value you, and even if nothing else happens during these two days besides getting to know each other well, and developing a personal connection, we will have made good use of our time together.”

In the following video, Erin Meyer explains how trust is build in different cultures. She also goes through the difference between cognitive and affective trust.

THE PEACH AND THE COCONUT MODEL

Culture experts Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner crafted the idea of comparing cultures as peaches and coconuts. Peach cultures are found most often in countries such as Canada, the USA or Brazil, where people are friendly (“soft”) with new acquaintances. Peaches are soft on the outside but difficult to crack the heart of the nut. They often network with strangers, move quickly to the first-name usage, share information about themselves. But after a little friendly interaction with a peach, you may suddenly get to the hard pit where the peach protects his/her real self and where the relationship suddenly stops.

In coconut cultures such Russia, Switzerland and Germany, people are initially more closed off from those they don’t have friendships with. They rarely smile at strangers, ask casual acquaintances personal questions, or offer personal information to those they don’t know intimately. But over time, as coconuts get to know you, they become gradually warmer and friendlier. And while relationships are built up slowly, they also tend to last longer.

Coconuts may react to peaches in a way that they interpret the friendliness as an offer of friendship and when people don’t follow through on the unintended offer, they conclude that the peaches are hypocritical.

Source: Erin Meyer, The Culture Map

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