You sent the follow-up the same afternoon. Summary of what was agreed, action points, a suggested date for the next call. Clear, prompt, professional.
Then nothing.
A week goes by. Then another. You send a gentle chase. Still nothing. You start wondering if you misread the room.
The situation
I've accompanied enough British-LatAm delegations to know what happens on both sides of that silence.
The British professional sends the follow-up within 24 hours because responsiveness signals competence. The meeting produced outcomes. Outcomes need confirming. The sooner it's done, the cleaner the record.
The Latin American counterpart receives it, reads it, means to respond. But the meeting is still processing internally. There are colleagues to consult, a read of the relationship to develop, a sense of whether this counterpart is worth investing real time in. The email isn't urgent. It can wait until the picture is clearer.
Meanwhile, the British professional is already reading meaning into the silence.
A Mexican corporate affairs manager spends the weekend before a big London pitch working through a business masterclass online. Lesson four says that holding eye contact is the single biggest signal of trust one can send.
He walks into the meeting and does exactly that. Steady gaze, no breaking away, right through the whole pitch.
Twenty minutes in, his British counterpart has shifted in his se...
Half the room ended up by the window. Half by the bar. Nobody planned it, and nobody moved for twenty minutes.
I watched this happen at a reception mixing UK and Latin American guests. Ten minutes in, the room had split clean down the middle, separated by the Atlantic Ocean.
The Situation
The Latin American guests opened the way they always open: are you married? Do you have children? Where's y...
Ted Lasso is back, and I won't pretend I’m not delighted.
I remember watching the previous seasons and recognising my own work as a diplomatic interpreter in Ted’s approach to Total Football: constant movement, no set positions, everyone covering for everyone else. His style of play, broken into the four maxims below, is part of what came to be known as The Lasso Way:
Conditioning
Versatility
...
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