You know the feeling. The meeting was warm, engaged, maybe even overran by twenty minutes. Everyone left smiling. You sent the follow-up that evening.
Then silence.
Not a cold silence. A polite one. Which, as it turns out, is harder to read.
The situation
A British consultant I know, senior, experienced, not someone who makes obvious mistakes, spent three months trying to close a partnership with a Colombian infrastructure firm. The conversations were good. There was genuine interest on both sides.
Every time they spoke, the Colombian team would say something like âwe will confirm with our director and come back to you shortly.â
He waited. He followed up. He waited again. The deal stalled, then quietly expired.
When I asked him what he thought had gone wrong, he said: âI think they just werenât that interested.â
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 Iâm not delighted.
I remember watching the previous seasons and recognising my own work as a diplomatic interpreter in Tedâs 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
...
THE BRITISH-LATAM FRICTION SCORECARDâ˘
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Find out exactly where your friction is.
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A personalised read of where your British-LatAm friction actually lives. The kind of specific information that changes how you walk into your next meeting. Used by British and LatAm professionals. Takes 4 minutes.
