Are you making eye contact or demanding it?

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 a...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 spatial dimension the friction dispatch™

The room that split in two

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 Lat...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 conversational dimension the friction dispatch™

Slots v. Loops™ & The Lasso Way

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 ...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 slots v. loops™

The agenda was aspirational

You sent the agenda four days out. Three items. Tight. Time-boxed. One page attached to the calendar invite so everyone could come prepared. They confirmed attendance. Nobody pushed back. You walked in with a deck for each point and ten minutes to spare. By 11:15, you were still on item one. The ...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 temporal dimension the friction dispatch™

The yes that wasn’t

‘We'll certainly take that on board.’ You leave the meeting satisfied. The questions were good. Someone on their side even mentioned exploring next steps. You make a note: deal moving. Two weeks later, nothing. You follow up. Warm reply, no movement. Another week. Still nothing. Eventually a mutu...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 conversational dimension the friction dispatch™

They liked you. That wasn’t the problem.

By the time the coffee arrived, you’d been introduced to two people who weren’t on the original invite, the conversation had moved well off the agenda, and nobody in the room seemed to mind. You left thinking: this one’s going somewhere. Three weeks later, you’re still waiting for the contract. T...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 relational dimension the friction dispatch™

What's the Slots System™ and why it works

I moved to London in 2015 and did what any newly arrived Argentine in a new city would do: signed up for everything. One of those things was my local book club. We’d meet at the pub mid-week, order drinks, and tear into the book of the month. The discussions were sharp, lively, the kind that kep...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 slots v. loops™

The follow-up that disappeared

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'v...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 temporal dimension the friction dispatch™

There is no such thing as Latin American Spanish

Contrary to what most British professionals assume, interpreting a technical meeting about infrastructure is often simpler than interpreting the lunch that follows it. In a meeting about bridges, water supply, or electrical grids, the Spanish is largely standardised across Latin America. The voca...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 conversational dimension the friction dispatch™

You both spoke English. That was the problem.

There is a particular kind of British-LatAm meeting that runs entirely in English, goes smoothly by all appearances, and produces a follow-up where both sides discover they understood something different. Not because anyone was unclear. Not because the English was poor. But because the two sides ...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 conversational dimension the friction dispatch™

The decade of observation that built Slots v. Loops™

Some systems arrive as ideas. This one arrived as a pattern: noticed once, then again, then so consistently that ignoring it stopped being an option. For the better part of a decade, I worked as a diplomatic interpreter. My job was to be invisible: present in some of the most sensitive British-La...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 slots v. loops™

Your LatAm counterpart's English isn't your English

In 2004, Jean-Paul Nerrière coined the term Globish — a blend of global and English — to describe the English spoken around the world by non-native speakers. It is not broken English. It is functional English, shaped by its speakers' own languages, carrying traces of how they think, structure sen...

by Cecilia Lipovsek — Aug 25, 2026 conversational dimension

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