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.
Your British counterpart did his homework. He knew Latin Americans build trust over the table, not just across it, so instead of squeezing in a second meeting before your flight home, he cleared two hours for lunch. No slides, no agenda, just food and conversation.
You talked about your kids, his weekend rugby, the flight in. He laughed at your jokes and asked good follow-up questions. Two hour...
I built the Slot System™ first. The harder question was what shape the other side would take.
I kept coming back to something small: the difference between my Oyster card in London and my SUBE card back when I lived in Buenos Aires.
Back then, topping up a SUBE was never a sure thing. You never knew which machine would work, or where. So, I'd take a longer route to the train station, one with a...
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...
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