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 your family from? To them, standard, expected warmth.
The British guests heard something else. A door opening faster than they'd like. A few smiled and answered anyway. More found a reason to top up a drink near someone safer.
To the Latin American guests, the retreat read as nothing. Weather, traffic, how was the journey: three questions that ask for nothing back. Most got bored, and drifted off too.
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...
THE BRITISH-LATAM FRICTION SCORECARD™
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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.
