Intercultural Communication Decoded: The Global Anatomy of Trust

Dmytro Shvets: In today's conversation, I will talk about the very interesting topic devoted to. Understanding other cultures, but even more deep about the trust building issues. And to go deeper into this topic, I invited my guest Maryna Starodubska. She's the author of the book, understanding Ukrainians Across Cultural Perspective, and she's also Cross-Cultural Interaction Consultant and Kyiv Mohyla Business School Adjunct Professor.

Hi Maryna and welcome to the show. Maryna : Hi. Thanks for having me, Dmytro Shvets: Maryna. Can we talk about the trust issue in general?

What is the anatomy of trust? What are the main ingredients of trust Maryna : right now? If you are an exporter and you're looking at markets to enter with your product or service, one of the key things to look at is how generalized trust. Structured generalized trust is the ratio of trust to ingroup, to trust, to outgroup.

Ingroup is people I know. My family, my friends, my colleagues. Outgroup is people from the street. Dmytro Shvets: Okay?

Maryna : Usually in a culture level of trust to ingroup is higher. Then level of trust to Outgroup, but the question is how much higher? Dmytro Shvets: So that means that I trust more to those people that I know. Yeah.

Whereas those people that I don't know. Yes. Maryna : Which is natural and expected. But let's take some countries popular amongst Ukrainian businesses to enter with their products.

Let's take. United States. Okay. It is a very lucrative market.

It's big. There's funding, there's perspective. Demand is very high range of products and services, and demand is very broad, but generalized trust in United States, it's 37%, Dmytro Shvets: Which means that they like 37%. Of people trust to outer group or Maryna : 37% of population say, generally people around me can be trusted.

Dmytro Shvets: Okay. Maryna : Which is not a high number. Because for instance, Germany, west Germany has generalized trust of 45%. Norway, Finland have generalized trust of over 65%.

There is a thing called trust radius. How wide is the circle of people which potentially one can trust? And in United States, the trust radius is 50%, which means. It's quite wide.

So yes, Americans may be not very trustful at the beginning, but you can take certain steps and the trust circle will open. Dmytro Shvets: And you have like more chances to get this trust within some time of cooperation. Maryna : Okay. Yeah.

Let's take China level of generalized trust is 64%, almost twice the percentage of the U.S.. But China's trust radius is 25% and US is 50. Which means that radius adjusted trust in China.

Is lower in the US even though the original indicator is high, which means in China it's gonna take you a lot more time, a lot more effort and a lot more information Dmytro Shvets: to get in this circle. Yes, to get in this circle. They trust. Maryna : Exactly.

The importance of trust if you're an exporter, there are five aspects of it. First, it defines your time to market because if it takes you half a year to only get to pre-operation talks in China. In United States, you can potentially, given that your product is in demand, achieve a lot more in comparable terms. Second format of cooperation.

If we're talking about countries like Romania. Poland, Moldova, Italy, Turkey Egypt countries where Ukrainian businesses have interest. All of these cultures are highly relationship oriented, which means there's no way you can gain trust through correspondence. You need to go there.

You need to meet people. You need to socialize with people. Dmytro Shvets: That's interesting because when I consult companies to go abroad and somebody is asking me if I can help them with for example, the golf area. Yeah.

And I say that I don't know how to build trust there, but I heard that there is a saying that you need one year to drink tea with this people first. Maryna : Okay. Dmytro Shvets: To get into their circle and only then start talking business. But on the other hand, to get into the Swedish trust circle took me also a lot of time.

So at minimum, like half a year. And they look at your actions, not words. Yeah. So they like.

The beginning, but then you should prove that you are okay and you can be trusted in the future. Maryna : That is very true. And the third aspect of looking at trust is the grounds. What is the trust built on?

Like you said, in how trust societies, Scandinavia Baltic states. You have some advanced trust. So they basically loan you some trust at the beginning. Yeah.

And watch you act. And if you do not drop that ball, the trust goes upward from there. But when we are talking about middle East. Latin America, Latin, Eastern Europe central Europe Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, in this region, trust is not advanced.

You don't get the loan of trust before cooperation. You need to actually spend some physical time, physical peasants, attention, resources, energy. This initial trust. And not only that, the fourth aspect of the five about trust is rank sensitivity.

If you are gonna Norway, Estonia, again, you can easily be. Leader of a department. Or you can be a high level specialist to establish the first contact. Dmytro Shvets: Yeah.

Yeah. Maryna : But if you're going anywhere south ward or east Ward you better be founder. Or you better the CEO if you want any kind of talks to happen. So rank sensitivity in other words, power, distance.

How much problem there is to inequality in position, privilege, status? Autonomy authority, things like that. So Scandinavia and Baltic states have low power distance, which means diagonal communication between people of different ranks. It's possible.

Intro: But if Maryna : you're talking about Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Balkans, Dmytro Shvets: Ukraine included. Yeah, Maryna : exactly. Our power distance colleagues is among the highest in the world. It's 95 outta 120.

Intro: For Maryna : reference, Malaysia's power distance is a hundred. Okay. So ours is very high. So in countries, cultures like these, unless you possess a certain rank, no one talks to seriously.

And the last, yeah. The last aspect of trust is whether trust is. Or not. Let's say you went to Estonia as a representative of your company.

You had some talks, you brought back some contacts. Next time your colleague goes in, in flat power distances, your colleague will be met as someone whom they already know through you. Through your company. But in higher power, distance cultures, that's gonna be an entire new conversation.

An entirely new relationship because trust isn't transient. Dmytro Shvets: Okay. So if, for example, director of the company went to Middle East and then agreed to some deal, and then they sent the manager of department so this manager of department will need to build everything from scratch. Maryna : That manager of the department will have to build their own relationship with department in the Middle East from scratch.

Talking trusting is entirely the. Dmytro Shvets: Okay. I also met this situation when I was working with Caucasian region. Yeah.

With Azerbaijan for example. There was another thing about the trust they show and the real trust behind what they talk like everybody are. Very hospitable. They invite you to drink some wine, tea, coffee eat some food.

And they are so open hearted and promise almost everything that you would like to get. But then it appears that it was like one part of hospitality and then the real issue happens afterwards. Yeah. So you still need to go into this communication and conversation in informal way.

Maryna : And Dmytro Shvets: you can feel that trust is there already, like from the beginning, like you, you came and you got this trust. But in reality it took me, I don't know, one year maybe to build real bonds with people and even make them speak freely with me. Not hiding something like they're just expressing their thoughts. Maryna : There is a thing called social norms.

Social norms are what's okay and not okay to do In a certain culture, the same social norm in different cultures may have different meaning, different timing. And different obligation. Let's take it in the Caucasus. Hospitality is a matter of politeness.

If you do not treat your potential partner at a good restaurant, you don't receive them well in, in a good hotel. You are playing rude. This is politeness. It has nothing to do Dmytro Shvets: with business Maryna : or lack there off.

Now, let's say Ukraine, which you and I represent in Ukraine, hospitality is a product of trust for a Ukrainian to treat somebody. At home or to accompany somebody to a restaurant. Usually it happens after some kind of communication, some kind of interaction happens. So to us, hospitality is a gift, a token of my trust.

So same norm, different timing, different application, different meaning. Same for emotions, like what you said. There are cultures which are neutral. Germany, United States, Austria, China, and there are cultures which are effective with an a.

Ukraine, Romania, Moldova Italy, Turkey, Spain. Exactly. So neutral cultures are those where in professional context, emotions should be controlled. So if you are holding negotiations with your German, Austrian, Estonian partners, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and you lose your temper, or you express frustration in an overly emotional manner, you just threw in your negotiation.

It doesn't matter how passionate you are, emoting too much in a serious context. In cultures like this is perceived as lack of professionals. Because emotion should be controlled. Dmytro Shvets: Maybe Japan is the top in this rank.

Yeah. Maryna : Yes. Japan is one of the most neutral culture in that sense. Now if you're talking about effective cultures, now effective cultures use emotion as a way to signal about your trust, about your willingness to cooperate, about the connection being established, and the degree of that emotion expression differs.

So in effective cultures, if you are not emoting, that is strange. You may perceived as disinterested. You may suspicious, distracted, aloof. When we're talking about reading off the emotions and behaviors of representatives of different cultures, it doesn't hurt to know what that symbolizes in that specific culture.

Dmytro Shvets: Are there any. Like basic rules. If you did not spend time or invested your time in understanding the culture beforehand. Are there some simple rules that you should consider talking with any culture in the world not to fail completely?

Maryna : First consider high trust, low trust. There are sociology surveys nationally in every country. So this information is very easy to obtain. Dmytro Shvets: By the way, I have here one book this your book.

Yeah. So this is yeah exactly. The book about how to understand Ukrainians. And you have here the source of data about trust.

Yeah. This high, low trust. This is a quadrant. Yeah.

So I saw it here. Yeah. This one. Yeah.

Maryna : So let lo first, high trust, low trust. Second power distance. How important it is to be of the same rank, how important titles are, how important it is to have several. With different people to ensure that everyone is on board.

Third one is risk aversion, or risk proneness called uncertainty avoidance. If a culture is risk averse, Ukraine, Germany. Turkey, Egypt, Moldova, Romania. In a risk averse culture, it's a big mistake to offer to a client, some sense, some solution that's completely new.

Untested. You'll be the first. You're literally shooting yourself in the foot there. But in more risk prone cultures, Australia, Israel, United States Netherlands.

It could actually be a good thing. So if you look at these three things, you can make your life a little bit easier. But again, reading on some cultural aspects is always a good idea. And luckily, this information is highly available in open sources.

Dmytro Shvets: From one hand, yes, but from another hand until I actually met you in the business school where we both teach I have. Been also reading this like cultural issues or cultural peculiarities, business cultural peculiarities, and in most cases it is so stereotyping yeah. And so generalized. Yeah.

So that it won't help. It even it's in any case in Japan, if you are in Japan, in any case, you should not forget to give your business card with two hands. Uhhuh, this is the most important issue that you should remember when going to Japan. So this is the most common sources that I have met.

Are there any other sources that people can have a look at quickly and get this information? Maryna : Of course. There are two different things. There's protocol, yeah.

Like the diploma protocol. Yeah. With what hands how many degrees of a bowel. This is protocol now and there's cross-cultural interaction.

Or cross-cultural interaction explains why. Why to hands. Yeah, why? Dmytro Shvets: Yeah.

Maryna : And cross-cultural interaction is a science that has several authors in Ukraine. It's me outside of Ukraine. On a global arena, you have Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars, Michele Gelfand, Edward T. Hall,.

Shalom Schwartz, Inglehart, Welzel, if you know what World Value survey is. One of the biggest cross-cultural service on the planet. So if you read any of the sources or ask ChatGPT to pull together some summary for you or based on peer reviewed publications, then you'll definitely have yourself a good base understanding evidence-based, what the culture is about. Dmytro Shvets: Do you have any typical mistakes that people do when they start to communicate with new culture and they have this things that they do not not correctly.

Maryna : I do. If you're talking about Ukrainian companies trying to enter for market, so five mistakes, mistake number one. Is too straightforward, too judgemental, and overly sarcastic. Bluntness.

Judgmental approach. Now, when I say judgmental approach is when you use a lot of adjectives. Ineffective, unacceptable, yeah. Things like Intro: that.

So Maryna : Ukraine is very confrontational in the way we discuss, in the way we deal now. Confrontational means I express my frustration, dissatisfaction and refusal bluntly and straight to your face. Most absolute majority of cultures in the world are not like that. So that's first mistake.

No sarcasm. It, there is a very limited culture, a number of cultures in the world, which actually allow sarcasm in serious business dealings. Absolute minority. Second mistake assuming everybody is like you.

Assuming everybody. I believe something my colleagues in Japan, Azer by John Estonia or us will believe something. The same thing. No, Dmytro Shvets: that's actually the same mistake when people say that this product will be, this need will be in the place in the market because I need this.

Yeah. So there's exactly the same mistake by starter person. Maryna : So kind try to stand in your. Shoes from another culture.

And look at your company, at your product with their eyes. Three. Everybody will overwork because I tell them to. Overworking is a way to show you dedication, and it's an element of prestige.

You can only be respected as a professional if you overwork significantly. Now that's a problem in European Union, which has a directive about worklife balance. If you having teams hiring anywhere, Poland, Romania, Czechia, Austria, Germany, forget it, not only over time is very costly. It actually has to be agreed upon, assuming that best and you do not need local expertise always hire local consultants.

Because you will never be able to gauge the granular nuances of a product demand in a competitive market. If you're entering a market where you are the second provider. By all means make mistake. You may make mistakes you like, Dmytro Shvets: but unique product.

Yeah. And innovative, unique product that everybody needs. Maryna : Exactly. But if you're entering United States.

The most competitive market in the world, you better have local expertise because failure is just too costly. Dmytro Shvets: By the way how different are the states of United States? Very, should you consider the different cultures within the country? Very Maryna : United States is actually 50 subcultures.

It's 50. It's not one object, it's 50 50 states. It's Dmytro Shvets: 50 states. Yeah.

Maryna : It's 50 subcultures. It's not one culture. And the lastly invest time in trust, building and communication. Absolute minority of cultures operate on the premise.

Let's get straight to business. Let's not. Dmytro Shvets: Disregarding the country. So this is a universal rule.

Yeah. So invest time and trust building and communication. Maryna : The question is how much time to we a month or half a year, but less. Don't forget, cooperation is not built on your product alone.

Cooperation is built on mutual, mutually beneficial partnership between your company and your vis-a-vis company. Dmytro Shvets: And even I would say humans like people from one company and another company. 'cause in my experience, I have seen a lot of cases when the decision was made, not because of the product or the company, but because I liked the other guy. Yeah.

So it's like one director is okay with other one and they have like the similar values and point of use and they like each other. So then the business will go, even if the product is not. That good that was expected. Intro: Exactly.

Dmytro Shvets: By the way, when I was talking to Danes, they, they say that they're almost that much direct and open in, and also in with this black humor as Ukrainians. And they like similar to us with this notion of directness and sarcasm, I would say as well. Maryna : There are different types of directness. Dmytro Shvets: They're Maryna : vein are indeed direct and they appreciate a good sarcasm.

But direct, and direct. A different direct. Intro: Yeah. Maryna : It's one thing to say, marina, could you be emulator with your report?

Factual, sarcastic. But if I say, marina, why are you solely responsible? Can't you see your report is not still in This is judgmental drug. Intro: Yeah.

Maryna : So there are different time, different types of direct Ukrainians are judgmental, direct. Norwegians fans, Germans gravitate Dutch. Dutch is William. Yes.

No. Judgment. Observation. Dmytro Shvets: What are the, maybe the last question to you or and yeah.

Three last question to you. From your experience and your opinion, what are the regions of the world that are most easy to enter and understand and to integrate in the culture? Maryna : I I my philosophy in inter a culture communication is there is no easy. Intro: Because, Maryna : One of the most familiar in a sense.

Similar culture to Ukrainians, a Colombia, and Argentina. Intro: True. Not Maryna : in Europe, Colombia and Argentina. Intro: Yeah, true.

Maryna : However, having said that, even though we have a lot of similarities, there is a lot of nuances and uniqueness, so I always urge clients do not think in terms which region is easier to enter. Because, I can make less effort. Yeah. Like everybody Dmytro Shvets: from Ukraine was thinking that Poland is the most closest to us culturally and mentally market.

We should go there. Maryna : Even though Poland and Ukraine have a lot of historic period where there they were intertwined and there are quite a bit of similarities. Poland is very different. Intro: Exactly.

Maryna : First of all, it's an individualist society and we're highly collectivist, yeah, just don't think, but don't think about in terms of easy. Yes. Think about cost and benefit of bridging the cultural distance because the more. Differences there are in approaches to motivation management.

Other things, the more it'll cost to re-engineer your process. So if the market is highly lucrative. Then probably it is worth attempting, but if you're not sure about the perspectives of a product or service in respective market, and the cultural distance is high, so Additional investment will be necessary. Maybe take a little more time to weigh the cost benefit.

So my advice, don't look for easy, look for cost benefit analysis, because bridging cultural divide is an investment. Dmytro Shvets: Actually you have answered my last question about the the last advice that you would give to our audience within this question as well. In fact, what you're saying is that in any case, you will need to study the other culture. Yeah.

In any case, you will need to invest some resources in building trust and communication. And in any case, you will need time to get, trusted. Yeah. And in some cases it is quicker and easy, easier maybe to some extent.

And what is the most important that you will need? Or you will use different tools depending on the culture, how to get this trust and start your sales within this country. 'cause in, like for example, in my experience now I am promoting my educational. Programs the start global education towards Nordic Europe.

And even though I have contacts there, I have partners there. I still cannot go directly to consumers because they do not trust me. They do not know me to. And in this case I can borrow this trust from local associations or local partnership that they will use then to build trust.

And in other countries, like you said, in Middle East, it is totally different story. So you, every time you will need to build your own trust connections with this company. Yeah. So in any case, you need to study.

You need to understand the cultures, and this will be. A very good base for you to not make too much mistake because of, in, in any case, you will do these mistakes when you will enter new company or start communication with new culture. Great. Thanks, marina.

That was yeah, I think that's true. Only the opening Yeah. The small the small part of what the intercultural communication is. And I have so many questions more, but unfortunately we don't have too much time for this episode.

But I hope that you will come back and probably we will tell more about other cultures to our listeners. Maryna : Thank you for having me. If you'd like to have me again, I'd, I'll be glad to share some more. Thanks.

Dmytro Shvets: Special thanks to all listeners who made it so far, and if you'd like this episode and you would like to get more insights on international expansion, please subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss the next episode.