How Cultural Awareness Wins Deals

Eelco Kraefft has spent years teaching international teams how to work across cultural lines. As business between Europe and Asia grows, he said, so does the cost of getting it wrong. The instincts professionals rely on to size up a new contact are not universal. They are cultural. And mistaking your own normal for everyone else's can cost you a deal before you realize what went wrong.

Kraefft, founder of Spot On Learning and ally of Women Together, brought that case to a Women in Breakbulk workshop at Breakbulk Europe, where he walked an international group of women through the practical frameworks his company uses with seafarers, multinational teams and global businesses.

He opened with a question: what would make you trust someone you were considering doing business with? The answers came quickly from the group. A referral from someone you already know. Evidence that the person listens. A track record and reputation in the field. A gut feeling shaped by eye contact, body language and energy.

What Kraefft wanted the group to see is that every one of those answers reflects a cultural assumption. What feels like instinct is often programming.

"You can really learn this skill," he said. "You can learn how to communicate interculturally and how to build trust, because it's very much related to your own normal, your own culture and the culture of the other person you want to trust."

He introduced four dimensions that researchers use to compare cultures and that come up repeatedly in Europe-Asia business relationships: task-based versus relationship-first approaches to work, egalitarian versus hierarchical structures, individual versus group decision-making and direct versus indirect communication. Northwest European cultures tend to cluster on one end of most of these scales. Asian cultures tend toward the other. The gap between them is wide enough that what feels natural on one side can read as rude, evasive or simply baffling on the other.

To put the dimensions to work, Kraefft divided participants into two groups to work through case studies: one on cross-cultural leadership, the other on deal-making with a Japanese counterpart.

The deal-making group surfaced a precise example. The case turned on the exchange of business cards. In Japanese professional culture, a card is offered and received with two hands and a small bow. When the Western protagonist accepted the card abruptly, the damage was immediate.

"It created an immediate breach of trust," one participant said. "All respect and all negotiations just stopped."

Kraefft noted that the protagonist had good intentions and solid preparation. That is part of what makes the case instructive. Good intentions do not substitute for cultural knowledge, and verbal preparation does not account for what goes unsaid.

The leadership group reached a parallel conclusion. A Western manager had pushed her team toward a deliverable without building the relationship first, without giving clear direction and without accounting for how differently her team members understood authority. She had the best intentions too. Things still went wrong.

Cultural dimensions are a starting point, not a formula, Kraefft said. Individual variation always matters. The goal is not to master every culture but to stay curious and get comfortable with not immediately understanding what you are seeing. That openness is itself a skill.

"Being open and learning to like it is very much part of being interculturally competent," he said. "And trust building is exactly the same. It's a learned skill."

About This Series

This article was developed from a workshop hosted by the Women in Breakbulk Lounge during Breakbulk Europe.

Title: Bridging Continents: Building Trust Across Cultures Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2026 Location: Women in Breakbulk Lounge, Breakbulk Europe, Rotterdam Ahoy Speakers: Eelco Kraefft, Founder, Spot On Learning; Women Together Ally / Mijs Verhoeven, Founding Director, Helmswoman; Women Together and WISTA The Netherlands Session URL: https://europe.breakbulk.com/agendas/event-agenda/bridging-continents-building-trust-across-cul

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