This document discusses the importance of building trust in intercultural relationships. It notes that trust is a critical element for effective ministry and opens opportunities for spiritual work. The document explores factors that affect relationship and trust building between cultures, such as worldviews, arrogance, deference, speech, behaviors, and attitudes. It provides strategies for establishing trust, including behaviors like listening, observing, and showing humility. Trust is seen as especially important since cultural misunderstandings can unintentionally damage trust.
1. Trust, Intercultural Relationship Skill Building
Relating from the Heart
Establishing Intercultural Trust Relationships
Concurrent Session
ICLL06 - October 7-12, 2007
• Effectiveness in mission combines excellence in language learning with the
ability to develop deep and significant relationships.
• It is this ability that opens opportunities for spiritual ministry within cross-
cultural setting.
• Learning cultural patterns that affect relationship building during language
study is important to ministry success.
Personal introduction:
In our own 30+ years in missions, we have lived and/or worked in 5 Latin
American countries and 14+ Asian countries. One commonality we have noted is
that relationships are the foundation for intercultural ministry.
Question:
• How many of you have at least one close friend/co-worker with whom you
relate in another language? (group participation).
• Would you be willing to share who that person is, what language do they
speak, and why that relationship is special?
• What are some of the skills that make these kinds of relationships
effective? (group list)
o Learning the obligations and privileges of friendship
o Flexibility
o Observation – how do they show love?
o Mutuality
o Learning posture
o Understanding humor
o Take initiative
o Be a servant
o Do things you are scared of
o Good listener
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2. o Allow enough time for relationships to develop
Domains of learning
Three domains of learning (know/do/be) needs to be emphasized simultaneously
in both program planning and cultural learning instruction.
BE
DO
KNOW
A Latin American colleague recently challenged me that this taxonomy is
incomplete. The “know” in Western minds is about information, however in
Spanish, Greek and many other languages. For example, in Spanish “know” is
two words, “conocer” and “saber.” “Saber” is about information; “conocer” is
about people and relationships. So in the Domains of Learning “pie,” the one-
third labeled “know” should be divided into “know” and “relate,” which would give
us a pie with four equal slices.
The least emphasized domain of learning in training for missionaries is
“relational.” Nevertheless, the missionary vocation is all about ministry with and
to people. Ministry is impossible without relationships. Missionaries must learn
how to gain and maintain strong intercultural relationships. In language and
cultural learning programs, people need to learn how to relate to others in the
culture they are studying.
Principle: All ministry involved relationships; therefore, intercultural
relationship skill-building should be a necessary and integral part of the
curriculum of all language/cultural preparation programs.
Group comments:
• The new generation of missionaries does not know how to relate to others,
even in their own culture and language.
• There is a difference in relational skills due to gender, generation, and
culture
• “Fast-food” cultures produce belief in “fast-food” relationships
• Westerners who train missionaries bring their own assumptions to the
training agenda, many times we are mistaken about how to build
relationship s in the other culture.
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3. Question: What are some of the factors that affect intercultural relationship skill
development? (group participation)
Speech:
• Fluency
• Vocabulary
Attitudes:
• Respect
• Trust
• Empathy
• Flexibility
• Patience
• Openness
• Accepting
• Humility
• Learner
Behaviors:
• Listening
• Observing
• Collaborating
• Risk taking
• Sociability
• Hospitality (Africa, for example)
• for sources: see Reference List
Trust is vital to, and a critical element of, all of the above.
Duane Elmer defines trust as “the ability to build confidence in a relationship so
that both parties believe that the other will not intentionally hurt them, but will act
in their best interest.” (p. 77)
Readings: Participants read cards with statements about trust:
• Paul Heibert, “No task is more important in the first years of ministry in a
new culture than the building of trust relationships with the people.”
(Elmer, 76)
• George MacDonald, “It is a greater compliment to be trusted than to be
loved.” (Elmer, 76)
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4. Questions:
• Think back to your close friend (the one we referred to at the beginning of
the workshop); is there a bond of trust which makes your relationship
special?
• Can you describe how you came to trust each other the way you have?
(group participation).
• How do you overcome the natural disadvantage that we have as
Americans in that often people do not trust us?
Of these three areas: speech, behavior, and attitudes; attitudes stand out as the
most important to developing trust. Both speech and behavior can be feigned,
attitudes, however, are detected by intuition (especially in non-Western cultures)
without the need for oral communication. (see a Western treatment of this
phenomenon in Malcomb Gladwell’s, Blink).
The trust relationship that draws us together with a person from another culture
can also create a dilemma for them. Social pressures and/or force can cause
people to break trust with someone in a trust relationship against their will.
Asking someone from a non-Christian culture to make a decision for Christ
causes a major break of trust within their family and culture (C1-C5 is all about
how much of a break needs to be made).
Trust-distrust continuum (Covey,The Speed of Trust)
How people trust can be distributed over a bell curve:
smart trust
distrust blind trust
Distrust at one side produces suspicion
Blind trust on the others side produces gullibility
Smart trust leads to sound judgment in relationships
You can conceptualize this as a matrix: The vertical axis is the tendency to trust
(hi and lo) and the horizontal axis is tendency to investigate (hi and lo). Hi trust
and lo investigation produces Blind trust/gullibility. Lo trust and lo investigation
produces No Trust/indecision.
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5. Tendency to Trust
HI
Smart Trust |
sound judgment | Blind Trust
| gullibility
| Tendency
HI _________________ |________________LO to
| Investigate
Distrust |
suspicion | No Trust
| indecision
|
LO
Hi trust and hi investigation produced Smart Trust/sound judgment. And lo
trust and hi investigation produces Distrust/suspicion.
Most cultures begin relating to other cultures from one of these four quadrants in
relation to those of another culture. For instance, Latin culture in many countries
is in the “no trust” zone in relation to North Americans.
Group comments:
• There are few Global South cultures which inherently trust Westerners
• In Paraguay, blind trust for foreigners s the norm
• In Brazil, there is blind trust of all things American; others affirmed this
posture in other countries
• Many indigenous people come at relationships with all those outside their
tribe from a stance of distrust
Distrust is the most dangerous of the quadrants: It cuts off synergy and
dampens collaboration.
Question: If trust is so important to building relationships, what can I do to
establish and/or reclaim trust. This is a key question for language/culture
learners. It is answered differently in every culture/country.
Behaviors which inspire trust
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6. Handout: Covey’s “13 behaviors” which lead to increased trust.
Question: How universal are these 13 principles? (group discussion)
Participants noted that the behaviors that inspire trust in relationship within
Western cultures are the same behaviors that tend to break down trust in many
other cultures.
Group comments:
• Inevitably we all break trust, sometimes intentionally, sometimes without
knowing it.
• How do we regain the trust once broken? A cultural learner must learn
what to do in the new culture to rebuild trust.
• Listening is the only universal trust-maker.
Questions:
• What would inspire trust in the culture where you live?
• What in the Covey list is inappropriate for building trust where you live?
Examples (group discussion/list):
• Eye contact
o for the West eye contact means open, honest, trustworthy.
o for the Global South, it can mean arrogant, or have sexual overtones.
• Planning for events
o Come to the table with a blank pad (builds trust in Global South –
signifies coming with no agendas).
o In the West, a blank pad means you have not “done your homework”
or are not interested in participating, or are closed to ideas from the
group.
• Silence
o In some cultures, silence means agreeing with the speaker.
o in other cultures silence implies the opposite - disagreement or non-
interest
Principle: Learning how to gain and give trust is one of the primordial skills
in missions. We need to improve ways in which we can be the bridge
between the cultures so that trust can be established.
Unique issues in building trust relationships:
World View issues:
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7. Limited good world view (peasant world view.) Because all good things come in
limited quantities, if you gain, someone else has to lose: jealousy, mistrust,
rumors are the results. Limited good invites the patronage system (feudalism).
Unlimited good world view – all good things are limitless in quantity, competition
is good as it spurs more independence and standing on your own; everyone can
succeed. Unlimited good is also called meritocracy (often confused with
democracy).
Question: How does a person from a limited good world view come to trust one
from an unlimited good world view?
Arrogance-deference cycle:
Domination of people (colonialism) has produced a disastrous phenomenon:
Some cultures are by nature self-assured and arrogant. These are often those
which dominated others (colonization). The cultures which were subjugated
respond to Western arrogance with deference and antagonism (passive/
aggressive).
The arrogance-deference cycle does not allow trust relationships to gain a foot
hold and develop. As a result surface relationships are the norm, with a frequent
“boiling up” of resentment in the “deferent” culture.
Examples:
Blog from India
Breakfast at Denny’s
Argentina and the rest of South America
People from dominating and subjugated cultures find it difficult to work together.
References
*Milton Bennett, IDI (Intercultural Development Inventory)
http://www.intercultural.org/pdf/idi.pdf
*__________. “A Developmental Approach to training for intercultural sensitivity.”
International Journal of Intercultural Relations 10 (2), 179-95.
*Guo-Ming Chen , “A Test of Intercultural Communication Competence,” Intercultural
Communication Studies II (2), 22-42, (1992).
Steven M R Covey, The Speed of Trust
Duane Elmer, Cross Cultural Servanthood
*George Foster, A Second Look at Limited Good, Anthropological Quarterly 45 (2) (Apr.,
1972), 57-64.
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8. *___________. Character and Personal Relationships Seen Through Proverbs in
Tzintzuntzan, Mexico. The Journal of American Folklore 83 (329) (Jul. - Sep., 1970),
304-317.
Malcomb Gladwell, Blink
Kishore Mahbubani, Beyond the Age of Innocence
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.
The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes
Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey, Stephen R. Covey, and
Rebecca R. Merrill (Paperback - Feb 5, 2008)
(39)
Other Editions: Kindle Edition, Hardcover, Audio CD, Audio Download; See
all 6.
1. Cross-cultural Servanthood: Serving the World in
Christlike Humility by Duane Elmer (Paperback - Mar 16,
2006)
(6)
1. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm
Gladwell (Paperback - April 3, 2007)
(893)
Other Editions: Kindle Edition, Hardcover, Paperback, Audio CD; See all 8.
1. Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between
American And the World by Kishore Mahbubani (Paperback -
Mar 21, 2006)
(2)
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