I was watching ‘Das Leben der Anderen’ (The lives of others) over the weekend.
This story set in former GDR is a masterpiece of German cinema. So powerful that it brought me back to my first years in Czechoslovakia.
The film is permeated by a feeling of fear and lingering mistrust that I can remember from the early 90s in Prague. The Berlin Wall had come down but trust remained a rare commodity.
I remember how I spent innumerable hours drinking Turkish coffee (the only kind you would get in Prague in those days) and talking to people off the record before I could conduct a real interview with them. They needed to figure out who I really was before they could decide whether to trust me or not.
I know this must sound like the most time-consuming form of journalism you’ve ever come across. But those very different times. And it really was the best school if you wanted to learn how to relate to people from another culture.
Watching “Das Leben der Anderen” got me thinking again about the issue of trust.
The problem is that trust means different things to different people. Your relationship with trust as a value depends on the experiences you have had over the years, on the way you have been treated by other people.
My years in Eastern Europe have made me very aware of the traumas societies and groups of individuals go through. And this awareness keeps coming in handy every time I have to conduct seminars in situations connected with corporate restructurings, mergers and other traumatic corporate experiences.
I do believe that learning how to gain trust is an important starting point in cross-cultural communications.
It was a survivor of the Bosnian war who taught me this. It is a lesson I will never forget. I have shared this story with my listeners at the Brand New World Telesummit.
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Hi Silvia, I really enoyed your interview with Bernadette and got a lot of value out of it - thank you!
Fresh from University at the start of my career I spent two years working for the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, and I have to say that this experience influenced many of my life choices since then.
Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by what makes people think, act and relate to each other in the way that they do.
As you’ll agree, its a great grounding as a communicator never to take anything for granted, and to become hyper aware of what makes us all different.
Regards, Ronna