Category: News

Cultural differences: approach to time

When I ask Dutch people: “How do you feel when people arrive late?”, most of them are quite honest: “Those people are annoying; they ruin the schedule and don’t take into account the fact that people are waiting for them.

Culture and sales

Culture Insights works with a worldwide network of intercultural trainers. Here, one of them worked on the impact of culture on sales.

Training Scientists

It was a great pleasure to delve deep into cultural differences together with a group scientists. What do you come across during your work? How can we interpret the differences? Can you step into other people’s shoes? Which are crucial elements in the communication and can we think of various strategies to become more effective? […]

Ghana Mission

Our consultant Alette Vonk joined a mission to Ghana. She visited various potential clients and had many interesting discussions with a large variety of people from the World Trade Center. Alette also gave a successful intercultural  training to a group of 25 employees from 8 different companies, which was organized by the Ghana Netherlands Business […]

In the Media: Saskia Maarse

Movies of the BBC: ‘Why the Dutch always say what they mean” and “Why the Dutch don’t say sorry”.

Saskia Maarse

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Saskia Maarse is a Dutch intercultural speaker, trainer and author. For six years, she researched how Dutch culture is experienced by people from other cultures. She did so through in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs and managers from 30 different countries. She wrote two books on the subject: Tutti frutti – Success in a colourful and entreprising Netherlands and Onder de zeespiegel – collaborating and living together with the Dutch.

Saskia’s fascination for cultural differences started at a young age. She worked in tourism for over ten years, including several years in France, Spain, Italy and Austria. Her work experience abroad and her subsequent trip around the world broadened her view of the world and its inhabitants. Her research provided Saskia with much: more cultural awareness and extensive knowledge about Dutch culture in relation to other cultures.

Saskia’s mission is to provide as many people and organisations as possible with cultural insights and awareness in an accessible and inspiring way, so that more understanding of different cultures is created.

“During our team building day in Openluchtmuseum Arnhem we have had the pleasure to enjoy a very interesting cultural awareness workshop focussing on the Dutch culture in comparison with other cultures, how other cultures see us Dutch and what we can learn with the 6 principles of intercultural working from Saskia Maarse. The diverse group that we were with 25 people, 6 nationalities and even more cultures (including Frisian and Limburg) were really enthusiastic and even more understood the importance of good communication (verbal and visual) in international business.”
Marko van der Smitte, Sales Director Alfa Laval