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Cross-Cultural Leadership

The Culture Compass

Navigate difference. Lead with cultural intelligence.

2 Full DaysSenior Leaders and Senior Managers

The Culture Compass is a two-day experiential programme for senior leaders who operate across diverse stakeholder landscapes and need to move beyond cultural awareness into cultural precision. Most leaders in global, multi-functional, or consulting environments know that culture matters. What they lack is the diagnostic language to identify where cultural patterns are generating friction, and the structured tools to navigate them deliberately.

Duration

2 Full Days

Primary Audience

Senior Leaders and Senior Managers

Delivery

In-person, cohort of up to 25

About This Programme

What The Culture Compass Is and Why It Works

The programme opens with Corporate Maze™, an immersive floor simulation that surfaces decision-making defaults, communication patterns, and trust-building behaviours under real pressure before any model is introduced. Day 1 moves through a structured eight-dimension cultural intelligence diagnostic using Erin Meyer's Culture Map, producing a Personal Culture Map for each participant that reveals their cultural orientation, blind spots, and leadership defaults across communication, evaluation, persuasion, leadership, decision-making, trust, disagreement, and time orientation.

Day 2 applies everything to live influence and feedback challenges. Participants build stakeholder engagement strategies calibrated to cultural context, practise feedback conversations using the SBI-AB model structured for the evaluating style of the recipient, and apply Cialdini's six principles of influence to their active stakeholder map. The day closes with TrustSIM or REEL|Life™: 12 Angry Men, and the My Culture Compass: a 30-60-90 day personal action plan translating cultural insight into observable leadership shifts.

Programme Architecture

Two Days. Eight Dimensions. One Integrated Design.

Day 1 builds the diagnostic and self-awareness foundation. Day 2 applies it to influence, feedback, and stakeholder strategy. Every session is experiential before it is conceptual.

Corporate Maze™ Simulation

An immersive floor simulation that surfaces each participant's cultural decision-making defaults, communication patterns, and trust-building behaviours under real pressure. Participants encounter the precise moments where cultural filters shape outcomes before any framework is offered.

Erin Meyer's Culture Map: 8-Dimension Diagnostic

A structured self-assessment producing a Personal Culture Map for each participant. The diagnostic maps cultural orientation across: Communicating (low-context to high-context), Evaluating (direct to indirect feedback), Persuading (principles-first to applications-first), Leading (egalitarian to hierarchical), Deciding (consensual to top-down), Trusting (task-based to relationship-based), Disagreeing (confrontational to avoidance), and Scheduling (linear to flexible time).

TrustSIM: Multi-Stakeholder Navigation Simulation

A ProventusHR live simulation used on Day 2. Participants make decisions across competing stakeholder priorities with incomplete information, discovering how their trust-building defaults perform across different cultural and relational contexts. Debrief connects simulation insights to each participant's Personal Culture Map.

REEL|Life™: 12 Angry Men

ProventusHR's cinematic reflection methodology applied to a film that examines influence without authority, cultural bias in judgement, and decision-making under sustained group pressure. Participants debrief specific scenes against their Personal Culture Map, surfacing the cultural patterns in their own leadership behaviour.

Session-by-Session Design

What Happens Inside Each Day

Day 1 - Diagnostic and Self-Awareness

Corporate Maze™

Surface team biases, decision-making tendencies, and cultural filters in a gamified environment before any framework is offered.

Culture Map Dimensions

Decode leadership and team behaviours using the 8-dimension model. Map cultural blind spots across all active working relationships.

Personal Culture Map

Self-assessment for cultural orientation. Participants uncover blind spots and leadership defaults across the eight dimensions.

Big Picture Thinking

PESTLE or Business Model Canvas to strengthen macro and micro problem-framing and strategic perspective-taking.

Relationship Styles and Trust

Diagnose trust-building approach: task-based versus relationship-based. Reflect on how cultural defaults affect key stakeholder relationships.

Day 2 - Influence, Feedback, and Strategy

Feedback Across Cultures (SBI-AB)

Understand how feedback is received and given across cultural contexts. Apply the SBI-AB model to calibrate feedback for the evaluating frame of each recipient.

Client Value Alignment

Realignment of stakeholder engagement using the Client Value Map with cultural overlays applied to active relationships.

Influence Without Authority

Tools: Trust Equation, Power Mapping, and Cialdini's six principles of persuasion applied to the specific influence challenges participants bring.

TrustSIM or REEL|Life™ Reflection

Experiential anchor: live multi-stakeholder simulation or 12 Angry Men cinematic reflection, debriefed against each participant's Culture Map insights.

My Culture Compass (30-60-90 Day Plan)

Personal action plan translating cultural insight and influence strategy into observable leadership shifts within 30, 60, and 90 days.

The Leadership Challenge

What This Programme Addresses

Cultural misreads that derail feedback, trust, and stakeholder credibility without either party understanding why

Leaders who adapt their style instinctively but have no diagnostic language to do it deliberately or consistently

Feedback conversations that land as aggression in one cultural frame and as evasion in another

Stakeholder relationships where trust is assumed but never built, because the trust currency the other party requires differs

Influence attempts that use positional logic where relationship logic is required, or directness where rapport must come first

What Shifts

From cultural intuition to cultural precision: diagnosing what is actually creating friction in a stakeholder relationship

From one-style persuasion to context-specific influence calibrated to the cultural and relational dynamic at stake

From feedback that protects the manager to feedback structured for the recipient's evaluating frame

From transactional stakeholder management to trust-based relationships built on the currency the other party values

Participant Outcomes

Six Shifts the Programme Produces

Named outcomes from the programme design document. Commitments are signed at close and tracked at 30 and 90 days through structured manager conversations. Kirkpatrick Level 3 measurement is standard on every engagement.

Cultural Precision: Participants leave with a completed Personal Culture Map and the diagnostic language to identify exactly where cultural friction is occurring in active stakeholder relationships.

Behavioural Agility: Leaders adapt their communication, persuasion, and leadership style deliberately to the cultural frame of each interaction, not by instinct alone.

Influence Without Authority: Leaders apply the Trust Equation, Power Mapping, and Cialdini's principles to specific stakeholder situations, moving from positional to relational influence.

Resonant Feedback Delivery: Feedback conversations are restructured using SBI-AB for the evaluating and communication style of the specific recipient. Leaders report fewer defensive reactions and clearer outcomes.

Trust-Based Stakeholder Momentum: Leaders build a specific 30-60-90 day engagement plan for their two to three most costly cultural misalignments, grounded in the trust currency the other party values.

Adaptive Decision-Making: Leaders demonstrate flexibility in framing and decision-making to accommodate different cultural orientations, improving speed and quality of decisions in cross-cultural contexts.

Frameworks and Tools Inventory

Eight Instruments. Two Days. One Integrated Toolkit.

Every tool in the programme is selected because it closes a specific gap that cultural agility requires. Participants leave with a working fluency in each.

Erin Meyer's Culture Map

8-dimension framework for understanding cultural differences in leadership and business contexts.

Personal Culture Map Tool

Individual diagnostic for analysing personal cultural biases, preferences, and leadership defaults.

PESTLE or Business Model Canvas

Frameworks for big-picture thinking and strategic framing that transcend functional and cultural silos.

Trust Equation and Power Maps

Models for assessing trust dynamics and power relationships within specific organisational and cultural contexts.

Cialdini's Influence Principles

Six principles of persuasion applied to cross-cultural influence and stakeholder engagement strategies.

Relationship Styles Grid

Tool for understanding different interpersonal relationship styles and how cultural orientation shapes them.

SBI-AB Feedback Model

Structured feedback methodology calibrated to the cultural evaluating frame of the specific recipient.

TrustSIM or REEL|Life™

Experiential reflection: live simulation or cinematic case study on group dynamics and cross-cultural decision-making.

Practice Area

Leadership Capability Development

Every ProventusHR programme is designed bespoke to your organisation’s context. No two engagements are identical.

Explore Leadership Capability ›
Related ProgrammesExtreme Ownership ›Lead the Shift ›Quest ›
Common Questions

Frequently Asked

Most awareness workshops describe cultural differences. The Culture Compass gives leaders a diagnostic framework for their own cultural orientation, a map of their active stakeholder relationships, and a structured influence and feedback toolkit built for the specific contexts they are navigating. It is not a survey of world cultures. It is a precision instrument for a specific leader's specific challenges.

TrustSIM is a ProventusHR live multi-stakeholder simulation used as the Day 2 experiential anchor. Participants navigate a scenario with competing stakeholder priorities and incomplete information, revealing their trust-building defaults across different cultural and relational contexts. The debrief connects simulation insights to each participant's Personal Culture Map.

REEL|Life is ProventusHR's cinematic reflection methodology. In The Culture Compass, 12 Angry Men is used as a case study in influence without authority, cultural bias in judgement, and decision-making under group pressure. Participants debrief scenes against their Personal Culture Map to surface their own cultural patterns.

A completed Personal Culture Map, a 30-60-90 day My Culture Compass action plan, stakeholder maps with specific engagement and trust-building strategies, and structured feedback tools calibrated for the cultural frames of their key stakeholders.

It is only delivered for single organisations. The cultural mapping and stakeholder work depend entirely on participants sharing a common organisational context. ProventusHR does not run open-cohort versions of any programme.

At 30 days, participants report specific cultural and influence situations where their approach changed. At 90 days, manager conversations confirm whether the shifts are visible to others. Where available, 360-degree instruments calibrated to the programme's focus areas are used. Kirkpatrick Level 3 measurement is standard on every engagement.

Culture Compass is ProventusHR's culture diagnostic and alignment intervention. It surfaces the gap between the culture an organisation states it has and the culture leaders actually experience and create. Using a structured diagnostic, facilitated leadership dialogue, and ExperienceLearning design, it produces a co-created culture architecture with specific behaviour commitments at the leadership level.

Design a Bespoke Culture Compass Engagement

Every engagement begins with a diagnostic conversation. Tell us the leadership challenge and we will design from there.

Start a Discovery Conversation