How To Best Improve Your Leadership With The Culture Map

Cultural awareness is a crucial skill for Global Leaders, extending beyond those who have lived in multiple countries. Whether you’re an expatriate leading a multinational team or a professional collaborating across cultures, understanding cultural dynamics can greatly enhance leadership effectiveness and team success.

But first, self-awareness is key to understanding other people. Cultural frameworks can provide a valuable foundation for exploring these cultural paradoxes. They can help us make sense of the behaviors we observe in different cultures.

These frameworks are essential for leadership, collaboration, and communication in global settings.

Today, I introduce The Culture Map framework, developed by author Erin Meyer. A set of scales that offer another lens through which we can examine cultural differences in professional settings. This post marks the beginning of a series where I will share the different elements of The Culture Map framework.

The Benefits Of Using The Culture Map

The Culture Map focuses on how these values manifest in everyday communication and behaviors. Meyer’s approach acknowledges the fluidity of cultural behaviors in a globalized world. Her framework adapts to different situations, acknowledging that behavior changes with context, industry, or experience.

By integrating insights from the Culture Map, Global Leaders can develop a more comprehensive and flexible approach to cross-cultural collaboration.

• Culture Map presents 8 valuable dimensions which include Communicating, Leading, Deciding, Trusting, Evaluating, Persuading, Trusting, and Disagreeing
• The Culture Map is qualitative and observational, based on interviews and real-world business experiences. Meyer offers practical tools for professionals to navigate cross-cultural leadership and collaboration
• Its visual design makes it quick to understand, offering leaders a visual tool to position themselves, their observations, their learnings of their selves, and their own cultures with the new cultures they work with

Understanding The Value Of The Leading Dimension

This dimension examines how leaders are expected to behave. This can include possible aspects such as: directiveness, participative, or consensus-oriented, depending on the power distance within a culture.

It’s similar to Hofstede’s Power Distance Dimension, which I have touched upon in past articles. A notable difference is that Erin Meyer’s research further integrates historical and anecdotal background – an example being her use of the word Egalitarian instead of Low-Power Distance, and Hierarchical instead of High-Power Distance.

These dimensions look at how much a society accepts unequal power distribution. This can be manifested in the workplace as deference to authority figures or acceptance of hierarchy, or egalitarian vs. hierarchical leadership styles.

Some of the historical and anecdotal background of the Culture Map Leading dimension includes:

• Countries under the late Roman Empire (such as Spain and France), tend to be more hierarchical. On the other end of the spectrum, while we might associate Vikings with “hulking muscular men,” today’s Norwegian culture is surprisingly egalitarian – these communities respected all voices and opinions.
• The distance between God and its people is also an important factor when talking about Egalitarian or Hierarchical cultures. Consequently, religion puts a strong weight on hierarchical preferences – this can also be seen in Asian or Confucius cultures, where structural hierarchies influence prescribed roles: Emperor over Subject, Father over Son, Husband over Wife, and older sibling over younger.

Managing Leadership In Different Cultures

Always remember the importance of understanding the other culture and acting openly and accordingly is key to Global Leadership. A true leader’s ability to view situations and problems from the perspective of a colleague, team member, or superior’s different culture qualifies them to interact successfully with individuals of foreign cultures and lead them most efficiently.

It is essential to adapt your leadership to cultural norms. Egalitarian cultures (Netherlands, USA) expect participative leadership, while hierarchical cultures (Japan, Mexico) value authority and structure. Here are some tips on how to manage these differences and align with your team’s expectations while boosting effectiveness:

Decision-Making Varies Across Cultures

• Consensus-driven teams (e.g. Germany, Canada) contrast with top-down decision-making cultures (e.g. Mexico, China)
• In a Hierarchical Culture, always make sure you “Facilitate, Don’t Dominate”
• As the leader, invite individuals to speak rather than expecting them to jump in, uncovering valuable insights

Manage Communication Differently

• In Egalitarian Cultures, trust comes from competence and collaboration, there is no need to copy or talk to a person’s boss first. Organizational levels may be skipped
• In hierarchical cultures, communicate with the boss, CC the boss in emails, and, if you need to talk with someone ranking higher than you or your leader, ask for permission first
• Encourage Open Brainstorming by having your team meet without you first to freely share ideas, and then report back. This reduces deference to authority

Leadership in Teams Requires Clarity

• In Hierarchical Cultures, clear directions are expected from leaders, so make sure your expectations are translated into clear objectives
• Setting expectations reduces misunderstandings, so provide meeting guidelines and key questions in advance – let team members know you’ll call on them to encourage participation.
• Egalitarian cultures, on the other hand, encourage open debate – promote healthy discussions, and be open to challenging conversations
• Facilitate goal setting by aligning personal objectives with the areas’ vision through discussion and negotiation, acting as a guide rather than a supervisor

Understanding how your cultural biases shape interactions will help you lead with greater awareness, adaptability, and effectiveness in global environments.

Facilitating the awareness of cultural differences with Executive Coaching will unleash the leader’s potential and leverage the richness of cultural diversity. However, before studying any intercultural framework, it’s essential to reflect on your own cultural background and leadership style.