Using the Culture Map to Improve Stakeholder Relationships: A Tech CEO Case Study
- Colin Swindells
- Jan 30
- 3 min read
This article summarizes a case study of how a tech CEO, working with a coach, assessed the cultural differences between herself and a challenging work stakeholder. The assessment utilized Erin Meyer's Culture Map framework. #CultureMap, #CrossCulturalCommunication, #GlobalLeadership, #LeadershipCoaching, #TechLeadership, #CommunicationSkills, #PersonalBranding, #DigitalWorkplace, #CulturalIntelligence, #RemoteWork
A tech CEO, Susan, in the SF Bay Area recently described to me the challenges she faces communicating with a particular stakeholder, Jason. I ended up referring Erin Meyer’s Culture Map [1] to her as a practical framework to assess the very different communication norms between her and the stakeholder. As knowledge workers increasingly work across expanding geographies, interact within more diverse cultural landscapes and build individual brands to thrive in a fully digital workplace, the challenges experienced by this particular CEO are likely to become more and more common. Furthermore, Daniel Priestley effectively highlights how these changes, especially the rise of personal brands and the decline of institutions [2], will likely accelerate the needs of knowledge workers to effectively communicate across diverse cultural spectra.
Figure 1 illustrates the eight dimensions of Erin Meyer’s culture map for the CEO, her stakeholder and typical US norms. Susan’s ability to become self-aware of her default cultural attributes, those of Jason and those of national norms helped her to assess and prioritize how to align her communications with Jason. We see that Susan defaults to precise, simple and clear low-context messaging at face value whereas Jason defaults to nuanced, layered and opaque high-context messaging with much ‘reading between the lines’. She defaults to handling direct negative feedback that’s a balance of frank and subtle compared to Jason’s default to handle indirect negative feedback that’s much more soft and diplomatic in style. Susan and Jason also differ in their defaults related to problem solving, and persuading in general. Susan’s default is to start with facts or opinions in a hands-on, applications-first way that later may build to a theory or concept, whereas Jason’s default is a balance of applications-first mixed with principles-first attributes involving building theories or concepts in parallel. Similarities and differences of leadership style, decision making, trust building, disagreement and scheduling are also illustrated in Figure 1.
After Susan built this culture map and became more aware of her similarities and differences with Jason, she had a deep discussion with Jason about their cultural dimension assumptions in various situations. This built shared understanding and trust in a way that aligned Susan and Jason for an improved working relationship. With a common framework in place, she was able to adapt and bridge her future discussions with Jason to more effectively work with him. For example, knowing that Jason defaulted to a high-context communication style, she asked more questions, varied her style and paraphrased to ensure that she didn’t miss unspoken nuances. Also, knowing that Susan defaulted to provide more direct negative feedback, Jason didn’t take offense when her efforts to be more indirect with negative feedback still seemed more direct than he was accustomed to. Susan also allowed a bit more time at the start of future projects for Jason to build concepts and theories instead of diving straight into a particular application as she typically would do with most other technocrats – a surprising change for her because she’s more principle-first driven than the US norm.
In summary, Figure 1 shows a CEO’s assessment of cultural norms in a way that built significant awareness of her needs and those of a stakeholder who she previously found very challenging to work with. Equipped with this greater self awareness and know-how, she was able to build successful working relationships with this stakeholder, completing a high-value project together that leveraged each other's strengths.
Note: Names in this article were changed for anonymity of the CEO and Stakeholder.
[1] Meyer, Erin. The culture map: Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business. Public Affairs, 2014.
[2] Priestley, Daniel. Oversubscribed: How to Get People Lining Up to Do Business with You. John Wiley & Sons, 2020.
Comments