Mental Fitness · 04 Choose · FOUNDATION
A report tells you where you stand. The program is where it holds.
What it produces: stronger self-command under pressure, better judgment, more constructive leadership behavior and stronger team interaction — held long enough to show up in results. It starts with one thirty-minute interpretation conversation on your reading and the system around you.
Building Mental Fitness
The Mental Fitness Lab
The offering is the capability. The Lab is where it is built.
Building Mental Fitness is the proposition: judgment under pressure, measured and trained. The Mental Fitness Lab is the facilitated cohort experience — individual or intact team — through which a participant assesses, learns, practices, applies and sustains it, with one system change chartered alongside the practice.
01
Assess
Take the Mental Fitness Read — two licensed instruments, about 10–14 minutes.
02
Understand
Receive your Building Mental Fitness Report and read it with Compass in one interpretation conversation.
03
Learn
One 90-minute cohort session a week and a one-hour Friday video, for the eight-week foundation.
04
Practice
About ten minutes a day of guided practice, recorded in your own private rep record.
05
Apply
Charter one system change alongside the practice — decision rights, roles, standards or cadence.
06
Reflect
Bring one live moment a week to the cohort: what fired, what you noticed, what you chose instead.
07
Measure
At week eight, re-take the Read and see your own movement — and, for teams, the team's. The four-week application phase then puts the practice to work on live decisions.
08
Sustain
Continuation is a decision, not a default: the cohort may renew into ARC™, or close with a dated handoff.
Eight weeks of foundation plus four weeks of application, one 90-minute session a week, about ten minutes of practice a day. PQ® and Positive Intelligence® are the licensed instruments inside the Lab; the interpretation and the enterprise work are Compass.
How the Lab runs
Two ways to take it on.
Participants build the same core capabilities either way. It begins as an eight-week foundation, then moves into a four-week application phase: a minimum of 12 weeks at $1,500 for the whole engagement, including app access for one year. Sessions run in person or online.
is the structured experience inside Building Mental Fitness: a small cohort that goes through the material together — an executive team, an intact sports team, a manufacturing cell, or a mixed group of individuals. It adds structured accountability, shared practice and peer learning. It is not a separate Compass product.
Option one
Individual
One leader, alone or inside a mixed peer cohort. The work is their own judgment under pressure, read against the demands of the role they actually hold.
The system change shipped with it: one named change to how the leader's own decisions are made — decision rights, a standard, or a cadence — with an owner and a review date.
Option two
Intact team
The leadership team as the team it actually is. Paired with the team reading.
The system change shipped with it: a written working agreement plus one change to decision rights, standards or cadence, held in the Compass delivery record.
The rule Compass holds
Awareness is not an intervention. Every Mental Fitness engagement ships a system change alongside the practice — decision rights, standards, cadence or role clarity — or the insight decays.
The two phases and what each commits to
8 weeks
The eight-week foundation cohort
One 90-minute virtual session each week
The cohort begins as an eight-week foundation. Members meet virtually once per week for ninety minutes, work through a one-hour video released each Friday, and complete roughly ten minutes of daily practice in the Positive Intelligence app.
4 weeks
The four-week application phase
One session each week, applied to live decisions
After the eight-week foundation, the cohort spends four weeks applying the practice to live decisions and team interactions. The system change chartered in the foundation phase is reviewed, refined and carried forward with evidence.
A week in the Lab
- Weekly sessionOne 90-minute virtual cohort meeting.
- FridaysA new one-hour video is released for the week.
- DailyAbout 10 minutes of guided practice in the PQ app.
What participants get their hands on — the app, for one year
The practice runs on the Positive Intelligence® app: a weekly video, a guided daily practice of about ten minutes, timers, and each participant's own progress and streak history. Access holds for one year from the start, so the practice continues long after the Lab closes.
- · Daily guided reps, timed on screen
- · A weekly video and focus for each of the eight weeks
- · Saboteur library and personal progress history
Illustrative view of the practice screen. Ask to see it live in the interpretation conversation.
Compass FOUNDATION
Where mental fitness sits in the operating system.
Mental fitness is not a wellbeing program. It is measured interference in executive judgment. Compass Mental Fitness is a capability inside FOUNDATION — one layer of the architecture Compass installs, held to the same evidence standard as every other layer.
Where it sits
FOUNDATION · Face Reality · self-leadership. FOUNDATION is the first element of the Compass core architecture, and Face Reality begins with the leader's own judgment. Mental fitness is one capability inside that discipline — never a program running alongside the operating system.
What it changes
A reading is evidence, not an intervention. Every engagement ships a system change with the practice — decision rights, standards, cadence or role clarity — so the insight lands in how the enterprise operates.
Where Positive Intelligence® appears
In exactly one layer: the two instruments and the practice app are licensed from Positive Intelligence, LLC and credited as theirs. The diagnostic reading, the enterprise interpretation and the system change are Compass.
Why it comes first
Mental fitness underwrites the whole architecture. Every discipline — SIMPLIFY, LEAD, GROW, ARC™ — is executed by leaders under pressure, so the quality of judgment at FOUNDATION sets the ceiling on everything built above it.
Catch the saboteur — the Judge first — then move forward with curiosity and empathy rather than the reaction that arrived first.
01
Empathize
Hold the standard and the person at the same time. No lowered bar, no blame read.
02
Explore
Get the facts of the condition before the opinion of it — evidence, not narrative.
03
Innovate
Generate real alternatives instead of defending the first design that comes to mind.
04
Navigate
Choose against declared priorities and True North, not against the loudest pressure.
05
Activate
Commit to one specific, dated action with an owner — recorded where the work is run.
The Judge, the Saboteur and Sage models and the five Sage powers are the work and trademarks of Shirzad Chamine and Positive Intelligence, LLC. Compass is an independent licensed user; the enterprise application above is Compass’s.
Who Compass is
Compass is an enterprise operating architecture firm. We exist because most organizations are not broken — they have outgrown the design that made them successful. The work is architect-led, integrated, evidence-based, and built to transfer. Compass leaves business architects, not dependency.
About Compass
One firm, one engagement, one operating system — architected with you and left in your hands.
The whole architecture is on the FOUNDATION discipline page.
Plain English
Every term on this page, translated.
Some of these words are licensed method names and some are Compass delivery terms. None of them should cost you a minute of interpretation.
- PQ®A judgment score, 1 to 100
- The share of time the mind is working for the decision rather than against it. Trainable, not a personality type.
- SaboteurA habitual reaction under pressure
- The pattern that arrives faster than thought and shapes a decision before the decision is consciously made. Everyone carries three or four.
- SageThe considered response
- The way of responding that stays curious and useful when pressure arrives — empathy, perspective, a clear next action.
- The Mental Fitness LabThe facilitated cohort program
- Where the practice actually holds: eight weeks of foundation plus four weeks of application, one 90-minute session a week, in an individual or intact-team cohort. The Lab is the structured experience inside Building Mental Fitness.
- Lab participantA member of a Lab cohort
- Compass says "Lab participant". "Podder" is licensed-community slang and is not used in Compass materials.
- Mental Fitness ReadThe two instruments plus the Compass reading
- You take the Saboteur Assessment and the PQ® Score, enter your results, and Compass interprets them against the role you actually hold.
- Building Mental Fitness ReportWhat you receive back
- Your range read, what each pattern costs in decisions and relationships, and the recommended next move.
- Interpretation conversationOne meeting about what your reading means
- Not a sales call and not coaching. Thirty minutes on the reading, the system around you, and whether the Lab is the right move.
- FacilitatorThe person who runs the Lab cohort
- Compass facilitates the practice and owns the enterprise interpretation. A facilitator is not a therapist and the Lab is not treatment.
- RepA ten-second attention drill
- The daily practice unit — a short tactile, sound or breathing focus that moves the score over weeks, not days.
Not sure where to start?
Three questions, and we point you to the right instrument.
Under a minute. From this page, most leaders begin with The organization.