Leader, is your Team In or Out of Alignment?
You can’t create your vision by yourself. Success is created with and through others. There are three communication skills that will serve you well: Networking which involves creating relationship; enrollment, or creating partnership in the vision; and alignment, or building a harmonious synergistic team.
A few words on alignment: Consider a car’s alignment – out, it’s difficult to drive, you don’t trust it to take the hills. When a car is in alignment, you know it – it’s smoooooth driving! Likewise, any accomplishment will be easier for you to achieve with an aligned team. This business concept can be applied to your corporation, family, networks of support, co-workers, peers, spheres of influence or any other group.
I work with organizations to assist executives with building stronger teams and aligning employees to the vision, core values, mission and other imperatives. The indicators of organizations that are out of alignment include lack of personal accountability, complacency, 
gossiping, not keeping commitments, being afraid to give and receive feedback, the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude, being a bully, being disrespectful, telling off-color jokes, being arrogant, not listening, being non-inclusive and being a victim. Have you been noticing any of these?
Aligned companies are characterized by mutual respect, win-win attitudes, courageousness, integrity, commitment, a team spirit, trust, and personal responsibility. Importantly they have a quality of connectedness that leads them to creation of results on the bottom line. Everyone sees a clear link between their roles and their part in creating the corporate imperatives. When everything is aligned, people will more easily be able to determine whether or not they are being a contributor or an obstacle. And leaders, this is intentional!
As a consultant who specializes in alignment, leadership and diversity I’ve got plenty of evidence that being and staying in alignment is not always easy but it is possible and imperative with solid working partners and top-down, bottom-up commitment and communication. Walking the talk and empowering others to do the same even when one doesn’t feel like it – easier said than done. However, consider the alternative.
Related articles
- Three Ways to Pull Your Senior Team Together (forbes.com)
- What ‘type’ of leader are you? (leadspeak.wordpress.com)
No Comments
Trackbacks/Pingbacks