Expert opinion: Team alignment is about emotional connect

One needs to be very clear on the circumstances and the context related to the issue of alignment or the lack of it. Once you are aware of the context, then you know where alignment is needed. There are times when you also have to build alignment about alignment. However, most of the times, consistency in people’s priorities determines if there is alignment or not. Alignment is needed to understand each other’s perspectives and to provide support at the right time — it serves as the lubricant to make the business run faster, better.

There are different kinds of alignment that are needed to be built. I think top team alignment is not just a feel-good factor, but more of a granular alignment around specifics, trust, processes, values, strategy, goals, priorities, methods of execution, resource allocation, etc. One needs to prioritize and decide which alignment is the most critical and the work on building that.

What the top team is, in itself, is a very different concept. There can be different top teams. And the same individual can be part of different top teams where each team can have a different need of alignment because the individuals, tasks at hand, and contexts are also different. Therefore, how you build alignment in different top teams is very different. If you are restructuring the business, there is a different need. If you are changing the long-term strategy of the company, it is a different need. If you acquire a company and bringing together two sets of leadership together, then a different kind of alignment is needed. 

I have seen that some of the core challenges related to team alignment come from 3 fundamental sources — first is the background of the individuals in the team. An individual’s background makes one big challenge for alignment because what a person has learnt in his life, gives him the framework, meaning and the lenses through which he perceives the world. The second source of challenge for alignment is the strategy. Sometimes, if the players are new or if the strategy is new, it becomes another source of challenge to alignment. The third source, perhaps, is that people believe there is alignment, but the alignment is superficial and not deep. Because the superficiality of it is neither comprehended nor understood, people move forward, only to realize later that the alignment they believed in was apparently never there.

The rapidity at which alignment is expected to be built is itself a challenge to building alignment as the context of the customer expectation and the expectation of the outside world evolves swiftly. 

Alignment building, thus, can be an individual process or a team process. It can happen through coaching, mentoring, organizational confrontation, debate, discussion, exchange of information and insights. Depending on what you want alignment on, you need to use a tool, a methodology or a process to get a sense of it. If you are a leader who is connecting and sensitive, you are always able to pick up when the alignment is deep, strong and effective. People behavior in your absence also shows alignment. But if you aren’t sure about it, there are other interventions. Surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, discussions, there are many data points from where you can pick up whether there is alignment or not. 

The issue of alignment is significant and exists more in large organizations, rapidly changing contexts, and in situations where there is a leadership change. Sometimes what we call alignment is nothing but a submission to the position of a very powerful leader — but that necessarily may not be alignment. Alignment is an insightful understanding that creates an emotional connect; it requires an understanding and a degree of buy-in. 

Top team alignment is not just a feel-good factor, but more of a granular alignment around specifics, trust, processes, values, strategy, goals, priorities etc.