4 Ways to Improve Team Alignment
The best leaders don’t want groupthink. They want team alignment, in which employees coordinate their actions toward individual, team, and organizational goals.?
82% of surveyed employees believe their organization is strategically aligned, according to research highlighted in Harvard Business Review . But actual alignment, as measured by written responses, was only 23% — nearly 60 percentage points lower!
When a team isn’t aligned — or worse, when its members mistakenly believe they are aligned — employees face more conflict, lower productivity, and reduced confidence in leadership, among other drawbacks.
Here are four ways to help improve your team’s alignment with Whole Brain? Thinking .
Foster Shared Purpose and Vision
Communicate the team's purpose and how it aligns with broader organizational goals. For example, a team leader might use team meetings to regularly reiterate the team's mission and how its work affects the organization and its stakeholders. These simple reminders help the team understand why their work matters and what they should focus on.
Develop a Common Language?
Team leaders can encourage alignment by establishing a common language around how their team thinks, acts, and attempts to achieve. This vocabulary will vary by team based on everyone’s job roles, thinking styles, and industry.?
Encourage Cross-Functional Collaboration
An extension of team alignment is learning how to collaborate across functions with a unified approach and mindset. Cross-functional teams bring together people with different skill sets, backgrounds, and ways of thinking. Misaligned teams can make this type of collaboration more difficult, as other teams will perceive conflicting information or goals. By contrast, when teams are aligned, they still contribute their unique knowledge and thinking, but they make sure their values and goals stay consistent across projects.
Communicate How You’ll Measure Alignment
Team leaders might not measure alignment directly, but sharing how they'll assess progress, whether qualitatively or quantitatively, is important. They might create KPIs that reflect the team's alignment with its goals and objectives. Leaders should share these KPIs, explain their purpose, and describe when and how they'll provide updates. By communicating how alignment is measured, leaders create transparency and accountability.
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