LEADERSHIP ROLE OF ALIGNMENT
Ayodeji Onabanjo
Asset Management, Maintenance & Reliability Solution For The Corrugated and Packaging Industry.
The role of a leader is that of ensuring perfect alignment of purpose, mission, vision, and goals among all members in teams, groups, and tribes within an organization, an association, and/or a community at large.
Similar to a rotating equipment (with a driver, driven, and interconnecting members), there exist a common centerline of purpose between the prime mover of a team’s innovative idea and the objective manifestation of all inherent values and benefits that can be derived as valuable offering in the marketplace.
This centerline represents a common ground that must be laser-leveled and optically aligned in a way that ensures minimal deviation while also promoting dampening effects of possible vibrations that might ensue from imposed external forces of aggression and disruption on the team’s efforts. This centerline is not a vacuum, neither is it imaginary in nature. It exists and requires urgent attention and continuous monitoring of events as it unfolds at all times. In a way, this is similar to having an umbrella view of all rotating members and supporting structures within the system. Drawing parallels with that of a dedicated team that was set-up to achieve a defined purpose and outcome, one will quickly come to an understanding that this responsibility of ensuring proper fit and alignment among all team members is often assumed to be assigned to the team or group leader.
Though nature abhors a vacuum, and lots of centrifugal and centripetal forces are always at play (with that of body-inertia) in any rotating equipment, such that, it starts to experience some aggressions, center-line deviations, and misalignments, leading to excessive vibrations and eventual collapse of the entire drive train if no feedback control and preventive action is in place to mitigate the eventual catastrophe. The important thing therefore is to ensure a smooth and seamless drive between the prime-mover (driver) and the driven load of innovative ideas to be transformed into valuable offerings for wealth creation by the team. The need to keep a watchful eye on the common centerline of purpose against any ‘out-of-tolerance deviation’ and ensuring that no angular, parallel, or lateral misalignment is entertained within the drive system is similar to the totality of what a leadership role in a typical team should be.
So, if you ask me, the person responsible for keeping an eye on this alignment process and ensuring active listening, up to date data gathering, fine-measuring, fine-adjustments, and fine-tuning of all component parts in a rotating equipment is someone that is well equipped with all the alignment tools, jigs, and fixtures to easily and efficiently take note of the obvious as well as the not so obvious changes in trends and performance of individual component parts of the equipment. It takes someone who is familiar and keen with the rotating parts - without taking each component part for granted - to achieve this feat and ensure up-to-date feedback and realignment whenever things appear to start deviating from the norm. Similarly, in teams and in groups where common interests, purpose, goals, and results are within the shared values to be attained, it takes a true leader who knows and pays kind attention to each team members, knows their individuals' strengths and weaknesses, can recognize opportunities and threats facing the team or group he/she is leading, to ensure the stability and alignment of purpose at all times.
He who seeks to be a leader should therefore put on the coverall and gather the toolbox of empathy and active listening and get ready for the backstage or behind the scenes responsibilities of painstaking adjustment, monitoring, guiding, guarding, reporting, measuring, and realignment of individual team members’ thought processes and mindsets through continuous and purpose-driven coaching, mentoring, training, and counseling. To achieve this role and effectively deliver on the mandate of leadership, the leadership candidate for the role of team alignment must be well armed with other tools, jigs, and fixtures beyond the technical capabilities, and must be willing to explore those right-brain activities of creativity, feelings, imagination, passion, and free spirit at all times.
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It is therefore very important for all 21st century engineering leaders and leadership candidates to get familiar with the realities of all types of situations that might be affecting their entire workforce without any kind of prejudices nor stereotypes. Going forward therefore, the leader, being well equipped to execute leadership roles of alignment, must ensure that all necessary adjustments needed for seamless connectivity and drive within their teams and/or groups are made in a proactive manner and in a way that enhances the labor productivity of their employees, and by extension, improving the bottom line. It is also very worthy of note that this leadership role of alignment will surely require great level of unalloyed compassion and empathy on the part of the leader in order to help individuals who had lost confidence and trust in the system to quickly fall back within the centerline, refocus their core values, redirect and re-align their distributed energies along a centerline of common purpose, vision and goals for the greater good of the team/group.
In conclusion, it is a well-known fact that engineering workforce and many other technical specialists are trained to be logical in their thinking. However, many will agree with me that logic often fails to work when trying to convince little kids. This is a kind reminder that people are emotional creatures and if engineers and technical specialists will like to persuade people in their teams and groups to reason along with them as they set out to become leadership candidates with umbrella view to ensure leadership role of alignment, then they need to always paint a word picture; tell a story; use clever analogies and anecdotes; and make their message real to human beings for a much better chance of getting through. I guess I have done the same in this article targeted to engineering workforce and technical specialists' audiences.
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Ayodeji Onabanjo