Set Your Team’s Guiding Stars

The first fundamental job of a leader is aligning people around what’s most important. Centuries ago, before the advent of GPS, navigators relied on the stars to guide them. As long as they understood their position relative to these stars, they could stay on course. Today, organizations have guiding stars in the form of their mission, vision, and values. These guiding stars help steer decision-making and determine how teams allocate time, energy, and resources.

Effective teams keep these guiding stars in sight at all times, ensuring decisions align with the organization’s goals. However, a significant challenge for many leaders is creating and maintaining this alignment. A Gallup poll found that only?41% of employees?feel they understand what their company stands for and what makes it different from competitors. This statistic highlights the critical gap in organizational alignment, which directly impacts employee engagement and performance.

Why Alignment Matters

An aligned team knows the answers to essential questions like:

• What is the organizational vision?
• What is the organization’s strategy?
• What is this team’s unique mission in support of the vision and strategy?
• What is my role and responsibility?
• How are we measuring success?

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When alignment is missing, teams struggle to make decisions that contribute to the organization’s long-term success. For instance, one study revealed that misaligned teams waste?up to 25% of their resources?on tasks that don’t directly support organizational goals.

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At GA-Ultra Leadership, we recognize leaders must articulate their team’s mission and create shared clarity. Once leaders are confident that their teams are aligned, they empower their teams to shape their work and achieve their best.

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The Cost of Misalignment: A Real-World Example

Unfortunately, the failure to create basic alignment is all too common in large organizations. I have seen this firsthand. In one company I worked with, one team was charged with reducing expenses while another team was instructed to focus on rapid growth without regard to cost. The two teams’ goals were in direct conflict: How could the first team successfully manage expenses if the other team was empowered to spend freely? They couldn’t—at least, not without coordinating their efforts.

Neither team knew of the other’s priorities, leading them to unwittingly work at cross purposes. This misalignment created a ripple effect across the organization, impacting almost every department. Through our engagement with them we were able to help the organization:

1. Identify the root of the problem,
2. Define what success looked like for the entire organization, and
3. Align their teams around that shared vision.

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This was all preventable if there had been better communication and alignment from the start.

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Two Levels of Alignment: Teams and Organizations

Effective alignment is twofold. It involves:

1. Alignment within teams?– Ensuring each team knows its mission, roles, and how success is measured.
2. Alignment between teams?– Creating horizontal communication and collaboration to prevent cross-functional conflicts or redundancy.

In the example above, by shifting the operating model to encourage inter-team communication, the organization reduced internal conflicts and identified ways to simultaneously manage expenses while pursuing growth. Research backs this up: companies with highly aligned teams are?72% more efficient, and?50% more likely to exceed revenue goals.

For a bit more on the importance of alignment, watch this: What EVERY LEADER Needs to Know to Prepare Their Team

Landing 2024 and Launching into 2025: Are You Aligned?

As you wrap up 2024, how aligned is your team around the guiding stars you’ll follow to success in 2025? Until your team can easily and consistently answer the alignment questions above, you risk confusion, disengagement, and inefficiency. Now is the time to gather your team and map out your path to success in the new year.

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At GA-Ultra Leadership, we have a proven track record of helping leaders and teams create the shared clarity needed to engage, empower, and activate their workforce to achieve their best results.?Reach out to us?if you’d like to discuss how we can help you align your team for success in 2025.

Cheers,

Greg

My newest book, Coaching for (a) Change: How to Engage, Empower, and Activate People, launches on December 10th! I hope you’ll get it, read it, love it, and share it. Details coming soon!

About the Author????

Dr. Greg Giuliano is an advisor and executive coach to senior executives and teams all over the world, designing change leadership and team development strategies to lead organizational transformation. His mission is to help leaders and teams grow their capacity to enable positive disruption for markets, organizations, teams, and individuals.???

Greg is the author of the #1 Amazon Bestsellers The Next Normal, Ultra Leadership, and The Hero’s Journey: Toward a More Authentic Leadership.??