Team Alignment – a Leadership Responsibility?

How a straight conversation led to a shift in perspective?

For me, the relevance of leaders to team alignment was clear and - dare I say it - fairly fixed.? Then, recently, I was talking with team and leadership coach, and strategic advisor to Mirror Mirror John Dobbin, and in that one conversation, my perspective shifted.? And that’s a big deal for me.? After all, I’ve spent years researching team alignment,? training people on it, and supporting leaders with it.?

Firstly, to clarify: when I refer to team alignment, I mean a process in which people with shared goals learn from each other’s perspectives for the purposes of:

• Creating a better shared understanding about their context and challenges
• Coming up with better or new options for achieving their goals
• Reaching agreement on the next actions together (not necessarily having to agree on perspectives or opinions).

My long-held position on the role of leaders in this process was simple:

People interpret things in their own ways because, naturally, they see things differently. Leaders cannot give people a message and expect them to accept it immediately, nor can they align the various interpretations within a group towards effective action.? Improved alignment between people is a reciprocal dialogue-based process. Leaders have a role to play in connecting the team with the strategy and making room for the alignment process, but everyone is responsible for participating in the process.?

And that, I thought, was the end of the story.?

Then, on a Thursday morning, John and I were on a Zoom call. We were preparing for a session he was leading with a team in India at a global bank.?

I shared a slide that included the following summary statement, fully expecting it to trigger a discussion on the need for / how to set expectations with the team leader:?

Alignment is not the responsibility of the team leader – everyone needs to participate.

He frowned, “Wait, back up,” he said.? “I don’t agree with that.” What followed was a challenging and revealing discussion.?

Patiently, I started talking from the pre-recorded tape player in my head, explaining the ingrained rationale behind the statement. But it didn’t work.

The conversation went a bit like this… (if you start wondering about the tone, we know each other well, so it was a mutually supportive, positive exchange of views…):

John pushed back with a statement that surprised me: “Team alignment is absolutely a leader’s job. You can even say it’s their primary job.”?

I jumped in: “I agree a leader has to help connect the team with strategy and stakeholders, and they need to make the alignment process happen, but they can’t do much more than that.”

John replied:? “They can. I know a lot of great leaders who align their teams really well.”

That gave me pause. I asked: “Are you saying some can and some can’t?”?

He responded: “Some have more of a natural inclination for it, but I think all leaders can be supported to do a better job at it.”

I pressed further: “OK, maybe under conditions that aren’t so complex or dynamic, leaders have more influence on alignment.? But they can’t control how people behave.? Take a worst-case scenario with a team made up of independent contractors. If they’ve got their own targets, they’re not incentivized to invest time in teaming – they just want to deliver.? How can a team leader be responsible for the lack of alignment between a group in that situation?”

John’s response was simple but powerful: “A leader can talk to those people. Explain the benefits of getting better connected with their team mates.? Find out what’s stopping them.? Encourage them to engage.? If they still don’t want to, that’s another conversation.”??

I wasn’t done yet:? “What about when – as is commonly the case – if the wider culture of the organization is more short-term oriented or rewards individuals over teams, then the team manager or leader doesn’t stand much of a chance”.

John added: “You’re talking about stronger organizational forces. That’s a leadership responsibility, too. Middle managers can raise the issues caused by misalignment as an issue.? They can talk with their leaders about what they need and what the organization needs.? Senior-level managers can change things.? Setting the culture and the conditions for team alignment are the responsibility of all leaders, plural.”

That last point hit home: “Ah.? Leaders across the organization, are responsible for alignment, long term.? Yes, I see that.”???

As we continued, John acknowledged leadership responsibility isn’t easy and added an important reminder: “Even when a team leader might feel they don’t have the backing of their own leaders, they still have a lot of influence over the culture within their own team”??

That resonated with me: “They still can’t make alignment happen by themselves, though, right?”??

He agreed: “No, they can’t. Good leaders can enable team alignment but can’t guarantee it as an outcome.? They can make it OK for people to share their views without negative consequences – that’s psychological safety, of course.? Team leaders who put a lot of effort into creating space for positive and productive conversations with people, both 1-1 and in groups, can achieve a lot.”

That clarification struck me. This is about influence. A leader’s role is to create the conditions where alignment can emerge, nurture it through dialogue, and create an environment where it can grow.?

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The Bigger Picture

The 16th Global Peter Drucker Forum recently brought a spotlight to the evolving role of leadership, and it’s clear we’re in the midst of a major shift. Leadership is becoming more human-centered and collaborative, with a deeper focus on enabling people to connect, innovate, and create value together. The Forum was awash with talks and posts on this theme. Here are just a couple of excerpts:

From Richard Straub on New Management for New Times:

A few major pillars can be described of what would constitute a next-generation version of management. It would put a primary rather than secondary emphasis on the goal of innovation, and it would be more human-centered, seeing skilled, creative, and engaged people as the greatest source of value creation.

And from Denning, Musser, and Lourenco’s on Transitioning to the Next Management:

Whatever the terminology, a new breed of firm is using subjective, human concepts to drive their business methods, tools, and processes. These subjective mindsets, goals, and values are the very things that traditional management tended to dismiss in principle as secondary or irrelevant. This shift in the way firms think about management changes everything in the firm. It’s not that methods, processes and tools disappear. But in these firms, mindsets, values, and culture drive and transform the methods and processes, rather than vice versa, resulting in a culture where employees thrive and create value for customers in new and innovative ways.

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Reflecting later on the nuances in that conversation with John, I realised two things.??

Firstly, my position had changed to include the words in bold below:

Team alignment is not just a leadership responsibility. Leaders have a role in connecting the team with the strategy, making room for the alignment process, and enabling participation.? With that, everyone is responsible for participating constructively in the process.?

And secondly,? bias shaped my previous position.? I know managers and leaders who have avoided running a team alignment diagnostic out of fear that if the results aren’t good, they’ll be blamed.? I sympathize with them – it feels unfair.? They are often indeed in a tight spot. I was trying to accommodate that.? But it doesn’t change the role of the leader.

In Closing Leadership and alignment aren’t about control; they’re about connection. Leaders don’t guarantee alignment, but they create the conditions where it becomes possible. By fostering trust, building understanding, and shaping the culture within their teams, leaders can make team alignment a reality in ways that benefit both the team and the broader organization.

It’s not easy, but with the right tools, capabilities, and dialogue formats, it gets much easier.?

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At Mirror Mirror?, we know every team is a complex landscape of unique experiences, viewpoints, and mental models. These differences can lead to misalignment, but when harnessed effectively, they fuel creativity, foster collaboration, and drive growth. That’s why our research-based diagnostic tools reveal where team members are out of sync, and our alignment process guides them to turn these into opportunities.