Alignment. A word topping many leaders’ wish lists for the year ahead. I recently spoke with a leader who has chosen it as her guiding word for 2025. Her challenge? Bringing two siloed teams together. She described the experience as feeling pulled in two directions, like pulling teeth to get teams to collaborate effectively.
Alignment is not mutual understanding. It’s not a thorough strategic plan, an inspiring slide deck, or a well-attended kickoff meeting that ends with, “Everyone onboard?”
True alignment is a firm commitment—collectively focusing on "Team One" results. It’s about prioritizing what’s right over who’s right. It’s making decisions that are best for the organization in the room and not undermining them later in hallways or follow-up meetings.
Why Most Efforts Fall Short
Alignment isn’t the plan—it’s the outcome of healthy disciplines. Patrick Lencioni’s Four Disciplines of a Healthy Organization offers a roadmap for achieving alignment. Yet, many leaders invest too much energy in Discipline 4 (reinforcing clarity) while neglecting the first three. Here are some familiar but costly examples:
Creating clarity but failing to reinforce it. Your team leaves a strategy meeting excited about the vision for 2025. A month later, no one is taking meaningful action because the vision wasn’t translated into practical steps or reinforced through ongoing conversations.
Over-communicating clarity without first building buy-in. You send weekly memos, hold town halls, and flood inboxes with updates—but employees feel overwhelmed and disengaged because they don’t feel part of the process or see how the strategy connects to their day-to-day work.
Attempting to align an already fractured team. Two team members dominate discussions in meetings while others stay silent, harboring resentment. Alignment is impossible because the underlying trust and openness needed to engage in healthy conflict are missing.
The reality? Without addressing foundational issues like trust, conflict, and commitment, true alignment is next to impossible.
A Litmus Test for Alignment
Ask yourself three questions to evaluate your team’s readiness:
Does your team have the foundational trust to engage in healthy, productive conflict?
Do team members consistently commit to decisions, even when they disagree?
Are personal or functional goals ever prioritized over organizational ones?
If you answered "no" to any of the above, here are three practical steps you can take to start building alignment:
Invest in building trust. Schedule a team offsite or session focused on vulnerability and trust-building activities to lay the foundation for open, honest conversations.
Simplify priorities. Clarify the top 2-3 organizational goals and ensure every team member knows how their role contributes to achieving them.
Create accountability loops. Establish regular check-ins where team members publicly commit to their part of the plan and follow up on progress as a group.
Small, consistent actions like these can begin to shift the team dynamic toward alignment.
Why It Matters
Clarity is the first step—but clarity without a cohesive team will crumble under pressure. Alignment isn’t a magic wand or a one-time declaration; it’s a deliberate process of changing mindsets, behaviors, and attitudes over time.
Call to Action: If this resonates with your current leadership challenges, consider starting with the basics. Build trust. Define clarity. Commit to consistency. Need help? Let’s talk about how to create the foundational alignment your team needs to thrive in 2025.
Alignment isn’t the plan—it’s the outcome of healthy disciplines. Let’s get there, together.
Written by Heather Italiano, Leadership Consultant and Founder of People Warriors
Comments