Alignment doesn’t usually shatter in a single moment. It erodes slowly.
New hires come in fresh, eager to contribute. But then they hear the way people talk in the kitchen or on Slack. They notice the tension in meetings, the sarcasm in hallway conversations. Maybe they ask questions and get eye-rolls. Possibly they saw a colleague get “dressed down” in a public setting. Or someone warns them to “just keep their head down.”
We all – as humans – are tempted to adopt the mood of the team around us — especially if it seems like everyone is in agreement about how bad things are.
As leaders, it’s our job to actively ensure we’re not CREATING these cultures. But we also know that, in the heat of battle, that can be hard to do while you’re focusing on meeting the demanding needs of the market. Everyone’s under stress. And cultural cynicism is contagious.
The good news is that if you have staff that you feel are getting out of alignment, there’s work you can do to reverse it and get them aligned again. I was faced with this earlier in my career after a really turbulent set of events at my firm. Here’s what we did:
1. I Talked to them More. Most organizations tend to under-communicate. And the more stressful things are, the more regular, honest communication is needed. We met weekly to do “All Hands” meetings. In those, I shared what was keeping me up at night. And the leadership team celebrated any evidence of the great work the team was doing.
2. I Made My Mantra “Assume Benign Intent” The social anthropologist Desmond Morris once described a fascinating study on marriage. In it, couples were shown doctored photos of their spouses—some more attractive than reality, some less. Happily married people tended to pick the better-looking photos as the “true” ones. Unhappily married people picked the worse-looking ones. In other words, our perceptions are shaped by how we feel about something. When we’re unhappy, we tend to distort our view in the negative. When we’re aligned, we give the benefit of the doubt. HINT: this only works if it’s a two-way street. If any on your leadership team tend to seek to assign blame, you all lose the right to ask your staff to assume benign intent.
3. I Met One-on-One with EACH member of the team to connect with them. I met with everyone. I learned a ton. Got grounded on what was important to them. And by doing so had the opportunity to reconnect them to what was important to the company.
4. With Those New Insights, I Adapted My Leadership to Maintain Alignment. One thing I learned was that my communications were too shallow & sanitized – and so I made them much more grounded in the realities of the business.
We saw a pretty spectacular turnaround at our business, and made headway in areas that I frankly wasn’t even expecting.