[Alicia Davis] So Stacie, we have been having conversations with lots of leaders who are trying to get their teams in alignment. And there’s so much going on right now. It can be a little bit like herding cats. And we wanted to talk about that a little bit, right?
[Stacie Watson] Yeah, you know, it’s so interesting, this idea of alignment, in some ways, it seems like the most fundamental, easy thing to put in place as a team, right? What are we doing here, and how are we going to do it? And yet, I think to the point you’re making it is so complicated, and there are so many changes. I mean, every day it feels like there are massive changes sort of coming down the pike. And so trying to ensure that everyone on the team is remaining clear on exactly what is it that we are trying to accomplish. You know, what does success look like? Like? Whatever the words are that we want to use. And we sort of call this this idea of alignment, right, making sure that we’re all in the boat pointed in the right direction, and hopefully rowing our boat in a similar cadence. And as simple as it sounds, it can be complicated, right?
[Alicia Davis] Right. And, you know, it’s really interesting because it ties into culture, ties into culture that you’re creating, right? It’s not just about setting goals, right? It’s about what is this environment that we are creating together as a team, you know? And we have an upcoming session in our TLA – Leadership 101 – and we talk about that in this session, right? We talk about how, whether we’re newer in our manager roles or whether maybe we just haven’t had lots of experience with this yet, like simple things like getting really clear on values, really understanding what behaviors look like in living those values every day on the team, how that ties into team goals, organizational goals, right? It’s, it is really important, and it can be relatively simple, right? Just takes a little bit of intentionality to create.
[Stacie Watson] Yeah, I think intention is exactly the word I was going to use as well. You know, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking that perhaps the team doesn’t feel like it’s quite working in full alignment, a simple thing to do is to just ask each person on the team. You can ask them as a group or ask them individually, “What do you believe our top two or three priorities are?” And if you’re getting different answers among the team members or different answers than what your thought is, then that’s, that’s your clue, right? There’s an opportunity there to really talk about, okay, what is it that we want to be focusing on, and how do we want to make sure that we are prioritizing in a way that’s consistent across the team? And we find when teams take the time to do that, and it doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time, but when you take the moment to do that with intention, it can really make a big difference.
[Alicia Davis] That’s right. So I’m Alicia Davis…
[Stacie Watson] I’m Stacie Watson…
[Alicia Davis] And we’d love to hear your experiences. Email us info@TLStransforms.com or check out Academy.TLStransforms.com for upcoming Leadership 101 session in February on the 18th. Thank you so much.
[Stacie Watson] Thank you.
