Good teams often have disagreements, because good frictions creates great ideas. An aligned team is a team that it agrees to move on although there is no full agreement about several aspects. The ability to align is often underestimated and it makes the difference between good average teams and effective teams. Agreeing to support a way to move forward even if team members disagree, is vital to long-term success and only works through open dialogue, mutual trust and by addressing all potential conflicts.
Our approach to a fast and sustainable team alignment contains the following steps:
- During the first step we meet and help team members understand the difference between alignment and agreement. Team alignment is about consciously agreeing to move in the same direction, even if you don’t fully agree with the decision or some aspects of it. To get close to team alignment, we educate team members and use our coaching tools to avoid toxic behaviours and find the common interests that contribute to the common purpose of the team.
- We continue the process ensuring that all opinions are welcome, important and heard. As a result team members take responsibility for possible disturbing communication among them, while they consciously create their own team rules for constructive and fast conflict solving.
- The last step is a classic to coaching. Actions. The team defines the necessary actions to move forward and agrees on measures for validation of its success.
We continue to support the team as long as the team needs to stand on its own feet.