6 Questions to Improve Team Alignment and Teamwork

“Trust between team members is the foundation of high-performance teams.”

Introduction

Team alignment is incredibly important, you want everyone to be in the same page, team success lies in sharing a common goal and core values in your team so that everyone can move as an unit with a clear sense of purpose. With team alignment only comes benefits, teams become more cohesive, cooperation and coordination become natural and productivity skyrockets. With an aligned team employee engagement also goes up, teammates will become invested and filled with motivation, and this will only lead to continuous improvement. But creating perfect team alignment is hard! You need various iterations on organizational culture and you'll need to gather and implement feedback left and right.

Creating Team Alignment

Fostering team alignment comes from setting up a healthy team culture,  you must create pillars of clear communication and collaboration, team members must feel like their work matters, that they are helping their teammates achieve shared goals and making a real impact within the team.

Common goals are a good idea! Set up big company goals that everyone in the team can work towards, and that everyone feels like they are contributing towards. This brings a higher meaning to individual goals and gives everyone in the team a shared vision and a growth mindset.

Trust

Trust is based on mutual respect. Aligned team members have boundaries that limit control and influence around work, also they assume the best intentions and behave as they think other members would. When team members behave this way, they feel comfortable enough to disclose their concerns, ask questions and more easily engage in team collaboration.

An organization’s culture influences whether team members feel they can trust each other. Culture is a set of shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that influence the way employees communicate with each other and the way they interact with customers.

When everyone in the team is “on the same page”, all team members have clear goals about what they are doing and why they are doing it and are committed to fulfilling their responsibilities to achieve the team’s goals. As a result, they become high performing teams with effective communication and a common purpose.

Don't become a Misaligned Team

Misaligned teams are a slippery-slope, over time they become less productive and quick as cohesion worsens and team dynamics start to deteriorate. To avoid this, make sure that your team engages in periodic team building or alignment workshop exercises, that they engage in constant collaboration and that everyone is on the same page !

There are three key reasons why teams fail to achieve alignment:

1. Team members do not understand what alignment really means.

2. Teams do not focus on getting into alignment on the two most important things on which they need alignment: Purpose and Values.

3. A lack of trust in the team prevents the team from having the robust conversations they need to have to get into alignment.

A survey that tracks these pitfalls along with some honest conversations on trust and what being aligned means for the team can go a long way.

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Get started with this template for better Team Alignment

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1. Do you find your work for the team meaningful?
2. Does the team’s vision and values inspire you?
3. Do others provide you with recognition for your accomplishments at work?
4. Do you feel like your supervisor is invested in your success?
5. Does our culture foster a comfortable, supportive work environment?
6. Is leadership invested in and contributing to your culture initiatives?
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