One of the essential responsibilities of leaders is to align the team to achieve the vision and achieve organizational goals and achieve the desired outcomes.
When there is alignment of the team motivated people work, people also do not feel they are giving up their interests and personal projects for the vision and the team's goals and purposes of the organization, but the shared vision and commitment becomes an extension of their personal visions in which the latter grow stronger to the extent that the organization's vision crystallizes. People discover their personal visions come to life on the vision of the organization because they feel walking in the same direction.
The alignment is a necessary condition for the person's energy does not dissipate or waste, but is channeled and focused productively.
When a team is ranked:
- Most people rowing in the same direction.
- There are real synergies and maximizing the skills of the people.
- It brings together a core that is committed to pursuing and achieving the vision and implementing strategies.
- His team includes a leader to where you want to go and they also want to accompany him. Take over and are responsible for vision.
- Surge a common direction and energies harmonize.
- There is a coordinated action. There is dialogue and cooperation.
But the alignment is not automatic, you must intentionally bring it to the leader it requires:
- Establishing communication with his followers
- Learning to listen to their followers
- What information needs to share the leader with his followers?
Share your dreams and aspirations for the future
The idea is to communicate to gain allies. As a leader needs to inspire his followers, for which not enough information, you need to share his heart, dreams, hopes and expectations. Speaking of arguments and not only data but also their perceptions, feelings and experiences, which includes not only sharing a vision, expectations about the future, but honestly express their fears and uncertainties about the future.
The idea is to be authentic in expressing his heart, real, without masks, without screens or stereotypes. People appreciated the sincerity and authenticity. People do not like to feel manipulated, which is not in the long run, because people perceive our duplicity ends up as a leader.
His followers need to be informed to give their best and gain commitment. People do not like to give their best at something unknown. So talking openly about your concerns, to back what they are fighting. Discuss your own experiences.
It is important that his followers should know what their beliefs, their beliefs and values regarding certain issues. In other words, what is their approach to management, organizational vision, integrity, and so on. This aspect of communication is vital because people first accept and agree with the leader and then with the visions. Alignment with the leader is first and then with the organization.
The leader needs to understand that people around you want and need to know:
- Where is the leader? What is your background?
- Can I have this leader to get there?
- Do you love along the path?
- Is the leader aware about my needs?
- What are your convictions and beliefs? What is not negotiable for the leader?
The information and knowledge sharing eliminates the assumptions, misunderstandings, doubts and uncertainties and promotes the alignment process.
Learn to listen to his followers
Listen to others to explore and discover:
- What is important to them? What worries them?
- Why spend time and money? Why?
- How intertwine and interconnect their values with the question where does it go?
- What do you think on certain topics?
- What are your dreams and expectations for the future?
One of General Eisenhower's favorite questions was "what do you think?". When people feel that it is taken into account, that your opinion is important, people respond with their commitment and alignment to organizational processes.
Note that the alignment is not only a task of coupling processes, people, systems and technology with the vision and strategies of the organization, but essentially and primarily a process of harmonizing perceptions, feelings and beliefs.
The alignment is the process of developing organizational congruence, ie, create a balance between the needs of individuals and the needs of the organization, so that people feel they have established a win-win relationship, which will help workers are tied and identify with the organization and linked to natural work teams, aimed at achieving the goals. People, then, are connected, responsible, committed and make us a culture, rather than a culture of me or you.
The leader not only technology management, systems and work processes (production, sales, finance, etc..) Management essentially human, that is, the needs, feelings, expectations, desires, personal interactions, processes development and training of people.
That is the battle for humanity in business, beyond the bureaucratic structures, that is the human side of management, because as Thomas Teal says: "Managing is not a series of mechanical tasks but a set of human interactions. Because there are needs in organizations, there are feelings, there are frustrations, there are conflicts, there are conflicting positions. Do not pay attention to these elements is to deny a reality that is there.
Manuel Barroso said: "A leader has to have time for himself and his own, content and processes to the needs and everything that has to do with education: mentors, guidance, support and above all make the development a reality. "
Now, when there is alignment of energy (time, attention and resources) is guided in different directions and you lose focus. When the team is not aligned energy dispersion is waste of resources, there is rework, no waste, no motivation, there is high staff turnover, dysfunctional conflicts exist, work ethic problems, these are signs that something is alignment between employees and organization. But with the emerging alignment harmony, focus, unity of purpose and synergy.
Processes are interdependent organizations (sales management depends and vice versa). Thus systems, personnel, processes and technology are intertwined, and unless many people working in different functions of the organization are aligned and move together in the same direction, will tend to bumping into each other, leading to dysfunctional conflict, inefficiency and blur.
When the organization is not aligned islands are created within it. On each island, then, people work as disconnected from other departments or sections, as each department becomes an end in itself, forgetting the vision system and process, which is what makes an effective organization to reach its goals.
In addition to alienate the team leaders also need to learn to:
1. Using team organizational processes such as strategic planning, decision making and problem solving, among others.
We must promote a team culture. The organization grows when people like Team is participating in management processes, decision making, goal setting, etc.., Which requires, as leaders, build on the skills, talents and resources of others to achieve effective management .
In some contexts it is the idea that they are functions of the leader, but the current reality, complex and evolving, does not support this reasoning. As Laurie Donald said: "The solution to the challenges of adaptation are not on the executive committee but on the collective intelligence of employees at all levels." In this respect also says S. Covey: "Successful organizations are the product of an organizational nature. Do not depend on the personality. Dependent on culture and the system. "
An organization that is growing is growing because its people is growing as a result of participating in making decisions, planning, management and problem solving as a team.
For the leader of a team, the leadership is not just a matter of personal performance, is how much more can be achieved through the team of people who are heading in the same direction and with the same course. Leaders need to get people to move in the same direction.
2. Promoting a sense of ownership
Usually people gain a sense of ownership when they help create something. " When they feel they are serving a cause that not only involves and benefits to themselves, and they do participate and co-stars in the pursuit of that cause or purpose.
It is important to awaken in people the commitment that comes from identifying with a vision, project or task in which they feel they have an important contribution to give. "People are willing to commit to a cause." If you do not ask their people's commitment someone else will, but for other causes.
People have the need to contribute to something greater than themselves: this need is in the hearts of people. When we promote a sense of ownership are not doing anything to identify and remove what is already in the heart of another person and that person develop the principles and values to strengthen and encourage their actions.
3. Create an environment - a culture - that encourages participation and commitment of people.
The leader is responsible for promoting an environment where people feel motivated to participate, where people feel that their concerns are met, that their ideas are taken into account, that their contributions are appreciated. An environment that encourages participation and engagement.
4. Tracking the management of people, providing feedback throughout the process. It requires a constant realignment effort.
The alignment is not just a specific action or event; is a process and never ends. Align a team takes time. Communicate the vision and values associated with it, creating a culture of us, coupled processes of the organization working with people, fostering an organizational climate of harmony, requires effort and constant adaptation, given the changing reality and the environment.
Now as the circumstances may often bring to the organization's way of achieving the vision and goals requires an ongoing realignment effort to refocus on what is important.
One way to ensure return to the path of what is important is to have constant feedback about what is happening in the environment and within the organization. That feedback is provided by both formal systems (financial, management control, market trends, etc.). And informal systems of the organization and, most importantly, contact with the people, appreciate the human side management.