Agreement or Alignment?

By this I mean, there is a direct cost associated with influencing change where the inherent intention is to broker agreement for change to occur.

When you consider contemporary approaches to causing results with people, a significant component involves concerted effort convincing and influencing people to accept and agree with prevailing initiatives and required outcomes.

In short, the agreement is expected and required, and people need to be convinced of this!

However, the strategies and activities deployed are often costly and time-consuming leaving people little access to contribute or address their unique internal concerns.

There are various reasons for this and one of these is that organisational leadership can fail to harness authenticity in aligning expert resources to the cause of their business or project.

Being up close and personal is more challenging than being in control and safe!

The likely outcome is that individuals produce results over the top of fears, anxieties, and concerns, impeding their effectiveness, productivity, and joy.

Of course, people will produce results regardless, albeit with lower levels of performance and satisfaction.

My thought is, there’s an opportunity for organisations, managers, and individuals to use practices that embody binding principles for authentic communication in safety to maximise individual and collective self-expression and performance i.e. action as action.

This idea does away with the notion that agreement is critical to producing results.

I assert agreement is not necessary for performance, while alignment is!

For alignment though, a foundation of performance and integrity is at the core in fostering a safe place for authentic communication.

The ability to say how it is for me, knowing that I am also responsible to reconcile this with the matter at hand, enables previously unseen obstacles to performance to be settled and cleared.

Of course, I know there is more involved and yet as recent events demonstrate, i.e. COVID-19, people are willing to let go of individual wants and needs in favour of collective results.

Coupled with this, many organisations have experienced significant increases in productivity as they were required to empower and trust their workforce without any agreements.

The rules of the game changed, no one was consulted, no one agreed, and most people aligned with what was needed.

It is possible to create contexts for performance and have people fulfill these with minimal effort or cost.

The essential ingredients; authenticity, safety, and trust.

Joy and Success, Alan 🙂