What does alignment mean to you?
For many, tires come to mind – keeping them all straight and going in the same direction so your car doesn’t experience damage. For many, it’s a vital building block of leadership culture, which leaders are in some ways measured.
You know that saying, “If you’re a leader and nobody’s following you then you’re really just talking a long walk alone” (or something to that effect)? That speaks in some ways of a leader’s ability to align people to the direction he or she is going.In meetings we talk about “getting people on board” or “getting the right people on the bus” or creating “ownership of the vision.” All this stuff is important. Because if there isn’t a critical mass of people on the same page then there’s not probably much going on as it relates to being fruitful or productive on a wide scale.
But have you ever thought about alignment in the context of culture (organizational culture that is)? How is “alignment” achieved? How do you try to get others on board?Alignment is tricky business and more complex perhaps that we want to think. The endeavor to get people on board (with you) raises a lot of questions about authority, voice, empowerment, an leadership. Just the act of trying to get a bunch of people to buy into a direction you are going should raise questions.
What are you trying to get them to buy into? A direction? A vision? Methodology?How are you trying to get them to buy into it? Lots of talking from a position of authority? Persuasian? Emotional appeal? Appeals to a higher authority?
How does alignment and servant leadership go together? What are tensions in trying to align people to a vision while at the same time stewarding power for the sake of serving and drawing out the best of who they are? Where are the limits to what we should try to align people towards? Core values? Vision? Methodologies?I don’t think alignment is bad. Mobilizing people in a common direction is a vital leadership function. Without it, you’ve got chaos.
But I’ll say this – alignment without a foundation of values that include empowerment, servanthood, and a high value of what it means to be a human made in God’s creation is just indoctrination. It’s just business school talk for getting people to do what you want them to do. It’s using people.
It’s an indictment against “religion” that when searching for “indoctrination” images online most of the ones that come up are either affiliated with religion or the Nazi’s. There are obviously extreme cases out there, but I believe the temptation to think in terms of your self as a leader as opposed to others is extremely prominent during the thought processes involved in figuring out how to mobilize people in the direction you feel like things need to go. Religious or ministry contexts, because of the role of “authority” and “God’s leading” makes the alignment process even more of a mine field.
Maybe’s it’s as simple of exposing what thoughts really cross our minds? How can I get these people to do what I want them to do? (or what I think they should do?) How can I convince these people that this is the right way to go?If those thoughts are typical of how you think of alignment, then chances are you have more of an indoctrinational approach to aligning others – basically just trying to win others over through content and emotion to thinking similarly to you.
I think in our work most of us are smart enough to know when we are being sold a bill of goods to channel our work and effort towards. We also tend to know when we are being inspired, being led to see things in a new way and a higher way, and that results in an inability on our parts to not invest our gifts and strengths and talents and sweat for a worthy vision, a worthy dream.
Is the distinction of alignment and indoctrination here as simple as just being inspired versus being a sales pitch? What do you see as the dark side of alignment?
How do you align with a view of empowering others and affirming the contributions and voices of others and not fall into top down pragmatic strategies of keeping the machine going?
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I welcome your thoughts and insights!
