BEING ALIGNED SUPPORTS WORKING TOGETHER

Every day, we have the opportunity to CHOOSE “how” we are going to enter in, participate, engage and communicate within our personal and professional relationships. ALIGNMENT gives us the advantage to CHOOSE “how” to work and be in relationship with others.

Often, our professional relationships focus on building relations with others that will support our work (or, we are supporting the work on behalf of others) for external outcomes within our role and responsibility. We may experience our relationships being diplomatic, kind, driven to succeed, competent, skilled and willing to be challenged. We have an opportunity to continuously learn and grow with others, in order to improve our present success and future goals for further success.

When we seek ALIGNMENT, we have a choice to:

Listen for AGREEMENT.
Process information together, while staying in ALIGNMENT.
Provide focus for moving plans, strategies and goals forward because we are ALIGNED.
Organize with ALIGNMENT to stay the course.
Stay engaged with one another, as we work together for the common good of the organization or for the relationships we seek to build for the communal benefit.

When a working or personal relationship seems disconnected, strained, difficult, or just not going well, we may want to ask ourselves,

“Where am I NOT in ALIGNMENT?”

What does ALIGNMENT mean?

It means the way we THINK is in agreement or in alliance with another person, group or vision.

Often, our thoughts or our “gut” will indicate to us when we are not in alignment with another person or with a goal, strategy or vision. Many times, our inability to address a different thought, opinion or conflict, impedes our ability to say to someone,

“I’m not in full alignment with you or in alignment with the direction you want to go.”

Or, “I need more information to understand where we are going or what your expectations are with the project.”

We can THINK of ALIGNMENT in this way:

When the wheels on your car are not properly aligned, it can create an imbalance with your tires. This will create more damage of wear and tear on your tires, due to the lack of alignment. A lack of alignment can make driving difficult and even uncomfortable with the shaking and vibration from the steering wheel. If, you wait too long to align your tires, you run the risk of your tires blowing out, which can create a dangerous accident. From an automotive perspective, it is best to address the small issues of wear and tear on your tires and car, rather than wait for something more serious to transpire, which can be even more costly to your life and your car.

There are always WARNING SIGNS, when there is not ALIGNMENT.

We cannot stress enough how IMPORTANT ALINGMENT is for us all - for our roles and responsibilities, our teams and for your organizations. TC&A is ALIGNED together in the way we THINK as a TEAM and MOTIVATED to bring our best support and communication of tools, resources and leadership coaching to YOU.

Our desire is for you to experience the benefits of Leading Yourself…FIRST, along with the gains of being in ALIGNMENT with others. When we have the ability to process information with others, provide focus and organization with others and stay fully engaged in dialogue with others – we experience greater purpose when reaching our goals and desired outcomes.

Our TC&A team created a resource called, “The Communication Model.” Our model of communication understands a dialogue goes through FIVE stages. The five stages can move in, out and through very quickly and even back and forth, while adjusting our dialogue every step of the way. We’ll be exploring our communication model for further growth and understanding in our May and June newsletters, as well.

For now, we encourage you to focus on allowing the following key words to be your Leadership guide: