LISTEN TO THE LATEST PODCAST EPISODE:

3 Keys to Get Alignment & Better Results

SUMMARY

It is important that we get aligned with our team, in our relationships and everything else if we want to get better results. But if we don’t do it right, people will have no direction and will get lost in the way. When you try to move forward, it results in little progress and there will be constant resistance in every step of the way.

But if we are able to build alignment with our people and team, there will be a clarity of direction and everyone will move in a united sequence. You will actually be able to make great leaps forward and you end up with results that flow.

To put this together, access is required for people with whom you want to be in alignment with. There should also be an atmosphere of articulation that allows them to communicate openly. Finally, you should also create an ally relationship where there is trust between you and your parties.

To tie up the 3 principles of access, articulation and allies together, the following comes into play:

The Alignment Navigator

The 3 keys to get alignment and better results:

  1. Access: The ability to walk in and have a dialogue.
  2. Articulate: To have an atmosphere of open communication.
  3. Ally: To create a connected feeling with the people that you communicate with.
  • Rhythm: You need to create an environment that is based on rhythm. It means that when someone knocks on your door, they are not there because there’s a problem but they are there because they have that access and the ability to articulate.
  • Trust: We need to build trust which comes from the rhythm that we create by allowing a good flow of communication. Trust is gained when people are not ridiculed, ostracized or criticized. We achieve it by being open, honest and tolerant.
  • Supported: Ultimately, you have a group of people that feel supported. It doesn’t mean that everyone is in unanimous agreement but they feel heard and supported.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we teach you how to capture, package and monetize your ideas, what you know, the wisdom in your head so you can have a greater impact, more freedom and more income.

And welcome to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show and in this episode, we’re going to talk about something that I think is tremendously important not only in business but in relationships, in team building, in all aspects of your life and that is alignment.

  • How do you get alignment?
  • What are the 3 keys to creating alignment?

And this kind of came about in the context of getting a question. Someone sent me a question via email which you can do and he literally said, “I’ve been watching you, I’ve had a chance to go through your programs and it’s great information and at the same time, I’m working with team members (in this case his wife). We’re in the same book but we’re not necessarily on the same page.”

And so, I’m not using names because I felt like he wanted to keep it a bit discrete and so, I’m just not going to use names in this but realize that I’m going to assume that there aren’t other relationship issues that may be are going on and I want to talk just generally whether it’s a husband wife, boyfriend girlfriend or just teams in general; just groups in general. This element of what does it take to get alignment.

And we will talk about The Alignment Navigator and if you want to download that tool, just go to MelAbraham.com/session062 or just text me MYLEGACY one-word MYLEGACY to 38470. We will make sure we get you the downloadable guide, action guide to help you out with this.

But this element of alignment, think about this for a moment. Just maybe, all of us, at some point, tried to drive an out of alignment car and then you let go of the steering wheel and all of a sudden it starts veering to the right or the left or it starts to shake and that’s what happens to your relationships. That’s what happens to your organizations when you find that things are not in alignment.

And what I’m talking about in the context of alignment, is a lot of it starts with values and then moves from values to goals and vision and a number of other things that come into play when we deal with this and I want to make sure that there is an alignment in place. Now maybe, you haven’t had a problem with an unaligned car but I know that almost every single one of us have gotten that shopping cart with that bum wheel that’s shaking and just and you’re constantly fighting it.

  • That’s what’s happening in our organizations
  • That’s what’s happening in our relationships
  • That’s what’s happening in our businesses

> When we don’t get this right.

So, let’s just look at why this is so important to us? Why is it so important that we get alignment?

  • In our relationships,
  • In our teams, and
  • Everything

Because here is the thing:

  • If we don’t get this right
  • If we don’t build alignment
  • If we don’t do the things to create alignment

Then you got a number of people that are working and they got no direction.

They’re effectively lost in that way and they’re really kind of wandering aimlessly.

The second thing that I see happening is that you have little progress.

It’s this standstill that there’s just little progress. It’s a gridlock in the organization in the context of the trying to move yourself forward.

And I think the third problem we end up with is this constant tug of war, is this constant resistance.

Every time, every step of the way with you trying to make a choice, make a decision, come up with something and move the organization forward, move towards your goals, towards your vision there’s this constant resistance. You can’t figure out why that resistance is there. A lot of times it’s just because that there isn’t alignment with the things that we’re trying to do.

But here is the cool thing, when we get this right. So, if we don’t get it right, we know what that brings but when we get it right, things change. Now, all of a sudden everyone has got a clarity of direction.

They’re going the same direction. They’re rowing in sequence in unity which we are going to talk about in another episode but there is a clarity of direction.

The second think is that you’re going to find that when you all work together and you are aligned in vision and scope and how you’re doing this, there’s going to be leaps forward.

You’re going to actually make big giant strides forward.

And ultimately what ends up is you end up with flowing results that things just flow.

  • There isn’t that friction
  • There isn’t that tug of war
  • There isn’t the challenges

And then, all of a sudden the results that you’re looking for start to flow out of that and you gain momentum in the process. So, when you look at this, “Alright, great Mel, I get why I need alignment.”

How do I get it?
How do we get alignment in this process?
What do you need to know?

Well, here’s some things that I think you need to know as you’re trying to put this together is that the first thing you need to know is that access is required.

That’s the first principle. In other words, that if there is supposed to be alignment then I need to be able to allow the people that I want alignment with to have:

  • Access to me
  • Access to the vision
  • Access to where we want to go
  • Access to having communication to being able to have a dialogue in a way that is meaningful

The second thing which really kind of leads to the second thing is that there needs to be an atmosphere of articulation.

In other words, there needs to be an atmosphere of openness, of the ability to communicate. So, it’s one thing to have an open door policy and have access but if you have that access but don’t have the ability to articulate and not create a safe place for that to happen, then there isn’t a dialogue where people can get on the same page to make that happen.

So, do you have an atmosphere that:

  • Encourages articulation
  • Encourages communication.
  • Encourages openness.

And then, the third thing is that at some point they need to feel that they’re in an ally relationship, that there is actually trust between you and between the parties to be able to do this.

Now, trust for a number of reasons. Trust that you have a vision and you understand the vision and the dynamics of that and the impacts of that but also trust in the sense of they feel comfortable coming to you with concerns and challenges and the frustrations in order to have that dialogue to really build out the element of alignment, to create alignment at that level.

So, these are the things that you need to know. The question now becomes: “Alright, great. So, I know why it’s important. I know what I need to know. How do I bring it to life?”

And so, I want to introduce you to a model that I use called The Alignment Navigator. And in the alignment navigator, we really start to look at the way that these 3 principles that I just taught you come together. So, if you look at it, I want to create alignment but I need to marry the 3 things that we just talked about.

And effectively, that’s

  • Access, so you need to give access,
  • The ability to articulate, and
  • The ability to create allies.

And so, here’s how this plays out. As I said, access is being able to have that conversation, being able to walk in and have that dialogue to truly spend the time to understand where each other is coming from, having a conversation to align that. We will talk further about that maybe in a future episode to kind of help you out.

Then to articulate, to be able to communicate, to be able to have that atmosphere of open communication. Here’s the thing. In order to allow this to happen, I think that what we need to do is create an environment that’s based on rhythms and here’s what I mean by that is that I want to allow for a communication rhythm.

What I don’t want to do is create an environment where anytime that the only time someone’s going to come and knock on the door is when there is something wrong. I actually want to create and instill a rhythm of communication.

So, this is why and I know that you can go to meeting hell but this is why I think that it’s important in organizations especially disconnected digital organizations; those that are telecommuting and in remote locations that don’t have the human contact. I think that it’s really important for us to embed in a communication with them.

That may be a weekly call. It may be an every other week call. I’m going to tell you that with your core people, I think that you need to have a weekly conversation. In some cases, if there is a lot of things going on, you literally might even have to have it daily, a daily huddle to really build that.

Now, I’m not talking about spending hours in a meeting. I’m simply talking about opening the door, having that conversation for literally 5, 10, 15 minutes maximum to really hit the hot buns.

  • What are the projects we’re working on?
  • What are the issues or obstacles that they’re trying to deal with?
  • Where are the choke points coming in? The bottom legs coming in?
  • And how can they help?
  • What resources do they need?

That’s all you need to do. So, now people feel supported, they’re moving in the same direction, they feel heard and now we can go execute and assign it. And so, if once a week, all you did is sit back and have that conversation to open that door, to create that rhythm that would go a long way to start to build that alignment, to build the ability to create alignment through communication.

The second part of this is when you start to realize that we need to build trust that’s going to come from the rhythm that we created allowing them to communicate. Now, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to agree on everything all the time. Agreement and alignment are two different things but if you are given the ability to articulate, to be heard and in a safe place to know that you’re

  • Not going to be ridiculed
  • Not going to be ostracized
  • You’re not going to be criticized in a way that’s demeaning

You can be critical on the things that are said in the sense of analysis but let’s separate what was said and the dynamics of the strategy or the tactics or the communication from the person itself.

Once it becomes personal, we start to destroy trust and when you destroy trust, we destroy communication. When you destroy communication, we destroy relationships in that way. So, what we need to do is make sure that we are nurturing trust and the way we do that is:

  • To be open,
  • To be honest, and
  • To be tolerant

But not disrespectful. So, we will need to, we need to build trust and that comes from having that ally type of feeling, that connected feeling with the people that you’re communicating with. Their ability to openly communicate, you’re going to solely build that trust up.

And then, the last piece of this is that when you allow for access, and you allow for creating that ally relationship, ultimately what happens is that you’ve got a group of people that feel supported. Again, it doesn’t mean that everyone is in the unanimous consent, the unanimous agreement. But they at least feel heard and supported.

So, these are the kinds of things that I think you need to look at in your relationship be it a personal relationship and I think that in answering this specific question, you may have some very special dynamics that come out of your personal relationship and not just your business relationship associated with that.

But the key is this: No matter business or personal, are you allowing them to access you—access you physically, emotionally, spiritually and openly? Are you allowing them to be open and honest and articulate what it is that is either paining them or what they see, their ideas to have a dialogue around them and work from there to build that trust and create a communication rhythm.

First things first, if you don’t have that communication, let’s put one in. Let’s put a regular call in once a week to have that dialogue, to open that dialogue up and it’s going to be like a muscle that may be hasn’t been exercised. It’s going to be tough to kind of get through it and kind of awkward. That’s okay because once you start to build it, it will become part of the process and then,

Are you allowing them to connect with you?
Are you creating that ally connection with them that allows them to build that trust, feel supported and feel aligned?

That’s the key to trying to build alignment. At least, that’s the foundational elements to building alignment, creating alignment with your team, with the people that you work with, with the people that you work for or even in your relationships. So, that’s the first piece of this. I’m going to come back.

In another episode, we’re going to talk a little bit about, how do you create unity because as I said in this episode that there’s a difference between alignment and agreement. And so, how do we do that? I’ll come back in another episode to talk about that but this should help you out as you try to move forward, as you look at moving forward to build the teams.

  • Build that rhythm in, give that opportunity for them to communicate openly so you’re building the trust,
  • Have them feel supported, and
  • Make sure that you’re moving in the same direction.

So, I hope you found that of value to you. If you want to download that alignment navigator to help you through this process, go ahead and go to MelAbraham.com/session062 or just text me MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces MYLEGACY 38470. I’ll make sure that I get you the download or the action guide right there.

If you have questions for me or challenges just like this gentleman did; if you have questions, I love having a dialogue with my community. I’d love to hear from you. Just go to AskMelNow.com or post the comments below or reach out to me some way. I would love to hear from you. I’d love to hear some of the challenges you’re having; some of the things that you’re going through so I can support you, so I can help you out, give you my thoughts on it to help you out with whatever it is that you’re looking at trying to do.

And if you haven’t done so already, hit the subscribe button. Go ahead and click it now. Stay with me. Subscribe. Make sure that you get some of these tips on an ongoing basis and while you’re at it, let’s share it with a friend. Let them in on some of these keys, some of these tools, some of these templates, some of these concepts that are going to allow them to build their business or create success in their lives; to live more meaningful, impactful lives.

And I hope that I get a chance to talk to you, hear from you and help you along the way. And until we get a chance to see each other in the next episode,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Bye!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel

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Mel is one of the smartest business people I know. I don't make any decisions without him! "

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#1 New York Times
Best Selling Author

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