Re-Release: How Teams Can Fly in the Same Direction

After Nathan watched his son begin the painful journey of braces, he was reminded that meaningful change often gets harder before it gets better. That same principle applies to leadership. In this rebroadcast, we explore what true team alignment looks like—and why the short-term discomfort can be worth the long-term outcome. Dr. Linda and Brian Schubring challenge the idea that alignment means conformity. Instead, they explore how leaders create clarity, shared commitment, and lasting momentum—even when the process is messy.

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Alignment and Teams

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everybody, it's Nathan Freeberg, and we are bringing you a rebroadcast of the Leadership Vision podcast because I had this idea. See, uh last week my 13-year-old son got braces. His his teeth were, let's just say that we've got some work to do there. Now we're only like not even a week in and he's in that miserable stage. If you ever had braces, or maybe one of your kids had braces, you know what that's like. He can't really eat solid foods yet, at least he doesn't want to, because his mouth hurts. Cleaning them is a hassle. And this morning he looked at me and said, Dad, I sure hope this is worth it because this really sucks. I get it. That short-term immediate discomfort is real. And so it reminded me of this conversation that Dr. Linda and Brian Schubring and I had almost two years ago now, about alignment. I know, maybe a cheesy connection. But whether you're leading a team, whether you're building a culture, or even whether you're helping to straighten a smile, whatever that looks like, moving towards something better, it can feel harder before it gets better. Progress is usually asking us to kind of embrace some sort of discomfort in service of a larger something, whatever that is. So, with that in mind, as we kind of approach our 4th of July holiday here, I just wanted to share this rebroadcast with you about alignment and a new metaphor that we had. Again, this is a couple years ago, but we're still using it about flamingos. It's not about conformity. There are emotional and relational aspects to alignment. And they talk about a couple of steps to achieving team alignment. And so here's this rebroadcast. I would love to hear your thoughts. You can drop us an email at connect at leadershipvision consulting.com, share it on the socials, comment on the socials, whatever it is. We hope that you find this helpful as you are moving towards your own alignment in whatever area that might be. Enjoy.

Introduction and Geese Metaphor

SPEAKER_01 1:56

You know, Brian and Linda, I have noticed the geese flying south, at least that's we're assume they're going. Uh, at Chloe's soccer game on Saturday, there was like literally a million geese that were flying. And I was thinking about uh this book that I had recently read with the kids about, you know, geese flying in this formation, and I thought that's such a cool metaphor for leadership because they're all in this tight, organized formation with the leader at the front, and then I assume different rankings of geese all the way to the back where the grunts are. And I was like, it's a fun metaphor for leadership because I also know they draft off of each other and there's some cooperation. Is that how you would describe leadership as this perfect V formation going the sky? No, okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Well, I think it's a great, I think it's a great analogy. It's some it's a great metaphor that people have aspired to, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

We've seen the posters in the break room that have that.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yeah, and there's and there's nothing wrong with it, and it's good reminders of like, okay, we're gonna go there together.

Leadership Vision Podcast Overview

SPEAKER_01 2:58

You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. For more information about what we do and to get some resources, you can visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting.com. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan

Discussing Alignment in Leadership

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Freeberg, and today on the Leadership Vision Podcast, we are talking about alignment, how to know if you're aligned, how to get your team aligned, and how to know when you're all going in the same direction together. Let's just jump right back in with the new metaphor for how we see alignment. So, then what is a better metaphor?

SPEAKER_02 3:39

How often do you really approach this? Yeah, I guess my point is how often do we experience a leadership team that actually has that kind of synchronization, commonality of thought, conformity of practice. You just don't find that. It's much I think my experience is the the leadership teams that we that we work with, the effective ones, it's still messy and somewhat chaotic. Yeah, kind of like that sometimes. But what's key to what is to what a team is doing is that they're more aligned on the direction they're going. Um, and that alignment doesn't necessarily look like that perfect V formation that that geese are flying, and so I think that that's where where where we fall. We had an invitation to work with an executive team, and the topic was alignment, and so we thought about this very illustration, Nathan, that you're referring to, and that's not at all what what we were thinking is practical. So, what we ended up um

Flamingos as a New Metaphor for Team Alignment

SPEAKER_02 4:46

choosing was we found this really unique, dynamic, and colorful image of a bunch of flamingos flying in the same direction. So, again, not Canadian geese at your daughter's soccer game, but several flamingos. The only thing the flamingos have in common is that they're all flying in the same direction. So when you look at those Canadian geese pictures, like there's oftentimes the same wing positions and the perfect, like you know, spacing between the birds with this flamingo, not at all. Uh, they're different colors, they're spaced out differently. Some are really far away, some are super close, some are compacted, some aren't. There doesn't seem to be a very distinct order to this, except they're flying in the same direction. And when we presented this picture to the executive team, it was an immediate connection to that's it. You know, that's what it is to live on this team. We're we're flying in the same direction, that's what it means, at different paces, we all look differently.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

And sometimes people would say, like, now I'm in the front, or I'm the one like definitely going slower. I might not even be in this image. Um, but we find that uh presenting an image that surprises people, so not maybe a predictable, like I've heard this before about the geese, uh, it it opened up uh their imagination to begin to dream of are we really aligned? Are we even going in the right direction? Uh I had a mentor that he would always say, if I'm going to Chicago from Minneapolis, I'm gonna get on 94 and go east. Am I on 94 and going east? And so it was this directional um lesson I think that I learned from Mike, where yep, we're gonna we're gonna head this way. And I think sometimes alignment begins with at least going in the same direction.

Defining and Achieving Alignment

SPEAKER_02 6:43

I think that the the big idea for today is that we want to invite individuals and leaders to think about how it is that their teams that they're on, their leadership teams, how it is that they're aligned. Do they have a commitment to going in the same direction? And is there any type of consistency on how you're checking in with each other and realizing that what we're not saying is that alignment equals conformity? Not at all. The purpose of our conversation today is for us to just begin to ask ourselves the question what does it look like for me to be in alignment with those around me? And what does it mean for my team to be in an alignment going in the same direction, aligned on what it is that we believe in and what we're trying to accomplish?

SPEAKER_01 7:30

So then it's the it's about the commitment, not the conformity. Yes. And I'm wondering where we start with that then. Like you have so many leaders that like this is just the team that they have. Uh it's one thing if you can pick your hand, pick your team for a specific job or a task or whatever. That's probably maybe a little bit easier to get alignment and commitment to. But how would you know any leader that's listening to us today, is there a what's the process? What's the one, two, three, fifteen-step process to get people to all go all go east?

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Well, one of the places that we love to start is where we have commonality on just the idea. And so I think the first thing we would ask people is what does alignment mean to you? And just let that conversation evolve because we don't know what alignment means to any team that we're working with. Let them define it because I think it's really important to have an understanding that there may be many people that have different opinions on what alignment means. Second, can we agree on what alignment might mean for us? And then third, where and when have we been aligned before? Because we think it's really important to capture when a team is practicing something that they say to themselves, we're not doing this, we're really struggling. And we would say, You probably have been aligned before, you probably have been in that level of synchronicity before. So, what does it mean to you as individuals? What does alignment mean to you as individuals? What does it mean? What does a the topic of alignment mean for us as a team? And and Linda loves to ask these questions, when have you been aligned before to remember what that experience looked like, what it felt like, what it sounded like?

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Because when people start to first define it, then you start to realize that maybe people are maybe people have really differing definitions. And so their operational definition of what alignment is maybe puts a value on that we're all in this together, or it puts a um a value on the speed of how we're gonna, you know, go at this, or uh who all needs to needs to be involved. And so that definitional start, then what we find as leaders will kind of look around like, is that how you define it? Oh, that's not

Personal Stories of Alignment

SPEAKER_00 9:55

how I thought about it, or that's not what the dictionary definition definition is. Um, but when people are starting to wrestle with it, um, that's really important. And when people have that experience where they can name some time in their life where they were on a team or in a group or among a variety of birds um headed to Chicago, as I'm mixing all the metaphors. I like it. Being able to remember, put themselves back in that space, and then speak from the wisdom of what they've learned in that space. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

So when we meet with the team, we had that broad discussion, like we already covered. That's really our our first step. The second place we go to is what Linda just said is when have you experienced alignment, being on a team that was aligned. Because that's really gonna make the conversation personal for individuals. They'll feel like they're contributing to the overall discussion by remembering when they were in that place of alignment. I think that the other important thing then is to be able to listen to team members share those stories uh from early in in their careers or from a decade ago when they felt that they were providing some kind of momentum or innovation to how teams were aligning onto something that was in their future. Because you'll see people's eyes light up, you'll see their body posture change. And that's oftentimes something that that's maybe even more critical than the topic we're talking about is watching people come to life when they begin to remember when they were a critical contributing member to a positive team culture.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

There's often one or two people that will say things like, Well, can I can I share an example of when we weren't aligned?

unknown 11:39

No.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

And we usually say, I mean, although that's important to learn from as well, and I think we do learn a lot of lessons about what not to do, or if you know, we can watch a leader and be like, we never want to be like that, you know. So I'd never want to have this kind of you know, lack of alignment going forward. Um, we find that that that conversation begins to spiral a little bit. And what we want to help leaders tap into are those positive memories, are those opportunities to remember when they were aligned, to remember who was next to them, to remember if they were leading, if someone else was um carrying most of the weight. And as Brian mentioned, yes, like the people light up. And I think that's where some of the breakthrough of creativity, some of the breakthrough of other ways to look at um an issue or progress uh when it comes to alignment.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

And when we're having this conversation, the third thing that we

Framework for Alignment

SPEAKER_02 12:40

provide is just some a little bit of framework of what we're trying to reiterate with this conversation with alignment. And like any frame or any four-sided frame, we have four words. And and the first thing is alignment is about clarity. That's kind of the place that we want to start is can we have a commitment to any type of clarity on what it means for us to align? And the the second thing is to um just give another side of the frame that um alignment cascades. Oftentimes one or two people will get it, and then that that will cause others to come into alignment too. So just giving people permission that we're not maybe all gonna feel aligned right away, but alignment cascades. And the third side of the frame is that with alignment, we need to cultivate it. Um, we need to kind of like keep that momentum going, remind ourselves of the direction that we're heading and why that's important. And then fourth, to remember that for alignment to really be resilient and carry through over time, it that topic and needs to be part of our culture. It's a culture that aligns, not just a team, but that we expect individuals to be aligned and other teams to be aligned in their appropriate ways as well. That's kind of how we finish off this first part of the conversation. I like it.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Brian Linda, I am I'm gonna read a paragraph from this document here. It says alignment is not about conformity, it's a shared commitment to moving in the same direction, leveraging each leader's strengths and insights, understanding that individual uniqueness and adaptive leadership styles are crucial for building a dynamic and resilient leadership team. Talk about that. Expand on that a little bit. I want to hear more.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

One of the things that we want to emphasize in this conversation is that we are not at all asking people to refrain from contributing in an authentic and individualized manner. Because what we are trying to do in our work from the very beginning is how is it that we can shine a light on what is beautiful and brilliant about people? And we want to then invite people to share that uniqueness of who they are as individuals, even when we're working in alignment, because we know that when individual voice is shared, when diversity is promoted, when innovation is encouraged, it provides a different type of life and energy to a team that provides a momentum that I think is uncharacteristic in a lot of organizations.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

So if I think of some of the examples from leaders who have demonstrated some of their, I don't know, adaptive capacities. A lot of times people are saying out loud, hey, I'm with you, I'm just listening. Hey, I'm with you, I'm just introverted. And we know that the introverts among us do not give us as many data points as the extroverts. So they can, you know, we don't know if they're aligned or if they're in the in the formation going in the right direction. Uh so sometimes just probing and asking some of those questions, we want to unearth some of the adaptive capacities. We also want to push leaders to consider the ways that they have been resilient in the past. And sometimes that, you know, the resilience isn't just like, okay, fine, and you give up and you just, you know, give over to wherever everyone else is going. Um, but there's a bit of a give and take, and there is a bit of a uh maybe curious posture, open posture, like I want to learn from something, and able and then be able to help us move faster together.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Here's an another example. We recently were working with a group on this topic of alignment, and I saw one of the more critical thinkers um standing in front of this beautiful big screen, staring at this picture. So I walked up over to him and stood alongside of him and kind of just gazed onto this big picture of these flying flamingos with him, and he didn't say a word. I was that was kind of awkward, like he stood there with me. Um, and I said, Well, what do you see? And so he kind of gave some descriptions of what he is seeing in the picture. And then I asked him, I said, Which one of these flamingos is you? And I was certain that he was going to be describing uh one of the flamingos that was closer to the front of the pack. And he took his finger and he pointed onto the screen to the furthest flamingo outside of the formation that's flying the lowest on the horizon. He goes, That's me. What caught my attention was the certainty with which he said it and the pride that he said, like, this is me. And I said, Well, why is that? And why would you choose that one way out there? And he said, Because when I feel that I'm most aligned, I'm not flying with the group, I'm flying alongside and at a distance, watching, listening, and learning, because then I'll know exactly when my opinion is needed, and then I'll fly closer to the group and then fly back out where I feel that my perspective is more keenly dialed in. And that idea or that example of this man emphasized a couple of things. He understood that it was okay to fly wherever you wanted to, but he also understood what role he played, and that was really part of the of the point of this whole conversation is what role do you play? And wherever you think you are, it's okay. We're just asking for us all to be flying in the same direction.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

And sometimes we just want to push up against the the adage that you know, to f that you have to fall in line to get in the right direction, to head in the right direction. And I think there's um falling in line and alignment are two very different things. And I think people feel uh more open or expansive or like, oh, I I could try this, instead of how do I conform? And I think that's why um we ask people it's not about comfort uh being conforming, it's about committing to head in the same direction as everyone else.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

So how do you know? You mentioned that there's that leader who felt aligned when he was kind of off to the side, but as the leader of the group, how do you know when your team is aligned? Because I'm also hearing there's the team alignment that, but then there's individual alignment. So however you want to answer that, just how do you know when there's some alignment? How does that how does that become something that you can you can measure or mark and say yes or no?

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Well, learning and living with people who compare everything. Um this one might be a great idea. I feel that this may be a great opportunity to name when teams or a group is not aligned. Where uh because that's usually when we get a phone call. It's like the purpose isn't clear. Um, sometimes we say like we want to invest in leaders to help teams align on purpose. So if the purpose is not clear or the purpose is not understood, that's where it's like, oh, there are some people doing their own thing, there are splinter cells going off and doing this, and other people going rogue. What in the world is happening? And it's not just, hey, everybody get in the V, but let's diagnose what's happening because for some reason we are not, we actually aren't aligned. And so in some of our research that we have done extensively over the last 10 years with teams, we have we've learned a lot about organizational alignment. So maybe let's move into then what it is.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Because when we ask when teams are working with us on getting aligned, we're we're trying to break this topic down as simply as possible because we're not asking for this like blanket alignment. We're asking specific questions. What do you want to be aligned on? Because we really want to provide an opportunity for an environment and for a team to experience a success, and that's critical for us. So a very common uh question is how do we align on strategy? Now, strategy is important. A lot of leaders need to know the direction that they're going and how they're going to get there and how their role plays into the strategy. So that's that's a more maybe common question, but then I want to follow that up with a unique question of us is how can we be more aligned creatively? Like, how can our teens promote creativity where it's not random creativity, but it's creativity that is aligned on a topic that needs innovation, if that makes sense. And so the question is, how do we be creative in an aligned way that may provide some innovative solutions on a specific topic? That can also be something that directly impacts how a group is aligned.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Sometimes it's detecting how people are living their values. And so the values alignment is really important here. Uh because we we will see like sometimes it's just there's a values fit that's just it's a maybe a misfit. Um, or okay, we are aligned on values, but there are some other things that we need to discuss discuss, because maybe it goes back to strategy or we're just thinking in. Of a box and not outside of a box, like Brian was mentioning with creativity. So looking at values is really important here.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Here's another one. Uh, when I when we're answering the question of what does this alignment look like? We're working with another organization. It's an emotionally charged organization, but what makes this organization unique is that they're they're really wrestling with what does it mean to be emotionally engaged and how does that align? Like what types of emotions do we really want to promote here that serves the mission of the organization? Can we be emotionally aligned there? And by doing that kind of conversation or by having that kind of conversation, they're also revealing the types of emotions that create this lack of alignment. Like what's really distracting is can get us to fly off course. And again, surprised by the question, but good.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Another component is the that um when you look at alignment, are you providing places for or um dialogue that's intellectually challenging? Uh that that's a that's a big ponent of alignment uh when people are free to just wonder, to poke holes in, to not be intellectually offended if someone asks a question that uh some of the some of the teams that we've worked with, you know, they'll they'll bat a variety of ideas around and then at the end of the day they decide on one. And um that intellectual challenge actually led them to advancing the strategy, moving in the right direction together.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

What I was gonna say to that before Brian's final thought is that before you can know if you're aligned, it seems like you have to agree on a bunch of stuff ahead of time. Yeah. And so yeah, I'm not where am I going with that?

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Like Well, I I think even just naming it and discussing it, it isn't um full knowledge. It's like, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? Agitating the thinking, agitating some of the feeling to surface rather quickly. Yes. Uh what are the components?

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Right. I just bring that up because it's you know, like nearly everything in leadership, it's not a oh, well, if this happened, it's A, then B. And so there's there's a lot of finesse, and I'm perhaps you never have a hundred percent alignment. That's just sort of the you know the deal. It's like if you got fifty-one percent, that's

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

SPEAKER_01 24:26

a good day. But um Brian, how might you wrap this up? What like do you have a final thought to kind of um land this proverbial ship? Um maybe on a ship in Chicago, maybe if we're east with the birds. If we're birds, how do we land uh these flamingos down into migrating? Um they have to land eventually into a leg. They stand on one leg and they're pink because they eat shrimp or whatever. No, they drink pink lemonade. How do you think we all know that? Right, right. And they swim in pools. Duh. Um, so how much of like Brian, what's your um I can tell all three of us are aligned here on wrapping up this podcast. Uh final thought, Brian.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Here's my final thought, and my final thought, um, I learned from an executive leader uh as she was gazing on this picture. Same situation. Um during one of the breaks, we had uh this picture on a large screen and um I noticed one of the executives just looking at at the picture, and I do what I do, I walked up alongside of her and I said, What do you see? And she began to talk about the colors and that kind of thing. And again, I asked her, which one of these flamingos best represents you on this team? And she looked right into the middle and chose a flamingo that was alongside someone else. And the reason why this example is so important for me is because what she identified was the importance of being in relationship with someone that was close to you, flying in the same direction, so you could help each other out on staying aligned. That lesson really resonated with me and what we're trying to communicate is alignment sometimes feels very isolated, like you're the only one that's flying in the right direction. You may feel that way for a variety of reasons. And her comment made me really think of who is it that helps us maintain our alignment? That person that we are with in the organization that understands who we are, that can contribute to some critical thinking, but that person that can provide relational and emotional support if we feel like we're off center or if we're struggling in any area. So the reminder that alignment is an emotional and relational game, too. It's a process of being in relationship with each other, relying on our individual uniquenesses as contributing factors, but still holding each other accountable in ways that keeps us aligned and in relationship.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

I love that. Brian and Linda, thank you so much. I appreciate the alignment conversation and the new way to think about this. I'll no longer look at geese the same way. I don't really have opportunity to look at flamingos, but uh in the case. You could I do, I could. Or anytime I see some disorganized mess going in, generally, generally.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Speaking of disorganized mess, there's like a whole herd of turkeys in our neighborhood, like 21 turkeys. Well, they're like they don't have any alignment. They just randomly walk across the streets or whatever. That's flock of seeds.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

That's what we're called a rafter.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Rafter?

SPEAKER_01 27:40

A rafter.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Well, there is a rafter of turkey.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

There's lots of rafters of turkeys around here. An adult milk. A group of turkeys is called a rafter or a flock.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

So well, I would not. I mean, I wouldn't consider when I'm watching our neighborhood anything about alignment.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Well, with turkeys. That's good. But now we have some good now. We have some good uh imagery to think about. So thank you for that. And thank you, listeners, for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has spent the past 25 years helping individuals feel mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. If you found value from this episode or any of your other material, we would love it if you could share it with someone else that you think might benefit from it. You can visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting.com. Please subscribe to our email newsletter, subscribe and review us on iTunes and Spotify and YouTube and all the social channels and blah, blah, blah. That stuff's all really helpful for us to get the message out. But again, thank you for listening. My name is Nathan Freeberg.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

I'm Linda Schubring. And I'm Brian Schubring.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

And on behalf of our entire team, thank you for listening. Should we do um a turkey sound to get to like play us out? Or should we gobble gobble? I think it's Halloween. I don't really have a gobble sound. But it won't be Halloween when this comes out. Okay. That'll all just be faded out.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

I'm dressed in orange.