Nods around the table can be reassuring.
They can also hide different assumptions, private doubts and completely different interpretations of what was agreed.
That tension sits at the heart of the Clear Leaders global study, Wayne Aspland MAICD, FCSCE, and I conducted on strategic alignment and leadership, supported by IABC.
We interviewed 55 CEOs, executives, and senior leaders across five continents, including Chiefs of Staff, communication, strategy, HR, operations and trusted advisors.
The top team matters deeply, but alignment has to travel through the organisation, or it starts to fragment.
Across the research, seven insights and four shifts kept pointing to the same conclusion: alignment has to be practised, not assumed.
For communication professionals (as well as HR and Chiefs of Staff), this is where the opportunity sits.
We are often close enough to see where meaning, behaviour and action start to diverge: where priorities shift, ownership becomes unclear, and teams believe they are aligned while working from different interpretations of what matters most.
At the IABC World Conference in Toronto, 14-16 June, my session, 'The Leadership Decision Communication Professionals Can’t Avoid', will explore what leaders consistently get wrong about alignment and the role communication professionals can realistically play in enabling it.
Some of the research contributors will be in the room too, so this will be a conversation as much as a presentation. Bring the questions and patterns you are seeing in your own organisation.
🌟 If you want to sit with the thinking before Toronto, I’m sharing the Catalyst article I wrote, the recent Stories and Strategies podcast with Doug Downs, the full report and the conference booking link in the comments. 👇
I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation in The 6ix. 😀
#strategic #alignment #leadership #communication
