Page 241 - Fearless Leadership

228 FEARLESS LEADERSHIP

ACHIEVING AUTHENTIC ALIGNMENT

Real alignment requires committed partners who behave as owners and
play big. From this perspective people do not work for a company, they
are the company. Committed partners work together to achieve sustain-
able alignment because they know it is a key to superior execution.
New skill sets are needed for transforming automatic behaviors into an
extraordinary way of working together. The prerequisites for achieving sus-
tainable alignment are

• Taking 100%-zero accountability for business results and your
impact on people
• Building and sustaining committed partnerships
• Talking straight responsibly
• Honoring and fulfilling commitments
• Holding each other accountable for high standards of behavior
• Constructively intervening whenever required to get the team
back on track

The ability of committed partners to quickly align and ensure that the
alignment is sustained or adjusted as needed is what distinguishes high
performance teams. This beginning-to-end process, in which people act
as owners, makes certain that two things are accomplished: (1) everyone
supports the decision both emotionally and intellectually, and (2) every-
one remains aligned throughout the implementation phase where most
breakdowns take place.
Self-managing teams are, in practice, committed partners who work
together as high performance teams. In business-as-usual teams, squab-
bling is an ongoing distraction, and team leaders must expend consider-
able energy managing others and refereeing conflict. Contrast this with
high performance teams in which committed partners constructively
intervene, coach each other in the moment, and quickly refocus the group
on the business need.
But there is another element committed partners bring to alignment:
caring for each other. Because they stand for the success of each other and
intimately understand each other’s blind spots, they turn the motto—when
one succeeds, we all succeed, and when one fails, we all fail—into a daily
practice. Their relentless commitment to greatness demands that every-