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For better team collaboration turn your initiatives into specific, observable habits
When it comes to team alignment, nothing speaks louder than behavior. You know this: the best strategies fall flat without the right habits to back them up. So, how do you ensure your team is truly aligned and working together on what matters most?
It starts with you. If you’re leading a team, your behaviors and habits set the tone. You can’t just tell people what’s important—you’ve got to show them, consistently. The way you respond to challenges, celebrate wins, and communicate expectations creates the framework everyone else will follow.
The secret to success is ensuring that the most critical success habits spread throughout your department through deliberate modeling, communication, and reinforcement.
So how do you do that?
Get started with a team alignment meeting.
How to Host a Team Alignment Meeting in 5 Steps
A team alignment meeting fast-tracks your key initiatives by identifying the practical habits vital for success. In this article, we outline an approach you can do yourself (or drop us a note, we’d love to help). This is a great activity for an end-of-year meeting, or to kick-off the new year.
Step 1: Get Clear on the Most Important Initiative
First, identify a strategic initiative that’s a priority for your team in the next 6-12 months. Choose a strategic initiative that meets three critical criteria:
- It’s central to your department’s success—everyone needs to understand it.
- It requires collaboration—how people work together will impact results.
- It needs broad ownership—everyone contributes to success in some way.
Before your team alignment meeting, communicate this initiative with your team and why it’s critical. You want them ready to engage in a “how” conversation, not still debating the “should we?”
Step 2: Identify Key Habits
Bring your team together and ask them to select one key habit that, if everyone consistently demonstrated it, would have a significant positive impact on the initiative’s success.
If your team has SynergyStack™ Card decks, have each team member sort through the cards and identify a habit that is:
- Essential to the initiative’s success.
- Not currently widespread throughout the team.
If you don’t yet have a SynergyStack™, invite team members to brainstorm a habit (be sure it’s practical and observable) and write their habit on an index card.
After everyone has selected their habit, have them share why they chose that habit and how they see it impacting the project.
This is where you’ll start to see patterns emerge: Are there common habits or themes? Are there certain collaboration dimensions (connection, clarity, curiosity, commitment) that show up more often?
Step 3: Align on Two Priority Habits
Now, narrow it down. As a team, choose two core habits that will have the greatest impact on driving success for the initiative. This isn’t just about consensus—it’s about choosing behaviors that will influence your culture and outcomes. Once you have your two habits, commit to them and get ready to build your leadership blueprint.
Step 4: Create a Leadership Blueprint to foster team alignment
To ensure these habits stick, every leader on the team needs a game plan for modeling, communicating, and reinforcing them.
Modeling:
Start with yourselves. Discuss specific, observable ways you can demonstrate these habits in your daily work. This isn’t just about big speeches or grand gestures—what are the small, daily actions that will show your team, “this is what good looks like”? Align on at least one or two consistent habits everyone will commit to practicing.
Communicating:
Next, think about how you’ll communicate these habits throughout your department. It’s not just about emails or meetings. Think 5×5 communication (communicate messages five times, five different ways), and include a check for understanding to ensure the message sent is the message received.
Consider: How will you connect what you’re asking people to do with why it matters? How will you make these habits come to life with stories or examples? Agree on how you’ll cascade communication down and across your teams.
For some very practical communication tips see: Beyond Magical Thinking: How to Ensure Your Team Gets It
Reinforcing:
Finally, look for opportunities to reinforce these habits over the next 30 days. How will you recognize and celebrate when you see people demonstrating them? How will you hold people accountable when the habits are ignored? f you want these habits to become the norm, they need to be what “people like us do.”
Step 5: Build in Accountability
Create a simple habit-tracking system to monitor progress. At your next team meeting, ask for updates: Who’s seen the habits in action? What’s working? Where are the obstacles? Adjust as needed, but stay focused on making these behaviors stick.
Take Action and Watch the Impact
When you and your leadership team consistently model, communicate and reinforce the right habits, you’ll see a ripple effect through your department. Aligned actions lead to better collaboration, stronger commitment, and ultimately, higher performance.
This isn’t just about another project plan—it’s about building a culture where everyone understands what success looks like and acts accordingly. That’s what team alignment really means. When your team knows where you’re headed, why it matters, and what behaviors will get you there, you’re not just managing projects—you’re building momentum.
And that momentum? It’s the fuel that will carry your team to success.
Gather your team, clarify your initiative, and choose those two vital habits. Then, go make it happen. The alignment you’re striving for starts with you.
Related: 10 Common Mistakes Executive Teams Make in Building Workplace Culture