Direction, alignment and commitment: does your leadership team produce them?

What are direction, alignment and commitment?

In 2008, six researchers from a US leadership institute proposed a different way to recognise leadership. Instead of asking who leads, they asked what leadership produces. Their answer was three outcomes, which they meant to apply to almost any group of people who share work (Drath et al., 2008).

• Direction is broad agreement on the group's overall goals, aims and mission. Members agree the goal is worth pursuing, not only what it is.
• Alignment is knowledge and work that are organised and coordinated, so that people's work broadly fits together.
• Commitment is members' willingness to fold their own interests into the group's, letting others make demands on their time and energy.

The three can exist apart. A group may agree on its aims and still fail to organise itself. A group may move together towards an end that no member wants, as in the Abilene paradox. A group may be full of energy yet unable to agree on an aim. For the authors, short-term effectiveness is the degree to which all three are present and work together (Drath et al., 2008).

The authors also limit the claim. The outcomes are needed for longer-term goals but are not enough, because context such as competitors and events matters too (Drath et al., 2008).

Why judge leadership by what it produces, not by who leads?

Drath and colleagues start from what they call the tripod: leaders, followers and the goals they share. They see it as the widely accepted foundation under the field's many theories, and quote Warren Bennis's statement of it. In that view, leadership is present when leaders and followers interact around shared goals (Drath et al., 2008).

They do not dismiss the tripod. They expect it to support leadership theory, research and practice for a long time yet. Their concern is narrower. As work grows more peer-like and collaborative, talk of leaders and followers starts to limit theory and practice (Drath et al., 2008).

The shift changes the basic question. The tripod assumes that leaders and followers exist first, and asks who leads and how they influence followers. The new question is how people who share work produce the three outcomes, with or without leaders and followers (Drath et al., 2008).

This widens what counts as leadership. Dialogue, teamwork and organisational learning count when they aim at the three outcomes. The authors give the example of a team charter, which aims to produce agreed direction (Drath et al., 2008). A leadership team charter is one such practice.

Why do these outcomes suit a leadership team?

The framework was written with peer-like, collaborative settings in mind (Drath et al., 2008). A leadership team is partly such a setting. Its members report to the chief executive, yet they must work as peers on the issues that cut across their units.

That gives the team a double role. First, it must produce the three outcomes among its own members. Katzenbach observed that by the time executives reach the top, they have mastered individual accountability, and most distrust mutual accountability. Most also give the top team only part of their time (Katzenbach, 1997).

Second, what the team decides reaches every part of the organisation. Each member carries the team's direction into a unit, or fails to. McCauley notes that having all three outcomes in a top group does not show that the wider organisation has them (McCauley, 2014). She suspects, though, that having them at the top is an important first step.

What does the research say about direction, alignment and commitment?

Less than you might expect. The 2008 article is theoretical. Its authors sketched a framework and posed questions for research, not findings (Drath et al., 2008).

The same authors, with one more colleague, also studied six organisations that seemed to practise interdependent leadership (McCauley et al., 2008). In five, members rated statements about the three outcomes, such as whether people put shared success above their own. Organisations whose members endorsed more interdependent statements also had higher average ratings of the three outcomes.

The authors were candid about the limits. The study was exploratory and cross-sectional. They wrote that the levels of the outcomes could not be credited directly to the practices they saw (McCauley et al., 2008).

A later paper by two of the authors studied how professionals in one leadership development organisation used the framework (McCauley and Palus, 2021). It does not test whether the three outcomes predict results.

Agreement on direction

The nearest evidence for direction comes from research on strategic consensus: how far managers agree on strategy. A meta-analysis pooled 23 samples covering 2,089 management teams (Kellermanns et al., 2011). Agreement was positively related to organisational performance, but the size of the link varied widely between studies.

The link was stronger in stable environments than in fast-changing ones. It also looked stronger for agreement on priorities, and among business-unit managers than in top teams. The authors call these last two results not definitive (Kellermanns et al., 2011).

From the team to the units

A study of 136 teams below the top compared each manager's ratings of strategic priorities with the chief executive's (Ateş et al., 2020). Where the two matched, a manager's visionary leadership went with more agreement on strategy in the team, and more commitment to it. Where they differed, it went with less. The data were correlational, so they do not show cause.

A study of 63 organisations measured how far each top team worked as one, which the authors call behavioural integration (Raes et al., 2013). Where top teams were more integrated, organisations tended to have more productive energy. That energy went with higher job satisfaction and lower intention to quit among employees.

What do the three look like, and what does their absence look like?

A white paper from the same institute lists signs that each outcome is or is not happening (McCauley, 2014). The table adapts them to a leadership team and its units.

One sign in the table comes from elsewhere. The interview's introduction reports that, in Hackman's research, members mostly do not even agree on what their team should be doing (Coutu, 2009).

How can a leadership team check its direction, alignment and commitment?

The 2008 study's authors called it exploratory, and said a much shorter measure of the outcomes could be made (McCauley et al., 2008). None of the checks below is a tested measure. Use them to start a conversation, not to score the team. For wider methods, see how to assess a leadership team.

Questions to ask, and signs to watch

• Direction: If each of us wrote down this year's three priorities, would our lists match?
• Alignment: When did one unit's plan last clash with another's, and how late did we find out?
• Commitment: When did one of us last give up something in our own unit for the sake of the whole?
• The units: Would the managers who report to each of us name the same priorities?

Start with the first question. Agreement on priorities was the kind of strategic consensus most clearly linked to performance (Kellermanns et al., 2011). The last is a sign to watch: ask a few managers one level down to name the priorities.

A short self-check, not a tested measure

Ask each member to rate five statements privately, from 1 (not at all true) to 5 (fully true).

1. We agree on the few priorities that matter most this year.
2. Each of our units' plans serves those priorities.
3. When one unit changes course, the others hear in time to adjust.
4. We hold one another to account, not only the chief executive.
5. Each of us would give up something in our own unit for the good of the whole.

What can you do when one of the three is missing?

When direction is missing

Hackman saw no single right way to set direction, but said it always involves authority and is emotionally demanding (Coutu, 2009). Aim for priorities, not slogans. Katzenbach warned that goals such as improving company performance are too broad to focus a team at the top (Katzenbach, 1997).

Then carry direction into each meeting. In eight top management groups, raising an unclear goal was linked to more focused talk and better task performance (Bang et al., 2010). See leadership team meeting agenda for a format.

Agreement should close a debate, not replace it. Kellermanns and colleagues warn that groups chasing harmony may stifle criticism and make poorer decisions (Kellermanns et al., 2011). Argue about the work first; see task conflict and relationship conflict.

When alignment is missing

In large organisations, alignment often comes from structure: plans, budgets, performance management and rewards. In small, informal groups it may come from people adjusting to each other face to face (Drath et al., 2008). A leadership team needs both.

McCauley suggests asking whether clearer accountabilities are needed, or more regular meetings with peers to set priorities across units (McCauley, 2014). Check, too, that each member's priorities match the chief executive's before they reach the units. The study of 136 teams below the top suggests why such a gap can matter (Ateş et al., 2020).

When commitment is missing

At the top, commitment shows as mutual accountability. One of Katzenbach's three tests of a real team was whether members hold one another accountable, rather than relying on the boss (Katzenbach, 1997). Agree what each member owes the others, and review it together.

Commitment may also grow when people can shape the outcome. In one scenario McCauley describes, it came from a logical case for change and a real chance to influence it (McCauley, 2014).

Do not read dissent as a lack of commitment. The framework allows for competing commitments, and even for opposition to parts of the shared work (Drath et al., 2008).

When the usual fix stops working

Drath and colleagues describe two kinds of learning (Drath et al., 2008). A team can run its current practice more skilfully, or swap in another based on the same beliefs. Or it can question the beliefs themselves, such as the belief that top managers should set strategy.

For example, a team's strategy day might end, year after year, without agreed priorities. Hiring a better facilitator is a single-loop fix. Asking who should shape direction is a double-loop question.

What can you do this month?

• Ask every member, privately, to list the team's three priorities for this year. Read the lists side by side at the next meeting.
• Ask two managers in each unit what the organisation's priorities are. Bring the answers back without names.
• Run the five-statement self-check, and spend the time on the statements where answers differ most.
• Pick the weakest of the three outcomes and try one practice from this article for a quarter.

The conditions behind all three are set out in leadership team effectiveness. Agreeing the purpose of a leadership team comes first.