What is the importance of internal alignment?

Efficient systems and processes also provide the foundation to build a culture of empowered and accountable staff. The success of any association invariably comes down to its people. When employees are engaged, associations can flourish. This makes effective people management arguably the most important objective for every CEO, because without an engaged workforce all the other organisational objectives are likely to remain unfulfilled. So how can you empower staff to thrive but still hold them to account for their performance? This is about ensuring that employees are absolutely clear on the purpose of their role, what their responsibilities are and what is expected of them in terms of output and behaviour. And that they feel their employer genuinely cares about them.

Employees are most engaged when they can see how their own individual purpose links directly to the mission, vision and purpose of their association and how their input directly benefits the output of the association. For this to happen, they need to feel safe, valued and acknowledged in addition to having full confidence in knowing what’s expected of them.

There is a critical moment when employees genuinely feel like they are an integral part of the overall value proposition. This tipping point comes when they realise they have a personal stake in organisational progress – when they trust that their own self-interest is linked to the success of the association. When they understand what’s in it for them, they shift gears from passive to active.

This simple, powerful philosophy is difficult to deliver in practice. The closer associations get to this, the more successful they will become. But to do so, they also need to overcome and transform five longstanding practices that can become roadblocks.

• Passion into Performance
• Over-consultation into Action
• Amiability into Authenticity
• Gossip into Healthy Debate
• Victims into Players

Associations that encourage performance, accountability, authenticity and healthy debate can tap into the immense potential of their employees. When employees engage freely and willingly from their own volition, it can spark a powerful culture of success and fulfilment. Here’s how.

Associations can incorrectly confuse passion and commitment with competent performance in the people they employ. This trait has also taken hold in other nonprofit organisations like charities and foundations because it is so easy to do.

Passion is a unique attribute of for-purpose organisations, and a major employment attraction for similarly motivated individuals. It is often a differentiator of nonprofit employees compared to the corporate workforce. It can even be an expectation within the job description itself. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that passion alone is not enough. Having employees who care deeply about an association’s cause is a wonderful trait. But passion cannot be used as an excuse for under performance. No amount of passion can compensate for missing attributes such as innovation, adaptability, accountability, engagement, transparency, teamwork, competence and professionalism.

Unfortunately, passionate individuals who have not been used to performing against benchmarks can get defensive when they are provided with performance-based feedback. They can feel they have invested so much of themselves in terms of time, energy and dedication into the cause, that they take a lack of results as a personal criticism. They can think their passion is enough and should be accepted unquestioningly – and can find professional performance evaluation alien and confronting.

The harsh reality is that passion alone won’t create solutions for the causes or members they are trying to serve. Only outcomes create positive change. For passion to be effective, it must be leveraged into measureable performance.

When passionate people realise how important outcomes are they will usually start to care more about their performance. Leaders who help employees get clear on how to get their jobs done better can transform this passion into performance. Outcomes are the logical conclusion to a lifetime of passionate dedication. Leaders need to build trust and resilience so employees can hear performance-based feedback as guidance and assistance, rather than as criticism or a rejection of their self-worth. Effective management coaching, training and mentoring can help employees improve their output to effort ratio – to achieve more for the same effort. And in doing so, they can gain the fulfilment that comes from seeing positive change unfold. That’s what makes passion worthwhile.

1. Over-consultation into Action

Associations can believe that consulting widely with staff reflects their organisational values of participation and demonstrates a less hierarchical spirit. It is a keystone of nonprofit organisations and a point of difference with the corporate environment. Consultation reflects caring. The aim of a democratic consultation process that is nice, fair and amiable is certainly worthy, but not without its shortcomings.

What constitutes too much consultation? Of course employees need to be consulted, so they feel heard and acknowledged, and can provide valuable input. Most will be enthused by the opportunity to participate in decision making. But how much is too much? At some point, someone needs to make a decision. Associations can cross this line by trying to be nice and please everyone. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to get everyone to agree to anything.

The aim of consultation is not to make everyone happy, but to solicit appropriate feedback and then transparently explain the reasons why and how the final decision was made. It is more important for employees to understand, trust and respect the decision making process than to ‘like’ any individual decision. The process of consultation must be clear from the outset.

No amount of consultation can compensate for a lack of transparency in how decisions have been made. When employees enter into long discussions, but the final plan does not include any reference to their feedback, it looks like a dictatorial process disguised as democracy. If you ever want to disengage your workforce, this is how to do it because it fosters resentment through an obvious question: ‘Why did you ask me if you weren’t going to listen?’

Over consultation can inadvertently breed frustration, bureaucracy and stagnation – the very opposite of what it was intended to do. Over consultation causes employees to lose the desire to work harder and make a contribution. Too much consultation is not only a poor use of time it gets in the way of employees doing their jobs. One of the greatest enemies of impact is duplication of effort. Doing things once and doing them properly is the essence of efficiency. The implicit message that employees receive from over consultation is that it is acceptable for things to go round in circles ad infinitum, that inefficiency is tolerated, and that striving for progress is not valued. For empowered individuals, this is as disengaging as it gets.

The consultation process sets the tone of accountability within an association. It too, needs to be accountable. I’m not a fan of acronyms but one that I do like is DIFOT – delivered in full, on time. Most often used as a performance delivery metric within supply chains, the words also express an ethos of accountability and responsibility towards others. DIFOT underpins what good consultation should be.

Transforming over consultation into action begins with the CEO and the leadership team articulating a transparent decision making process linked to the achievement of key objectives at the outset. Then defining the parameters and timelines for the consultation process and setting a deadline on which the decision will be made, and communicated. In this way, they take the accountability for DIFOT first. They make themselves and the process accountable to the employees – and then take the action to make a firm decision and communicate it to everyone. In setting an example around accountability and action, it sends a clear message that it is valued and expected from everyone.

1. Amiability into Authenticity

Association employees often have high empathy levels and amiability. It’s one of the endearing traits of the nonprofit sector – people want to be nice. Of the four major behavioural styles commonly used in management, nonprofits have traditionally been more aligned with Amiable and Analytical personalities than the Driver and Expressive types who are more typically associated with corporate leaders. However, there are dangers in being too amiable.

No-one wants to work in an environment where staff are not cared about or valued. Everyone loves a positive, friendly and harmonious working environment. But amiability becomes a roadblock when employees avoid doing things that might be unpopular. Being too nice can stifle productivity. When the need to be liked develops into a fear of upsetting sensitivities, or worse being the kind of person who always says what others want to hear but doesn’t actually do anything about it.

Amiability can disguise a lack of forthrightness. One sign of this is the employee who sends reassuring messages that say ‘I’m onto it’ or ‘I’ve been working hard on this’ to express agreement with a request, but often fails to deliver on the task itself. When expectations are not delivered, no amount of amiability can compensate.

Amiability can also be a defence mechanism to handle outright fear – whether real or perceived. Employees need to feel safe to raise issues for debate, and to be able to disagree and say ‘no’ openly. Sometimes rather than confront these, employees can revert to amiability as a coping strategy.

It is the CEO and the leadership team’s role to define a culture of authenticity – where every employee feels confident enough to be his or her authentic self. In return, every employee then has a personal responsibility to contribute to authenticity in the workplace, by speaking up for important issues that need to be resolved. The opposite of over amiability is not rudeness. It is the courage to be authentic.

1. Gossip into Healthy Debate

People love to talk. When employees feel safe in an environment of trust, respect and integrity they are more likely to speak up and share their thoughts openly. This is how high performance organisations think – through a diversity of ideas for healthy debate. It is when talk is driven underground that it can become negative, and cause distrust and morale issues. Gossip is a major cause of lost productivity, engagement and staff turnover. It can incite reactive behaviour to avert responsibility or avoid blame, inadvertently encourage discrimination and cause talented staff to leave.

Gossip flourishes when there is fear and frustration. Fear can be created by a top down, punitive control and command ethos. Frustration can be created by over consultation, and a lack of clear systems or accountability. Associations will do well to avoid both extremes.

The CEO needs to set the tone and lead by example. Once the leadership team presents a united front, they can begin to address the behaviour of specific gossip perpetrators to ensure bad behaviour is not rewarded. Or, where there are issues that warrant employee frustration or fear, to tackle them and create an environment where talk is channelled into productive, healthy debate.

Communicating transparently and clearly so all staff feel they know what is happening will help reduce any gaps in the management dialogue – because gaps feed the uncertainty that negative gossip fills. Encouraging positive gossip by actively listening to thoughts and ideas from within encourages employees to realise their voices are important. The goal is not to shut down all gossip, but to embrace its positivity so people speak up.

Passionate arguments and robust discussions are integral to the success of every association. They enable individual ideas to be shared, communicated and negotiated within a group dynamic so that the optimum outcomes can be revealed. Disagreement is critical for different perspectives to be reviewed. Extroverts and introverts will express their contribution in different ways, and both need to be heard equally for true diversity of thinking to be revealed.

Associations too concerned with upsetting sensitivities can find it hard to bring issues out into the open. Paradoxically, this can have the opposite result and foster negative gossip that has a far more disastrous effect. Some association employees who rely on gossip can perpetuate an insular and individual culture that makes open collaboration almost impossible. This is especially true of those who haven’t worked in environments that encourage open, healthy debate – they can find the process intimidating and incorrectly diagnose healthy debate as hostile because it is so overt.

Similarly, if employees choose to work within a certain association, they need to take personal responsibility and make a contribution to good culture. This means disengaging from negative gossip and standing up for integrity and truth. Once employees start perpetuating negative gossip because they see everything as a problem, it may be time for them to leave. Not only for the association’s wellbeing but their own. Employees who are deeply unhappy in their jobs and cannot change their perspective harm themselves by staying, as well as infecting others to become similarly discontented. Gossip is a virus.

Turning negative gossip into open, healthy debate is one of the most powerful things associations can do to ignite positive change internally. Promoting soft skills like teamwork, collaboration, problem solving, adaptability and conflict resolution throughout the workforce can enable employees to enhance their communications and become more comfortable speaking out openly. These soft skills and values need to be instilled, embedded and encouraged on a daily basis.

Fred Kofman, author of the best-selling book Conscious Business conducts a wonderful experiment in his seminars about unconditional responsibility. He defines it as ‘response-ability’, or our ability to respond to a situation. He picks up a pen, lets it drop to the ground and then asks his group, ‘Why did the pen fall?’ Gravity is usually the first answer, and then people also point out that he dropped it. Both answers are correct, but the gravity group seem to be saying there is nothing they can do about it because it wasn’t their fault – it was gravity. They have abrogated their ability to respond. However, the other group that said Fred dropped the pen are clearly articulating they can do something about it. They can hold onto to the pen, negating the effects of gravity. Fred goes on to define the groups respectively as ‘Victims’ who pay attention to factors they cannot influence, or ‘Players’ who see themselves as being able to respond to external circumstances. I know which group I’d rather have on my team! The good news is that you can help some victims on your team to become players. Once they realise they have the power and ability to respond to any situation, they can start being more pro-active in the workplace. It’s a slight mindset shift that can have a massive impact on staff culture.