Cultural Alignment in Teams

A team or organisation that just seems to work and produce fantastic results has discovered a winning recipe for success. An effective team can produce results almost magically it seems and productivity and therefore profitability soar. Is this the result of happy coincidence and a bit of magic, or have they discovered the vital ingredients that make teams work?  

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A well-oiled team that operates as metronomically as clockwork in the production of success is an aligned and congruent team. So how does a team become congruent and aligned? The critical components are values. When values align, magic does indeed happen.

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Values are part of our personal filtering system through which we process our model of the world. They represent the lens through which we view reality and make judgements about how appropriate everything is or is not. Our values are deeply integrated into the very elemental basis of our personality and guide our energy and therefore our results. Values are what we deem important and are what we are most willing to spend our time and energy on.

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When values are aligned, everything just seems to fit like a glove. Likewise, when our values are unfulfilled or violated in any way, we experience incongruence and nothing seems to click into place. We feel out of alignment and because values are some of our most unconscious filters, we can’t really locate the source of our discomfort.

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Values also present themselves through cultural and organisational memes. A cultural meme which predicts the thinking of the people adapting to and operating within the particular environment and life conditions they find themselves in. Values systems thinking provides us with a fascinating window through which we can observe and ultimately understand cultural, corporate, team and even individual behaviours. During our Enhanced NLP Master Coach Certification Programme, we spend a significant amount of time studying and understanding personal values. It’s fascinating learning and sheds a bright and very illuminating light on current human behaviour both worldwide and closer to home.

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If we sharpen our focus down into the team or organisational level, we can assess how efficient and effective these groups can be by discovering how congruently their values are aligned. Have you ever found yourself operating within an organisation or team and felt that you just didn’t fit in? You felt uncomfortable or uneasy and didn’t really know why? The answer lies in the content and hierarchy of your values set.

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Imagine a team of Directors, at the helm of an organisation, steering the course towards the company’s goals and aspirations. What do you think the results would look like if every one of those Directors had a different values set in the context of career? How would it feel to be in a team where everyone had a different idea of what is important and everyone was directing their energy to different places. How would that be? Chaotic comes to mind!

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Values conflicts within teams are one of the key reasons why teams are dysfunctional and organisations fail to excel. That’s where the NLP Master Coach becomes the consultant worth their weight in gold. An NLP Master Coach has the formula that will create alignment and congruence and dramatically increase productivity and therefore profitability and it will all seem like magic!

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Here’s the thing! People are not able to change their behaviour just because they are told to. Team members cannot instigate personal behavioural change just because the team leader tells them what their behaviours should be. They need assistance to change functional behaviours. The same is true for values. A team member cannot change their personal values to fit the corporate values of the team because they are told what the team values are. Values are far too engrained in the unconscious for this transition to be possible. If a team member chooses to change their values to fit the corporate values presented to them, then they require a robust process to instruct them how to do that at the unconscious level. In NLP, we call this Corporate Values Alignment. All the investment corporate entities make into setting, branding and publishing their corporate values is wasted unless investment is made into assisting employees to change their values hierarchy.

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A Corporate Values Alignment can be completed within any organisational team within a couple of days, eliminating what could be years of conflict and dysfunction. As an NLP Master Coach you will have the knowledge and skills to elicit values in any context, create a values hierarchy, identify and deal with values conflicts and change a values hierarchy consciously in order to achieve unconsciously actioned results. You will also know how to identify cultural memes within an organisation and coach individuals who no longer comply with the present level of values. Like a soothing steam iron you will glide through the organisation and smooth out all of the wrinkles, creating harmony and alignment and most importantly enabling results within anyone being burned in the process.

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As an NLP Master Coach Practitioner you will be given the specific process for creating aligned and dynamic teams. Now take your thinking one step further, a relationship is a team of two, a family is a unit of three or more. Imagine the harmony you could bring to these environments utilising your knowledge of values. The possibilities are great and very exciting, aren’t they?

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