How Team Alignment Affects Corporate Culture

Team alignment affects how your employees work together on a day-to-day basis, but it can have huge effects on your overall company culture. When your team is aligned around similar priorities and works well together, you can create an environment that fosters cohesion and is open to new recruits.

How Team Alignment While cordial relationships among your team members increase engagement and promote office goodwill, your team alignment will also have big effects on your company’s corporate culture.

While company culture is internal, the way others perceive your organization can have a huge effect on your public image, efforts at receiving funding, and more.

One top reason maintaining cohesive interpersonal relationships in the workplace should be a company priority is the risk of bad blood tainting your enterprise.

Several companies have failed, lost valuable employees, or ruined their reputations due to animosity between their co-founders or members of the executive team. One notable case is the story of Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s scandalous affair with Google Glass marketing manager Amanda Rosenberg and subsequent divorce from his wife, 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki.

While Google’s company culture didn’t explicitly ban romantic relationships between employees, the fallout of Brin and Rosenberg’s affair likely had significant effects on their personal and professional personas. This situation also  what is expected at the company and media perceptions of the kind of culture Google has.

While most successful entrepreneurs and business leaders know better than to begin romantic office relationships, there are other ways that your interpersonal interactions can affect your work life.

How Team Alignment Can Affect Corporate Culture

Particularly in small companies, your employees and the way in which they interact with one another can have a gigantic impact on your corporate culture in the coming years. Employees at small businesses often feel more connected to their coworkers, feeling like a part of the “family” or main team. One recent survey found the number one retention factor at a small business is the relationship the employee has with management.

A healthy corporate culture and respectful interactions can also improve your team’s engagement and motivation.

When employees feel comfortable with their colleagues, they’re more likely to work together to brainstorm ideas and collaborate on projects, which can help inspire innovative practices in your company.  Another benefit of strong interpersonal workplace relationships is that team members will trust one another and be unafraid to ask for help when needed.

There are a variety of tactics to improve and maintain cordial and comfortable office relationships among your executive team, departments, and other coworkers.

One important first step is to keep an atmosphere of open and honest communication in your workplace. As we’ve discussed before, a frequent rhythm of communication among your team helps you stay on track to achieve your goals and address issues as soon as they occur. Another strategy is to adapt the way you communicate. Experts advise using non-confrontational language to keep communication respectful and non-judgmental.

If you and a colleague have a poor working relationship, it’s important to try to fix it rather than ignore the problem. While every relationship will need different strategies to improve it, a good start is to try to see the other person’s perspective and find neutral ground. While you may not get along with a coworker on a personal level, you should still be able to have a professional and respectful office relationship.

While most of us won’t experience scandalous office affairs in our organizations, strong working relationships can greatly help your team and your company stay aligned to your goals.