We live in a paradoxical world that values alignment yet, at times, seems immensely misaligned. Economic uncertainty, technological advances, and social tension have been shifting more rapidly than ever. Individuals and organizations allocate varying levels of resources and support to achieve and sustain alignment in the current environment. That allocation is driven, in part, by what I call the urgency factor: the more urgent, dangerous, or longer lasting the problem is perceived to be, the more likely we are to seek assistance.
If your car or truck will not safely hold a straight line, pulls, shakes, or will not respond effectively during turns, you take it in for alignment. Your vehicle feels unsafe, so it is urgent to schedule the appointment. If your body posture is noticeably poor, you are in constant pain, or you experience limited range of motion, you go in for physical alignment. Your anxiety over diminishing health creates an urgency to do so. If your tech stack is not well-integrated, not scalable for your long-term organizational goals, or creates redundancy or inefficiency, you invest in realignment. Your business success depends on keeping pace in a technological world, and it becomes urgent to allocate resources.
The Hidden Cost of Organizational Misalignment
But the tech component is only one part of strategic alignment in an organization: what about the human element? Often the urgency around the human element – both in individual skills and leadership – is not as obvious. For example, middle managers who operate within a silo, without a clear understanding of the scope of a strategic project, might be directing their people into duplicating the efforts of another department. This may take a while to discover, so no urgency is triggered.
Why Organizational Alignment Often Lacks Urgency
Without clear urgency, people don’t always invest in alignment. Urgency in the human arena, however, is only uncovered by using the very skills that may be lacking in an organization. As Shakespeare would say, “Ay, there’s the rub.” Unlike humans, your car doesn’t need permission and a safe space to communicate its dysfunction. Your pain or lack of mobility does not wait for a convenient time to reveal itself. The data flow bottleneck does not search for an opening on your calendar to announce the problem.
Unless you have elevated levels of burnout, astronomic employee turnover, or consistently delayed deliverables (and by this time, it is too late), misalignment in the human realm is often overlooked and relegated to the dark corner. Experts cite such low prioritization as one of the most common causes of misalignment.1
The Human Skills Stack: The Foundation of Organizational Alignment
Let’s free the human element from the corner before you face astronomic turnover or missed deliverables. The survey results from The State of EQ 2026 reveal the need to pay more attention to the role of the Human Skills Stack, which consists of Core Regulation (self), Execution (thinking), and Coordination (others). These three levels comprise emotional intelligence, critical thinking, prioritization under ambiguity, communication, feedback, and trust-building behaviors to foster greater human alignment.2 Prioritizing human alignment results in clearer decisions, more effective coordination, and resilience under pressure. Highly aligned companies grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable, while significantly outperforming their unaligned peers in terms of customer retention and satisfaction, employee engagement, and team leadership.3
You don’t, however, want to wait until a survey at the end of each year or an elucidating article to check in on human alignment in your organizations.
Four Proactive Steps to Strengthen Organizational Alignment
Here are some proactive steps you may take within your organization and throughout the year:
- Build the Human Skills Stack: Develop adaptability, effective communication, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking as baseline capabilities through training, peer learning and coaching.
- Reinforce in Real Time: Embed prompts, tools, and behavioral practices into everyday work so skills show up when the pressure is on.
- Create Fast Feedback Loops: Normalize short, frequent check-ins across roles and teams to surface misalignment early.
- Reward Learning Over Judgment: Make growth the expectation by reinforcing and rewarding experimentation, reflection and recovery from mistakes.
Leadership Alignment Is the Multiplier
Leaders will need to drive the above priorities. Only if individual contributors see commitment to growth and openness from their leaders will they feel engaged in the shared vision. Gallup research emphasizes the reality that employee engagement starts with leadership alignment. Yet only two in 10 U.S. employees strongly agree they feel connected to their organization’s culture, and just 40% of leaders say the same.4
Interestingly, a review of 2025 TalentSmartEQTM Emotional Intelligence Appraisals revealed specific challenges for leaders in today’s work environment, therefore increased development work must coincide with the responsibility to lead the alignment charge. Leaders’ perceptions of their own effectiveness frequently differ from how these leaders are experienced by others, and only 36% of respondents report being effective at soliciting and providing feedback. Unless more development takes place within the Human Skills Stack, leaders will continue to limit their ability to accurately understand their impact on creating alignment.5
It is important to note that leaders of all levels in an organization play a significant role in strategic alignment. A study on the impact of leadership found that only when leaders’ effectiveness at different levels was considered as a whole that significant performance improvement occurred, meaning leaders at various levels should be considered collectively to understand how leadership influences employee performance.6
Feedback Gaps That Undermine Organizational Alignment
Given their role in strategic alignment, leaders may increase their self-awareness by asking these important questions:
- When was the last time I solicited honest feedback about how others experience me?
- How closely did I listen to the feedback? (not just from my fans, but also from my critics)
- Can I recall my gaps in perception and blind spots revealed by the feedback?
- How intentional have I been about making behavioral changes to be more effective?
- How have I contributed to strategic alignment or misalignment in my organization?
From Intent to Impact: Leading the Alignment Charge
Leaders must reflect regularly to drive strategic alignment, but everyone has a stake in the game. Alignment requires intent, and intent requires humans. In the ever-changing landscape of our current work environment, let’s not wait for the urgency factor but embrace a proactive approach. We cannot rely on a lack of safety, pain, or inefficiency alone to drive alignment. We must embrace the Human Skills Stack and lead the charge!
References
1 https://hbr.org/2026/01/what-leaders-get-wrong-about-strategic-alignment
2 The State of EQ 2026 – https://www.talentsmarteq.com/2026-state-of-eq-report/
3 https://lsaglobal.com/insights/proprietary-methodology/lsa-3x-organizational-alignment-model/
5 The State of EQ 2026 – https://www.talentsmarteq.com/2026-state-of-eq-report/
6 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1048984309002021