Instead, when I’m working with clients to understand what didn’t work in the past and how to transform successfully in the future, we focus on how the most senior leaders in the organization need to lead differently.

Leader alignment activation around transformation is often underfunded, underleveraged, and underappreciated, and it is often a major contributor to failure.

What does leadership alignment and activation look like? Here are four things to look for:

1. Do leaders have clarity on how they need to work differently together in the transformed organization?
2. Are leaders connected to the new language of leadership—the new questions they need to ask, new metrics they need to use, and new capabilities the transformation is delivering?
3. Have leaders put ways of working into place to keep them committed to leading in the transformed environment?
4. Are leaders demonstrating the courage to make new decisions and take risks for themselves in order to change how they lead going forward?

The worst situation a company can be in with regard to transformation is when they have leaders who want to be cheerleaders—rooting on the team but not playing the game. These leaders have the town halls, they hit the bullet points on the slides they are given, they push out the right emails from the comms team about the transformation, and they recognize people in their groups who are putting in the effort, but they don’t do their own work to transform how they lead.

But you can’t lead from the sidelines—you have to be in the mix, changing yourself while you encourage others to change too. Making that work visible to others is an important part of alignment and activation.

Leaders should be willing and able to make their own journey of change visible and tangible for others.

During organizational transformation efforts, consider how to support leaders in:

1. Explaining their own effort to change how they lead to support the transformation.
2. Sharing their challenges and struggles with their colleagues.
3. Communicating excitement about what’s different for them personally as well as for the organization.

As I often tell leadership teams I’m working with, if you don’t have to change how you lead, you probably aren’t transforming your organization. If you are a leader in a company that is going through significant change, have a conversation with your peers about how you need to work differently to successfully transform. If you are on a team, ask your leaders what they are taking on for themselves. That will give you an indicator of the likelihood of success.

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