How to Improve Leadership Alignment

What Do Effective Leaders Do?

Effective leadership involves inspiring, aligning and activating followers. The best leaders build relationships, develop people, lead change, inspire others, think critically, communicate clearly and create accountability. For example, leaders:

• unite teams around a shared mission and purpose
• make decisions that determine the organization’s strategic direction
• set the standard for how the organization’s values show up in daily work
• develop managers to coach, engage and support their teams 
• communicate about change, priorities and successes 

​How Does Leadership Affect an Organization’s Culture?

How leaders work together influences their organizational culture, employee engagement and company performance.

According to Gallup research on leadership:

• Leaders are responsible for meeting their followers’ needs for hope, trust, compassion and stability. Yet in May 2026, only 20% of U.S. employees strongly agreed they trust their organization’s leadership. As of August 2025, only 16% said their company’s leadership makes them enthusiastic about the future. 
• When employees strongly agree that they trust their organization’s leadership, they are 3.7 times as likely to be engaged, according to Gallup research of U.S. employees from the second quarter of 2026.
• Employees who strongly agree that their leaders help them see how today’s changes will affect the organization in the future are 5.8 times as likely to feel connected to their company culture, according to Gallup research of U.S. employees from the third quarter of 2025. That connection is associated with higher engagement and retention and lower burnout.

What Does Leadership Team Alignment Look Like?

Leadership team alignment reflects a shared commitment to how the organization moves forward. Aligned leaders share an understanding of the organization’s mission, strategy and values, and turn that understanding into strategic decisions, clear communication and accountability for outcomes.

In your organization, consider whether leaders:

• agree on the organizational metrics that define success
• communicate the same priorities to managers and teams
• model the organization’s values in how they work together and make decisions
• present a unified direction, even when they disagree internally
• agree on how to develop the managers and teams responsible for carrying out their shared strategies 

Common Reasons Organizations Struggle With Alignment in Leadership

Leadership misalignment often becomes more visible as complexity increases and organizations face change. Business disruptions, conflicting personalities and beliefs, and rapid or frequent leadership changes can make it difficult for the leadership team to stay connected on priorities, expectations and direction. These challenges also can make it harder for leaders to communicate a consistent direction to the managers and teams they lead.

As you reflect on your own leadership team, look for these common sources of misalignment:

1. Unclear behavioral expectations. Leaders identify strategies but do not define the behaviors leaders, divisions and teams need to demonstrate to achieve the desired results.
2. Lack of communication in leadership. Leaders do not have an effective forum to communicate regularly or raise and resolve disagreements about priorities, decisions and direction.
3. Inconsistent accountability. Leaders agree on values and performance standards in principle but apply or model them inconsistently across their teams.
4. Ethical dilemmas. An ethical issue or crisis exposes conflicting values or priorities within the team.
5. Leadership changes. Frequent turnover changes the makeup of the leadership team, or a new leader brings a leadership style that conflicts with those of other team members. 
6. Misunderstandings about how leaders work. The leadership team lacks a shared language for understanding how each member naturally leads and why their approaches can create friction.

Do You Need Support to Solve Your Leadership Challenges?

If you see some signs like these, your organization may benefit from outside perspectives on how to evaluate culture and address leadership challenges:

• Organizational divisions have significantly different employee engagement levels, accountability practices and performance outcomes. 
• Leaders agree a problem exists but cannot reach consensus on the root cause or how to address it.
• Leaders don’t know how to conduct a culture assessment or connect leadership and culture issues to business outcomes.
• Executives understand the strategy, but it does not translate into consistent behaviors or results across the organization.
• A leadership change has disrupted communication, decision-making and processes within the leadership team.
• The leadership team lacks awareness of each other’s strengths and leadership styles, and they have no clear path for leadership development.
• Managers and employees feel disconnected from the culture and from leadership, and leaders do not have a clear way to bridge the gap. 
• Managers receive conflicting priorities from different executives and are unsure whose direction to follow.
• Employees see a gap between what leaders say and what they do.

Go deeper: "How to Build Accountability at Work"

How to Enhance Leadership and Culture With Customized Strengths Development

Gallup helps organizations build leadership alignment through leadership development, organizational culture consulting and a strengths-based approach connected to their unique mission, vision, values and strategic goals. Strengths-based initiatives for supporting leadership alignment and culture can help organizations:

• Introduce CliftonStrengths® across the leadership team so every leader has a shared language for understanding how they and their colleagues naturally lead and where different approaches may create friction.
• Provide individualized CliftonStrengths for Leaders reports that show each leader how their strengths shape their leadership and where they may need to rely on their peers’ complementary strengths.
• Connect leaders’ strengths to the organization’s culture, values and strategic priorities so they can see how each member of the leadership team contributes to the organization’s purpose. 
• Equip leaders to develop their managers with strengths-based coaching tools tailored to the organization’s performance expectations and cultural standards.
• Measure the effectiveness of strengths-based leadership practices against business performance and engagement and culture measures.

Contact us to learn how Gallup can customize a strengths-based approach to improve leadership alignment and development at your organization. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Leadership and Culture

What Causes Leadership Misalignment?

Leadership misalignment can occur when leaders define success differently, have different standards for how work gets done and disagree about what the organization values most. These differences can lead to conflict and reduce transparency. Common causes include unclear behavioral expectations, inconsistent accountability, poor communication, a lack of shared forums for resolving disagreements and leadership changes that disrupt established ways of working. 

What Do Followers Need From Their Leaders?

Gallup’s 2024 research across 52 countries and territories finds that followers worldwide need four things from their leaders: hope, trust, compassion and stability. Hope is the most common need, followed by trust. Together, they account for 56% and 33%, respectively, of the positive leadership traits people mention when describing what various types of leaders contribute to their lives. Followers look to organizational leaders for hope more than they look to managers, colleagues or mentors, making the hope and trust that senior leaders inspire especially influential on organizational culture. 

What Is Organizational Culture, and Why Is It Important?

Organizational culture is the unique way an organization turns its purpose into action. Leadership, values, people practices and the unwritten standards for how work gets done every day all shape the culture.

Culture affects measures tied to an organization’s profitability and growth. A Gallup analysis of data from February 2025 found that U.S. employees who strongly agree that they feel connected to their organization’s culture are more likely to be engaged, more likely to recommend their employer, less likely to be burned out and less likely to seek out another job:

• 4.3 times as likely to be engaged at work, and Gallup research shows that employee engagement has a measurable impact on business outcomes
• 5.3 times as likely to strongly agree they would recommend their organization as a great place to work
• 62% less likely to feel burned out at work very often or always
• 47% less likely to be watching for job opportunities or actively looking for another job

How Can Leaders Improve Leadership Effectiveness?

Effective leadership starts with self-awareness about what the leader does well and how to apply their strengths with intention. Gallup research identifies seven expectations for leadership behavior that contribute to success: building relationships, developing people, leading change, inspiring others, thinking critically, communicating clearly and creating accountability. Leaders who invest in their own development and understand how their strengths apply to each of these expectations are better prepared to lead and develop high-performing teams.

How Does Strengths-Based Development Help Leadership Teams Align?

Every CliftonStrengths profile is unique. The chance that two people share the same top five CliftonStrengths themes in the same order is 1 in 33 million. When leaders understand how their individual strengths shape their leadership style and communicate about how those strengths complement those of their peers, they are well-positioned to align on strategies, make great decisions together and present a unified direction for the organization. 

Talk With Gallup About Your Leadership and Culture Challenges

Gallup works with leadership teams to develop customized workplace strategies that create shared commitment to the organization’s mission, build strengths across leadership teams and the people they lead, and support the business outcomes that matter most. 

Contact us to learn how Gallup can help.