Podcast: Aligning employees with shared mental models

Jonathan Davies
26 mins read

Table of Contents

Imagine: flying saucers above your head, robot dogs wreaking havoc, colorful pills instead of meals...the future is near.
Things are changing, more so now than ever before. The real challenge comes in the form of adaptability. Getting your organization to be aligned towards one common goal, ready to affront change with empathy and tolerance. Lindsay Uittenbogaard, director at Mirror Mirror, takes us through the process of shared mental models and how to address misalignment.

You can listen, watch the podcast, or read the full transcript down below. We hope you find this conversation as insightful as we did.

Defining employee alignment

Jonathan Davies: Welcome back to the Internal Communications podcast, and I'm delighted to be sharing the stage with Lindsay Uittenbogaard...

Lindsay Uittenbogaard: Employee alignment is really when people are moving in the same direction and their views are compatible...

Evaluating the process to deal with misalignment

Lindsay Uittenbogaard: Definitely, because things are always changing. Alignment is a state at a particular point in time, much like a balance sheet is to finance.

Looking into shared mental models

Jonathan Davies: I think that shared mental models was a very key piece in how you talk about alignment...

Starting a dialogue to create employee alignment

Lindsay Uittenbogaard: Yes, but I suppose you might say ''Ah, okay, well, we've had that already.'' That's called the employee voice...

Dealing with alignment gaps

Jonathan Davies: I find it interesting that, first off, when you talk about creating alignment that you start with maybe a team of 20 top-level leadership...

The value of employee alignment

Lindsay Uittenbogaard: But it is counterintuitive. Every other discipline has a responsibility to own and control the outcomes of a certain topic...

Wrapping up

Jonathan Davies: I completely agree. I think that's a beautiful note to close things on...