Radical Alignment: How to Have Game-Changing Conversations That Will Transform Your Business and Your Life

by Alexandra Jamieson

The core idea is that when embarking on a new experience (couples moving in together, sales negotiations, asking for a raise, vacation planning, and more), we examine together our individual intentions (our personal why, which is connected to our values), concerns (things we fear might keep this experience from going well), boundaries (our personal non-negotiables), and dreams (our hopes and highest aspirations for the experience).

Communication is too often misunderstood to mean either persuasion or sharing—convincing someone of your perspective or simply informing them of it. But communication is so much more than that. It is a deeply embedded human superpower that depends both on sending and on receiving information. And even more than that, great communication means each party in the exchange is changed by it.

How well groups achieve their goals (efficiency and effectiveness) and how pleasant the experience of being in the group is (culture and level of relationship) depend largely on the quality of communication in that group. Much, if not most, communication happens in the form of conversations. Back-and-forth exchanges can be enriching and vexing; a source of meaning, intimacy, and pleasure and also of frustration, confusion, and pain.

At worst, ongoing interactions can become abusive and the source of profound dysfunction and emotional pain. Couples and families can even become what psychologists call conflict habituated, a state in which every interaction is approached as a battle for dominance rather than an opportunity for connection and realness.

At home, poor communication often leads to unnecessary conflict that destabilizes our relationships and turns sources of support into sources of anguish. When we are in regular conflict with our partner, we might even begin to anticipate a clash in every interaction and start avoiding them.

It is designed to help you be a better communicator by helping you have more thorough and constructive interactions so you can avoid missing essential conversations. It also helps you have these conversations early in a project or a relationship, when changes in trajectory are easier to make.

When one person feels disrespected, manipulated, taken advantage of, or disregarded, tension or conflict will usually be the result. Likewise, when a person feels respected, listened to, and considered, even profound disagreements can lose their power. We become more generous with people we like, who we think care about us.

Emotional intelligence is a powerful set of tools in any relationship, whether romantic, parental, or professional. Plainly stated, your emotional (intelligence) quotient (EQ) is your ability to recognize your own emotions and those of others, discern different feelings, and label them appropriately. People with a high EQ are able to use that recognition to guide how they think, speak, and behave. It’s about managing and adjusting emotions to adapt to a current situation or conversation to help you achieve your goals.

Practicing emotional intelligence leads to emotional maturity. Emotionally mature people can handle people, communication, and group dynamics with awareness and fairness by placing equal importance on their own needs and the needs and goals of the group. To have emotional intelligence means you understand your own feelings and motivations and manage them in healthy ways. Emotional maturity is extremely important in today’s hyperconnected, hypersocial world.

In a series of studies, psychologist John Gottman developed a model that predicts a couple’s likelihood of divorce with near 90 percent accuracy. Gottman’s work hinges on the communication patterns in relationships, and specifically on his Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse theory: 1. Criticism: This is locating a problem within our partners, not just offering a critique of how their behavior is affecting us. Phrases such as “You never . . .,” “You always . . .,” and “You are . . .” indicate criticism of them as people instead of critique of their behavior. 2. Contempt: This goes beyond criticism and assumes our moral superiority to our partners. We can communicate it directly (“You think your day was hard? Well, mine was so terrible you couldn’t even handle it!”) or indirectly through body language (e.g., rolling our eyes). 3. Defensiveness: We often respond this way to criticism; instead of being curious or taking responsibility for our mistakes, we go on the attack. “I was too busy to do it. Why didn’t you just handle it?” 4. Stonewalling: This isn’t just asking for a timeout when we feel overwhelmed by a topic, but actively refusing to discuss it. We often respond this way to contempt.

“WHEN YOU SHIFT FROM THAT DOMINANT HIERARCHICAL THINKING TO A RELATIONAL THINKING, YOU SHIFT FROM LINEAR THINKING TO ECOLOGICAL THINKING. YOU’RE NOT ABOVE THE SYSTEM, YOU’RE A HUMBLE SUB-COMPONENT PART OF THE SYSTEM. YOU LIVE INSIDE OF IT. AND IT’S IN YOUR INTEREST TO KEEP IT CLEAN AND HEALTHY.”

And not having an important conversation can often result in negative, even disastrous, outcomes.

Ecological thinking means taking a holistic view of the teams you are on and the relationships you are in—and acknowledging that you have a vested interest in keeping them healthy.

A shift from reductive and linear to system-level and holistic thinking means you are less concerned with fairness and more focused on the overall health of the team or relationship and what you can do to make it better. This usually means making sure that all needed conversations are happening—and taking care that you show up for them in healthy and constructive ways.