Why do some conversations leave you feeling energized and motivated, while others drag you down? The difference often comes down to how we share and explore perspectives. We've pulled together key research insights and linked them to practical actions so you can better understand the science behind aligned, high-performing teams.
Sharing Perspectives is Enriching and Productive
Remember the last time you were in a conversation that just clicked? In conversations like these, it’s not about agreeing with eachother, but about listening and thinking together. It feels open, meaningful, and ideas flow effortlessly: you walk away with a deeper actionable understanding.
Research shows these discussions can generate new insights and facilitate sense-making (Bohm, 1996). This is the essence of Bohmian Dialogue—a freely flowing exchange in which people explore different viewpoints without judgment, ultimately reaching a common understanding.
But why does this happen? The answer lies in Interactive Alignment Theory, which suggests that when people make sense of things together, they improve communication efficiency, clarity, and even innovation. This shared mental space fosters a sense of flow and excitement, making collaboration not just productive, but also energizing.
At the heart of this process are collaborative learning behaviors—negotiation of meaning, clarification, and feedback—which play a crucial role in fostering cognitive alignment (Van den Bossche et al., 2006). Teams that actively engage in these behaviors are more likely to stay on the same page, avoiding costly misunderstandings. On the flip side, neglecting these behaviors can lead to cognitive misalignment, reducing a team’s overall effectiveness.
People Make Better Sense of Things In Dialogue
In an era of complexity and ambiguity, teams must rely on sense-making to navigate uncertainty. Research-backed strategies to enhance dialogue include:
Active Listening – Fully tuning in to verbal and non-verbal cues (Rogers & Farson, 1987).
Reflective Questioning – Encouraging deeper thinking and shared understanding.
Psychological Safety – Creating a safe space where team members feel comfortable expressing their thoughts (Edmondson, 1999).
When people align their mental models, they reduce cognitive friction, making future collaboration smoother. This alignment fosters cognitive ease, a rewarding and motivating state that drives better teamwork and decision-making.
Positive Listening Helps Others Be More Effective
Beyond simply hearing words, how we listen matters. Positive listening—showing curiosity, gratitude, and encouragement—helps individuals become more aware of their reasoning processes and articulate their implicit knowledge. This process, known as the self-explanation effect (Chi et al., 1994), allows people to identify gaps in their thinking, resolve contradictions, and reorganize information for deeper learning.
By displaying positive emotions, listeners help others develop cognitive flexibility and divergent thinking—both essential for innovation (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001). In essence, by being genuinely engaged and appreciative, you enable clearer thinking and greater contributions.
Long-term, teams that maintain a positive outlook amid adversity are more adaptable and resilient. Research on resilience suggests that such teams are better at collaborative problem-solving and innovation compared to those that succumb to negativity (Coutu, 2002).
Beyond improving communication, meaningful conversations also strengthen social bonds. Research shows that positive interactions trigger the release of oxytocin—the “bonding hormone”, which fosters trust, connection, and overall well-being.
By practicing positive listening, you’re not just supporting others—you’re actively helping them think more clearly, communicate more effectively, and contribute more meaningfully. Small shifts in how we engage in conversations can make a significant impact on team alignment, innovation, and resilience.
Teams that Reflect, Adapt
A team’s ability to regularly reflect on its objectives, strategies, and processes is a critical factor in achieving alignment and adaptability. This practice, known as Team Reflexivity, enables teams to adjust continuously and stay aligned toward shared goals (Schippers et al., 2014). When teams fail to reflect, misalignment occurs because they don’t update their strategies in response to errors or changing conditions.
But adaptability shouldn’t stop at strategy adjustments—it should extend to questioning underlying assumptions and mental models. Teams that engage in dialogue and reflection move beyond single-loop learning (adjusting actions) to double-loop learning (changing the mental models that guide actions) (Argyris, 1976; Argyris & Schön, 1978). This deeper level of adaptation often leads to new approaches and innovative solutions.
The reward system in the brain is activated when people successfully solve problems together, reinforcing a sense of accomplishment and motivation. Moments of insight—the classic “aha!” moments—trigger the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter linked to pleasure and drive.
Team Alignment Feels Good
Simply put, alignment between people feels good. Engaging discussions that build shared mental models activate the prefrontal cortex, enhancing executive functions like problem-solving and creative thinking. This cognitive stimulation leaves individuals feeling mentally refreshed and more motivated to take action.
When teams invest in meaningful dialogue, they don’t just align on goals—they foster stronger relationships, greater adaptability, and a shared sense of purpose.
And Team Alignment Is Essential for Sustainable, High Performance
In his book, Leadership Team Coaching, Peter Hawkins, the well known thought leader and multiple published author on all things team coaching, outlines the vitality of what has become known as the Fifth Discipline (a nod here to Peter Senge and his wonderful book of the same name). This is,Team Learning, a practice at the centre of Hawkins’ 5 Disciplines of the ‘high value creating’ team.
Team Learning is concerned with
what the team understands about its reason for being
how it organises its work
how the team members relate to one another and
how they collectively connect to their stakeholder environment.
The wisdom goes that if the team is not learning from its experiences, it is doomed to repeat mistakes and get locked in a self-referencing loop.
Hawkins asserts (p118) that ‘good team learning goes beyond the learning of all the individuals within the team to the team itself learning, as well as attending to the learning in the wider system. He goes on to say that
“… a team that commits to be a learning team is investing in developing the members’ individual and collective capacity through spending time on each phase of the classic action learning cycle.”
This necessarily means that all perspectives on Strategy, Values, Vision and Purpose have to be heard and synergised for authentic alignment to take place.
In summary
When faced with complexity and change, conversations oriented to aligning people through perspective sharing and perspective seeking are not only more engaging and inspiring, they are vital for organizations to stay healthy and adaptive.
What would happen if you fostered a better perspective sharing practice in your team?
Mirror Mirror™ identifies real work issues, uncovers gaps quickly, and drives immediate action. It’s practical, intuitive, and scalable. It supports teams as a whole, rather than focusing solely on leadership, and considers the entire system, beyond individual behaviors. Directly linked to daily work, it avoids complex frameworks. It focuses on what’s happening in the team, leaving personality types, psychological profiles, and preferences aside.
References
Bohm, D. (1996) On Dialogue. London: Routledge
Van den Bossche, P., Gijselaers, W., Segers, M., and Kirschner, P. (2006). Social and Cognitive Factors Driving Team Learning. Small Group Research 37(5), 490-521.
Rogers, C.R. and Farson, R.E. (1987) Active Listening. Communicating in Business Today (eds. R.G. Newman,M.A. Danzinger, M. Cohen). Lexington MA, D.C. Heath and Company.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly 44(2), 350–383.
Chi, M.T.H., Bassok, M., Lewis, M.W., Reimann, P. and Glaser, R. (1989). Self-Explanations: How Students Study and Use Examples in Learning to Solve Problems. Cognitive Science 13, 145-182.
Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What Good Are Positive Emotions? Review of General Psychology 2(3), 300-319
Coutu, D. L. (2002). How resilience works. Harvard Business Review 80(5), 46-55.
Cannon-Bowers, J. A., and Salas, E. (2001). Reflections on Shared Cognition. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22(2), 195–202.
Schippers, M. C., West, M. A., and Edmondson, A. C. (2014). Team Reflexivity and Innovation. In L.
Argote and J. M. Levine (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of group and organizational learning (pp. 175–193). Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Argyris, C. (1976). Single-loop and double-loop models in research on decision making. Administrative Science Quarterly 21(3), 363–375.
Hawkins, P. (2021) Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership. 3rd edn. London: Kogan Page.