Blog Posts

Awareness to Alignment to Action

Turning Behavioral Insight Into Observable Change

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” — Goethe

There is a lot of power in awareness. Seeing a pattern for the first time, understanding why a team keeps getting stuck, or recognizing how your own behavior affects the people around you can change the way you think about a problem.

But awareness is only useful if it goes somewhere.

Knowing that you interrupt people in meetings does not change the experience of the people you interrupt. Recognizing that your leadership team avoids difficult conversations does not resolve the issues everyone keeps avoiding. Seeing that growth has created friction across your organization does not tell you what needs to happen next.

That is why Behavioral Essentials uses a simple but important framework for growth: Awareness > Alignment > Action.

Awareness helps us see what is happening, including patterns we may not be able to see clearly from inside the system. Alignment asks what the situation actually requires. Action turns that insight into observable change.

Awareness: See What’s Really Happening

Sometimes the challenge is easy to recognize. A team keeps having the same conflict. A leader knows they are micromanaging. Communication between departments has deteriorated. The organization is growing, but things that once felt easy now take more effort.

Other times, you know there is a problem but cannot clearly see what is driving it. And sometimes you do not see the pattern at all because it has become part of the way the organization operates.

This is where awareness becomes more than introspection.

At Behavioral Essentials, awareness can be informed by conversation, observation, coaching, 360-degree feedback and behavioral data.

Jill Macauley, COO at Behavioral Essentials, describes it as gaining information about what is really happening rather than relying only on assumptions, anecdotes or how we think things are working.

Adding a Data-Driven Layer of Awareness

The E3 Behavioral Insights Platform gives organizations another way to see what may otherwise be difficult to identify.

E3 provides behavioral data about how people actually show up at work. That creates a common language for understanding patterns at several levels:

Individual: strengths, blindspots, motives, communication tendencies, information processing and how someone may respond in different situations.
Team: patterns in communication, decision-making, conflict, collaboration and the mix of behavioral strengths around the table.
Organization: patterns that can influence leadership, culture, hiring, onboarding, development and performance.

This distinction matters. Awareness is not simply a leader saying, “I think I know myself pretty well.” It is the combination of self-awareness, outside perspective and behavioral insight that can reveal something the leader or organization has not been able to see on its own.

Jill describes this as a central part of the Behavioral Insights System: data from E3 and Blindspotting can create awareness at the individual, team and organizational levels, giving people something tangible to understand and work from.

Explore the E3 Behavioral Insights Platform

What You See Is Not Always the Whole Story

Consider a leader who knows they are highly decisive. That may be one of the reasons they have been successful. Behavioral insight may also reveal that under pressure, their decisiveness becomes over-control and leaves less room for others to contribute.

Or consider a team that describes itself as collaborative but continues to struggle with unresolved conflict. They all mean well, however the behavioral patterns underneath the team—how people approach disagreement, process information, influence one another or respond to pressure—may tell a much more useful story.

The goal is not to identify a “good” or “bad” behavior. The goal is to get a clearer picture of what is happening so the right questions can be asked.

That brings us to Alignment.

Alignment: Define What the Situation Requires

Awareness provides information. Alignment gives that information context.

Once you understand a behavioral pattern, the next question is not automatically, “How do I get rid of this?” It is, “What does this situation require from me?”

Jill was quoted in an interview saying, “Alignment asks, ‘What behaviors do we need for this dynamic?’”

Asking what behaviors we need for this dynamic changes the conversation because behavior does not happen in a vacuum. The same tendency can be useful in one context and create friction in another.

A leader who moves quickly may be exactly what a team needs when it must make an urgent decision. During strategic planning, that same leader may need to slow down enough for other perspectives to surface. A person who naturally minimizes conflict may help steady a tense situation, but that tendency becomes less useful when the team needs someone to address an uncomfortable issue directly.

Alignment connects what we know about behavior to what the role, team, organization and moment actually requires.

Alignment at Different Levels

For an individual leader, the conversation might include questions such as:

What does my team need from me in this situation?
Which of my strengths am I leaning on too heavily?
Where do I need to adjust the way I communicate or make decisions?

For a team, the questions become broader:

How do we want to make decisions together?
How will we handle disagreement?
What behaviors help this team perform at its best?
Where are our current patterns working against what we are trying to accomplish?

And at the organizational level, Alignment can influence how leaders think about culture, hiring, development and growth. If an organization says a particular behavior matters, is that behavior actually being modeled, rewarded and reinforced?

Alignment gives people a clearer definition of what “better” needs to look like.

Action: Turn Insight Into Something People Can See

This is where the work becomes real.

As Jill explains, “You have to get to action because that’s where change, growth, impact actually happens.”

We’ve seen that when change is needed, organizations tend to jump to major organizational initiatives. Yet, what is needed is simply one observable behavioral change, such as:

A leader changing the way they facilitate meetings.
A manager addressing a difficult conversation they have been avoiding.
A team establishing new agreements about decision-making or accountability.

At an organizational level, action may become part of the systems surrounding employees.

Behavioral insight can influence all parts of the employee lifecycle within organizations, such as:

Executive alignment
Hiring and behavioral benchmarking
Onboarding
Individual leadership development
Team development
Succession planning

Make no mistake, these applications are interconnected. The behavioral expectations established by leadership influence who gets hired. Hiring affects onboarding. Onboarding shapes development. Leadership behavior affects team behavior and, ultimately, culture.

Jill describes that interconnectedness across the employee lifecycle, from recruiting and hiring through leadership and succession.

Awareness > Alignment > Action Is a Cycle

The process does not stop once an action has been taken. You change something, watch what happens and learn from the result.

Maybe the action solves the problem. Maybe it exposes another issue. Maybe the business has changed enough that what worked six months ago no longer fits the situation today. Every action provides new information, which creates new awareness and starts the process again.

This is especially important for organizations experiencing growth. The behaviors, structures and relationships that helped a company succeed at one stage may not be enough for the next. Growth introduces new people, more layers, different decisions and greater complexity. Leaders have to keep looking at what is happening and determining whether the way they are operating still matches what the organization needs.

Jill describes Awareness >> Alignment >> Action as: “A cycle of leadership. It’s a cycle of executive development. It’s a cycle of business success.”

The goal is not to achieve awareness once. The goal is to build the ability to keep seeing, adjusting and acting as the environment changes.

Watch: Awareness, Alignment and Action in Practice

In this short video, Jill Macauley explains why awareness is only the beginning, how Alignment helps determine what a situation requires, and why Action is where meaningful change takes place.

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Put the Framework to Work

You do not need a major organizational challenge to begin using the framework. Start with one behavioral pattern you already know deserves attention.

Ask yourself three questions:

Awareness: What do I actually know about what is happening? What information, feedback or behavioral data could help me see the situation more clearly?
Alignment: Given what I now understand, what does this person, team, role or situation need?
Action: What will I actually do differently—and will the people around me be able to see the difference?

Then pay attention to the result. What you learn becomes the next round of awareness.

See What You Couldn’t See Before

Organizations are full of people who work hard and mean well. Yet, too often, people are operating inside patterns that have become so familiar they are difficult to recognize from within.

Behavioral insight makes those patterns easier to see. Alignment creates clarity around what is needed. Action puts that clarity to work.

Awareness > Alignment > Action gives leaders and organizations a practical way to move from insight to change, and to keep adapting as the business, the people and the context around them evolve.

Learn More About the E3 Behavioral Insights Platform

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Written By:

Behavioral Essentials