Short answer
The Team Alignment Conversation Guide, developed by Dr. James Liu, helps team managers assess and improve team alignment. With 5 targeted conversation prompts, it evaluates four dimensions — Goals, Priorities, Process, and Trust — and produces an alignment heatmap with disagreement markers. It is a premium assessment designed for team managers.
↓ See typical profiles & try it yourself below
Figure 1. Illustrative profile: {{ activeProfile.label }}. Values are representative, not your personal scores. Your custom profile — drag the sliders below to explore how each dimension shapes the radar.
Typical profiles
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What this shape suggests: {{ activeProfile.insight }}
Try it yourself
Read it. Try it. Get your result.Reading about team alignment conversation guide is useful, but seeing your own result is more concrete. Take the free assessment — it takes a few minutes, your answers stay private, and the result renders your personal profile.
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Your preliminary lean:
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Best for
Team Alignment Conversation Guide is most useful when you want to:
- Understand your profile across 4 dimensions rather than being assigned a single type.
- Reflect on your tendencies — for self-awareness, not diagnosis.
- Compare your results with research findings in this area.
It is not designed to tell you who you "really are," to predict your future, or to replace professional advice.
What it measures
Goals Alignment is one of 4 dimensions measured by this assessment. Each dimension is a spectrum — you can be high, low, or anywhere in between.
Goals Alignment
Whether the team shares the same understanding of what it is trying to achieve.
Priorities Alignment
Whether the team agrees on what matters most and in what order.
Process Alignment
Whether the team shares norms for how decisions are made and work gets done.
Trust Alignment
Whether team members feel safe to speak up, disagree, and take risks.
Explore the dimensions
Drag any slider — the radar above updates in real time.
Click "Try it" to drag the dimension sliders and watch the radar chart reshape in real time.
How it works
- 5 items — drawn from Dr. James Liu Original.
- Open-ended — rate each item on the scale provided.
- Approximately 5 min — no right or wrong answers; answer as you truly are.
- Scoring — responses are calculated to produce your personalized report.
- Results — an alignment heatmap with disagreement markers.
What it cannot tell you
This is a descriptive framework for self-reflection, not a clinical or diagnostic tool.
This assessment is a descriptive framework for self-reflection, not a clinical or diagnostic tool. It cannot:
- Replace formal team assessment or organizational development consulting.
- Diagnose specific interpersonal conflicts or performance issues.
- Predict team productivity or business outcomes.
- Provide a quick fix for deep structural or cultural team issues.
Evidence and sources
Team alignment research draws on team effectiveness and organizational design literature.
Alignment is not agreement on everything — it is agreement on what matters most.
- Lencioni, P. (2005). Overcoming the five dysfunctions of a team. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (1993). The wisdom of teams. Harvard Business School Press.
- Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
What you take away
A result from this assessment is not a verdict — it is a starting point for noticing patterns. Here is what a thoughtful reading of your profile can offer:
- Alignment heatmap — scores for Goals, Priorities, Process, and Trust alignment.
- Disagreement markers — specific areas where team members are not aligned.
- Conversation recommendations — which alignment conversations to prioritize.
Next step
If you want to go deeper, consider these next steps:
- Explore other assessments in the Career Direction zone.
- Reflect on how your profile interacts with your values, skills, and context.
- Use your results as a conversation prompt — not a label.
Insight is only useful when it changes your next step.