Nurture: Build the Habit of Ongoing Stewardship
Nurture: Part 5B of the ALIGN Series
Absorb | Legitimize | Integrate | Grow | Nurture
In this series of posts, I introduce each stage of the ALIGN Framework, a method designed to align leadership and engage staff. My premise is simple: when leadership is aligned, brilliant ideas take flight, and when staff is engaged early to shape the details, those ideas are far more likely to be adopted. Staff feel valued, heard, and involved. It is a win win for the organization.
In the Nurture phase of the ALIGN framework, the work is about sustaining momentum once priorities are in motion. Momentum is sustained when practices are embedded into daily operations and supported with consistent attention and resources over time.
Nurture focuses on leadership stewardship. It is where leaders stay present to the work, ensure resources remain aligned, review progress against expectations, and make deliberate adjustments as conditions change. Rather than assuming momentum will sustain itself, this phase recognizes that results are achieved when focus is maintained and accountability remains active.
In this stage, leaders are reinforcing what matters, checking whether efforts are producing the intended outcomes, and intervening early when progress begins to drift. Nurture is how organizations protect the investment they have already made and ensure that alignment continues to serve performance, effectiveness, and results.
Make Reflection Routine
After the launch of any initiative, schedule a regular cadence for check-ins that invite conversations. In addition to the typical statistics of time, budget and risks/mitigation, ask open ended question to further understand how things are going.
· What’s working as intended?
· What surprised us?
· What is going better than expected?
· What feels harder than it should?
· Does anything feel out of sync with our expectations?
· Are we noticing any new opportunities?
These conversations can begin with a project team and continue with staff once an initiative transfers over to regular operations. They can also be conversations among the management team, and then taken to staff for further exploration
Ideally, the conversation flows in both directions, with leaders and staff sharing their experience and perceptions from their roles.
Group Problem Solving
Encourage staff to surface emerging issues, not just successes.
When leaders say they don’t want anyone to come to them unless they have a solution, they are increasing the risk that they will not hear about problems because people don’t have the information they need to solve the problem.
Some people are really good at spotting problems and need other people to identify the solutions. By discussing challenges, problems, obstacles (what ever word you want to use), it allows the team to utilize the collective team strengths.
Coaching Conversations
In the Nurture stage, it is important to stay connected to the development plans established during the Grow phase. Growth does not end once new skills are introduced; it requires continued attention and reinforcement. Whether someone is a leader, manager, or front-line staff member, people need ongoing support to build and sustain the capacity their role requires.
At its core, coaching is about learning from experience. It helps identify what is working and should be strengthened, and what is not working and should be adjusted. When pressure increases and demands pile up, the temptation is often to abandon developmental work in order to focus on immediate problems. While understandable, this short-term focus can prevent people from developing the skills and judgment that would reduce those recurring “fires” over time.
There will also be moments when people are putting in significant effort without seeing the progress they expected. In these situations, leadership plays a critical role. Acknowledging effort matters, but it is equally important to shift the conversation toward what has been learned through that effort. If progress remains limited and learning is not occurring, those conditions provide valuable information. They signal the need to revisit initial assumptions, reassess the approach, and consider what might need to change.
One-on-one coaching conversations are especially effective in supporting this kind of learning and performance improvement. They create space for reflection, honest feedback, and problem-solving in a way that is difficult to achieve in staff meetings or project team settings. Over time, these focused conversations help people build confidence, capability, and resilience, reinforcing the alignment the organization is working to sustain.
Celebrate Success
Momentum thrives when recognition is built into the feedback look . People need to see that their efforts matter.
Create visible ways to share stories of progress: short internal updates, dashboards that track meaningful indicators, or brief showcases where teams present what they’ve learned. When success is named and shared, it naturally reinforces alignment.
Sustain Focus on What Matters
Nurture is the ongoing work of staying with priorities as conditions evolve and ensuring that focus, resources, and accountability remain aligned with the outcomes the organization is trying to achieve.
Over time, pressures shift, new demands emerge, and assumptions made early in the work may no longer hold. Ongoing stewardship means leaders regularly stepping back to assess whether the work is still delivering the results it was designed to produce and whether adjustments are needed to keep it effective.
When this kind of review becomes routine, momentum grows and is sustained through leadership attention, clear accountability, and a willingness to make timely course corrections. In this way, Nurture ensures that progress continues because it remains important.
Nurture in Practice
In practice: reflective team huddles, quarterly alignment reviews, recognition rituals, coaching check-ins, storytelling sessions, and leader reflection prompts that keep the purpose visible.