Distinguish from
Goal alignment
Agreeing about what should happen does not determine who gets to decide, who owes what to whom, or what kinds of action require consultation.
A lens
Relational alignment
Do interacting parties sufficiently agree about what relationship they are in and what rules govern it?
People can share goals, care about one another, and sincerely want to cooperate while still disagreeing about authority, reciprocity, obligation, autonomy, permission, or what each person may reasonably expect from the other.
Try seeing it
Sometimes the disagreement is not about the goal. It is about the relationship.
Two collaborators can both want a project to succeed while one assumes that major decisions require mutual agreement and the other assumes that one person has final authority.
Both can be cooperative. Both can understand the task. Yet ordinary actions repeatedly generate friction because they are being interpreted through incompatible relational rules.
Distinguish from
Goodwill
Sincerely wanting to cooperate does not guarantee that the parties organize cooperation according to compatible expectations.
Distinguish from
Institutional alignment
Institutions can impose explicit rules from outside the relationship. Relational alignment concerns how the parties themselves understand the rules and expectations governing their interaction.
A question to carry elsewhere