The Gift of Alignment: What You Give Comes Back

The gift of alignment… is that it creates reciprocity.

I first discovered this at twenty years old, working as a barista in a scrappy little café in California called Espresso Roma. It wasn’t glamorous. The machine hissed and sputtered, the mugs were chipped, the regulars were misfits. Starbucks had just opened a block away, but we were the rebels - the place people came when they wanted heart, not whipped cream.

Then one day, the manager quit. I don’t know what made me raise my hand. I was twenty. No credentials. No plan. Suddenly, I was leading a thousand-dollar-a-day café with fifteen staff and a broken espresso machine.

I baked muffins before sunrise, wrote rosters on legal pads, fixed toilets with duct tape. And somehow, it worked - not because I had all the answers, but because I cared. Because I listened. Because I wanted the place, and the people in it, to thrive.

That’s when it clicked.

We weren’t just making coffee. We were creating belonging.

Customers came not only to fill their coffee cups, but their heart cups. And my team - a patchwork of students, artists, single mums, recovering addicts - showed up not just for a paycheck, but for each other.

That was our value. Not beating Starbucks. But offering something rarer: a culture of care, respect, and belonging. And in creating it for others, I found it for myself.

That’s reciprocity. When what you give flows back to you, multiplied.

When purpose and values are woven into how you lead - when goals are rooted in purpose and decisions guided by values - something predictable, yet magical, happens. The culture starts reflecting what you stand for. Your team begins giving you energy and commitment you appreciate. The people you serve reward you with loyalty that compounds. And it flows both ways: the more you give, the more value flows back. Once reciprocity is in motion, it feels almost infinite.

The opposite of this is extraction. Without alignment, leaders fall into taking - from their teams, from stakeholders, from themselves - because there’s nothing else to do. But extraction always ends in collapse. When all you do is take, value eventually runs out.

Alignment is the antidote. It’s what allows leadership to endure pressure, for teams to sustain performance through growing pains, for organisations to weather shocks because trust runs deep. Alignment (and reciprocity) doesn’t just sustain results. It creates legacy.

The gift of alignment is simple.

When you give what you value, your leadership multiplies it - and gives it back.

So I’ll leave you with this question: What are you giving in your leadership today - and is it the same value you most want returned?