Core Drives and the Alignment Funnel
When I work with teams, I am always trying to foster deep self-understanding for individuals, mutual understanding of others, and a path towards maximizing everyone’s Superpowers within the team.
When I work with teams, I am always trying to foster deep self-understanding for individuals, mutual understanding of others, and a path towards maximizing everyone’s Superpowers within the team.
The better you can understand yourself, pushing into your strengths, and coming to terms with your weaknesses, the better you can understand other people, and the more effectively you can team up with others for maximum impact.
I believe that radical success comes each team member operating in his or her Superpower area of effectiveness, effortlessness, and joy.
Some of the tools I use to facilitate this clarity are the Core Drives and the Alignment Funnel.
They are incredibly intuitive, and require little explanation.
1. Core Drives: What Fuels You
At the heart of every individual is a Core Drive—a deep internal motivation that shapes how you see the world and what brings you fulfillment.
*Everyone has all three, but one will usually rise to the top.
Order is driven by a desire for stability, precision, and alignment. Structure.
Progress longs to move things forward, innovate, and build momentum. Motion.
Harmony seeks relational connection, cohesion, and wellbeing. Peace.
Knowing your top Core Drive helps you understand your natural strengths—and where frustration shows up when your gifts aren’t used.
2. The Alignment Funnel: How Work Gets Done
If Core Drives are about who you are, the Alignment Funnel is about where and how you plug in to get meaningful work done in a group. Every successful team endeavor moves through these three stages:
Vision — Defining the big picture goal or desired future.
Direction — Outlining the strategy or game plan (blueprints, maps, lists).
Execution — Doing the work with consistency and excellence.
Each stage requires different kinds of contributions, and different people thrive in different parts of the funnel. Like the Core Drives, you one will almost always rise to the top.
The funnel flows from abstract, big ideas, down to street-level, concrete execution.
3. The Relationship: Know Your Fuel. Know Your Fit.
These two frameworks aren’t linear. They’re layered.
Your Core Drive tells you what energizes you. What propels you.
Your Alignment Funnel role tells you where that energy fits into a team context.
You may be a Harmony-driven person who thrives in the Execution stage—holding the team together in the trenches.
Or a Progress-driven visionary who needs help from Order-driven teammates to build systems that last.
The magic happens when individuals know both:
What drives them, and
Where their strengths best serve the group process.
That’s when contribution becomes natural, and collaboration becomes powerful.
Superpower Experiment Update: Progress!
Audrey Kerchner, my marketing partner in this bold $1K → $2K challenge, continues to crush it. We’ve now met weekly, and she’s consistently driving the process forward. She and her team just finished the first draft of my new landing page and gave a sleek redesign to the Superpower Quest Starter Survey. If you're curious about Audrey’s character, motivations, and marketing philosophy, check out our interview here: Super Humans: Audrey Kerchner. This is the “Join Forces” principle in action, and I’m loving the momentum!