THERE IS NO LEADERSHIP WITHOUT VISION
People can be genuinely inspired if their organization has a compelling vision building upon robust and established values, and a clear, worthwhile goal everyone wants to achieve.
What motivate teams?
Teams and team building efforts are popular buzzwords in today’s work environment. Bringing individuals together in the workplace and getting them to work together as an effective team is a challenge. And to ensure this team will deliver on success will need something else additional.
Business managers will experience success in team leading and success in their business to the extent they nurture:
- a VISION: They have clearly defined a crisp vision
- common VALUES : This vision must build upon existing, shared and robust values
- strong DESIRE: The necessary buy-in has been secured to ensure a strong desire to embrace the change.
What does it take? You must clearly articulate the vision, reiterate the values and goals to everyone involved with the business. Then talking about the team himself, you will have to mesh the business’s vision, your company’s values and goals tightly into those of each individual so that in achieving individual goals and visions, business goals and visions are also achieved.
Define a vision everyone can embrace.
Your vision is a statement that talks about your future. It answers the question, “Where do we aim to be?” The “we” stands of course for the entire team as well as for the individuals. Hence, for your team, it shall list where you see yourself some years from now. It inspires you to give your best. It shapes your understanding of why you are working here.
I shall not insist enough here on what the “we” or “you” represents: it is yourself and your team. Include yourself when you say “you” to your team. Dare to say “we!”. If there are lots of ways to make a positive impact on your team, the easiest and best involves only one simple word : TOGETHER
A vision has to be shared
What shall characterize your vision is its clarity and lack of ambiguity: A vision describe a bright future, in a memorable and engaging expression. It should have realistic aspirations, be achievable; and in alignment with your organizational values and culture.
Leaders may change, but a clearly established vision encourages people to focus on what’s important and better understand organization-wide change and alignment of resources.
Your Vision shall:
- Define the optimal desired future state – the mental picture – of what an organization and/or your team wants to achieve over time;
- Provides guidance and inspiration as to what an organization and/or your team is focused on achieving in a given period of time;
- Functions as the “north star” – it is how all employees and/or team members understand their work every day that ultimately contributes towards accomplishing over the long term;
- Is written succinctly in an inspirational manner that makes it easy for all employees to remember and repeat it at any given time.
I like this one: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world”. Guess which company it’s the vision?
Last but not least, I like also how this one vision embark all company’s stakeholders, from R&D to Sales within this worldwide leading medical device company and deliver to its customers : Our vision is to provide innovative solutions that reduce the economic burden of costly diseases on health care systems worldwide and provide improved outcomes for patients. (St Jude Medical)
Understanding your goals and being able to state them clearly is the first step toward making them happen.
Eric Lambert
MedDev Solutions (www.meddevsolutions.com)
Owner and principal consultant