As a leader, one of your most important jobs is defining a compelling vision for your team. A strong vision serves to motivate, provide direction, and give people something to rally behind. But that vision shouldn’t come from you alone – truly effective visions are shared by leaders and team members alike.
What Is a Shared Vision?
A shared vision clearly articulates where the team is headed in the future. More specifically, an inspiring vision has several key attributes:
- Ambitious yet achievable – Stretch goals energize teams, but make sure they are within the realm of possibility or teams will just get frustrated. Set big goals – then break into small milestones.
- Reflects company values – Your vision should reinforce what your organization stands for, not just what it’s trying to achieve. Values-based visions drive passion.
- Appeals to hearts and minds – Visions tap into both inspiration and logic. Emotionally connect people to the end state while also clearly communicating how you’ll get there.
- Co-created, not just delivered – Leaders drive the visioning process but get buy-in by soliciting ideas from the team. Collaboration unlocks greater commitment.
Steps for Developing a Shared Vision
Turning your strategic vision into a shared vision that energizes your team involves a specific process. Here are some best practices to drive engagement:
1. Set the stage
Dedicate focused time for reflection and discussion around crafting the team vision. Offsites work particularly well to get away from the bustle of daily distractions.
2. Drive the conversation
Use targeted questions to facilitate an open exchange of ideas focused on hopes, motivations and shared purpose. What gets us excited? What values resonate?
3. Distill the themes
Identify areas of alignment across conversations. Spot the shared passions and motivations rising consistently across the team. Those form the foundation for your vision
4. Draft an aspirational vision statement
Synthesize the raw ingredients into concise, clear and inspiring language everyone connects with. Refine through an iterative process of gathering feedback.
5. Make it tangible
Connect the intangible vision with concrete priorities and next steps so people understand what it means for actual behavior and operations.
6. Integrate reminders
Reinforce the vision by incorporating it into meetings, communications, office décor, performance metrics and conversations to sustain mindshare.
7. Celebrate progress
Spotlight milestones achieved and break out the champagne! Recognition of progress toward the vision motivates teams to push further.
8. Refresh periodically
Revisit and update the vision statement occasionally. Evolving dreams keep teams engaged for the long haul.
Remember, drafting an initial vision statement is easy. But the real work lies in collaboratively crafting a vision that genuinely resonates with all stakeholders. Carving out quality meeting time for rich conversation, actively listening to diverse perspectives, and iteratively refining the vision drives engagement.
With a truly shared vision, you harness the collective passion, talent and effort across your team. That accelerates your organization confidently towards the future you collectively envision.
The Bottom Line
Strategic visions originate with leaders, but they only become powerful when the entire team feels true ownership. That’s why inclusive collaboration, not top-down delivery, serves as the recipe for defining visions that motivate. Ultimately, it’s the process itself of co-creating aspirational visions that catalyzes buy-in and effort as much as the articulated vision.
So carve out the time for that critical upfront investment into rich dialogue and trust the payoff will come through discretionary effort and progress fueled by a collectively owned vision.
Image Source: pexels.com
