Creating a vision means defining where your team is going and how they will get there. It’s not unusual for a leader, after a grand pronouncement, to sit back and assume their vision will happen. In truth, many bold strategies never reach liftoff because team members were either confused, uninspired, or had a “this too shall pass” attitude.
Consider these best practices for creating and communicating a vision:
- Adapt your message to the culture.
- Craft a vision that is within reach.
- Articulate and repeat the vision at every appropriate opportunity.
- Create ambassadors.
No leader has ever over-communicated an inspiring vision. Worthy aspirational projects and initiatives typically fail because leadership wrongly thought they had been sufficiently translated throughout the team or organization. Or in some cases, they lost interest themselves.
FROM MESS TO SUCCESS: CREATE VISION
- Draft a team vision by answering these questions:
- What contributions can our team make to the organization’s mission and vision?
- If our team could make one extraordinary contribution over the next one to five years, what would it be?
- Take a moment to remember an inspiring vision that resonated with you. What about it made it personally motivating and powerful?
- Create a vision for your team by articulating not only the why and the what, but the how. The how may well be the key that brings it to success.
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