How do you bring your vision and goals to life?
“Set a goal that is so BIG, so exhilarating that it EXCITES you and SCARES you at the same time.” Bob Proctor
I love this quote from Bob Proctor because it is so simple and so effective.
When you set yourself a goal, it has to be so big it takes you far enough outside your comfort zone for your motivation to kick in. However, to avoid internal turmoil and fear getting in the way, your goals need to be congruent with your values.
“The real value of setting goals in not the recognition or reward, it’s the PERSON WE BECOME by finding the discipline, courage and commitment to achieve them.” (Anon)
As well as clear, congruent goals, all teams and groups need a vision of where they want to get to; otherwise, they will have no idea where they are going, what needs to be done to get there or how and when to celebrate along the way.
“If you don’t know exactly where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?”
Steve Maraboli
Team and company vision
All organisations have a corporate vision, an aspirational description of what the organisation wants to achieve or accomplish in the short, medium and long terms. This vision provides the company’s employees with a clear direction and gives them missions to complete within a set time period.
What is a vision?
All good leaders have a vision. In his famous book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey wrote that one of the founding ‘habits’ is “to start with the end in mind”.
A vision can’t work unless there is a plan supporting it, and your vision will help you to decide which tools, techniques and approaches you can use to make it a reality.
Here is a summary of some of the tools I use and the approaches I take:
Use Bruce Tuckman’s stages of team development theory (Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing) to guide and manage my team.
Get the team’s buy-in to the project by sharing ideas.
Believe that my vision can be achieved and convey this to the team through the message: “Let’s prove we can do it together” that was born of my natural influencing style (‘I’ on the DISC profiling tool).
Demonstrate honesty and courage, which are two of my leadership traits.
Create a visual display with lots of positive quotes to inspire and encourage the team on their journey.
Continuously question myself as the leader of the team on how I could get the best out of each individual.
How do you bring your vision to life : through building trust.
There are a variety of skills, tools and techniques that can be used to do this, but here is a summary of the tools I recommend
1. DISC – By using a personality profiling system, I could get to know people in minutes rather than months. By doing this, I was able to adapt my communication style to suit the needs of each individual on my team, which increased rapport and helped me to develop a trust-based relationship with each person on the team.
2. Communication Cycle – Listen to what someone is saying, then seek to check your understanding by asking questions, clarifying what you have heard and repeating back what you have heard. Finally, agree a way forward and offer support and encouragement.
3. ‘Connect then lead’ flowchart – There are two ways we assess others as trustworthy; first, we ask: “Can I trust this person?” (A test of warmth). Secondly, we ask: “Can I respect this person?” (A test of competence or strength). Leaders need to demonstrate both warmth and strength to succeed. However, leaders who project strength before warmth risk eliciting fear in their team rather than trust. The best way to build trust in a team is to begin with warmth because this facilitates good communication and makes the team more willing to take on new, different or challenging ideas. As a leader, it is important that you build a foundation of trust at the outset. This is because your team needs to decide what they think of your message before they can decide what they think of you. Once you have established your warmth, your strength is perceived as welcome reassurance of your competence to lead. Connect first, and your leadership becomes a gift not a threat.
Team vision boards
If you are going to deliver a vision and achieve your goals, it is important that the team is clear on what that vision is and what goals or objectives you are working towards. To facilitate this, put up a visual display describing the vision and reaffirming the goals. Make sure the team vision is copied in all learning documentation. Vision boards are a great way to capture goals. They visually summarise what someone wants to be, do and have right from the start. Vision boards help a team to dream big and explore the ‘what if’ scenarios that can arise on the journey towards achieving a goal. Once you know what it is you want to be, do or have, you need to take action. This is where you start to make your dream or vision a reality.
When company goals are imposed, it isn’t very motivating or engaging. This is because when we are forced to take company goals as personal goals, they are not meaningful to us, so it’s hard to feel any commitment to them. This is where most leaders fail because they start out with a goal that their team is not committed to delivering. This means there is little or no willingness from the team to be held accountable for achieving that goal.
Team goal setting
Get your team to complete the learning style questionnaires so that you know how they each learn best. Then give them the motivation questionnaire because you need to know what motivates them. Both of these are important when a team sets its goals