Strategic Coach Resources

Wouldn’t it be great if the people who work with you could anticipate your every need? What if their goals and efforts were so aligned with yours that as soon as you identified a danger or an opportunity, they came up with ideas and solutions that fit perfectly because they’d already been thinking about the same things? Certainly this is an ideal, but it’s one that provides a great focus for goal setting. The entrepreneurs who come closest to achieving it are those who share their vision for the future of their company with their teams.

Sharing your vision may seem like a natural thing to do, but in reality there are often obstacles that get in the way. When you’re busy struggling to capture a multitude of opportunities, put out fires, and hold everything together at the same time, communication about the bigger picture may fall to the bottom of the priority list. And even if you’ve got the time, you may think that your team won’t understand or want to know, or that thinking about the bigger picture has little relevance to their roles.

If you’re not sharing the big picture frequently and vividly with your team and using it to collectively set goals and create strategies, you may be depriving yourself of a big source of support and confidence — and a big opportunity to leverage your results. Here are four great benefits of sharing your vision:

1. Alignment

Bringing your team on board creates alignment and energy. A shared vision is a great catalyst for teamwork, especially when you allow team members to use their unique talents, skills, and capabilities to create and implement the plans to get there. If someone has difficulty supporting this vision, be honest with yourself and with them. The vision may need some adjustment, or it may be a sign that the person is better suited for another role, or another company.

2. Direction

Your vision helps your team members by giving them a track to run on. It focuses them on a path and a set of common goals. People always do things for their own reasons, but if you provide them with direction on the results you’re looking for, you allow them to align their agendas with yours. With a view from above, they are able to be strategically proactive in planning for the future instead of merely responding to issues as they arise.

3. Clarity & Confidence

If you have doubts about your ability to clearly communicate your vision to your team, or if it isn’t completely clear in your head, sharing it with someone you trust on your team can help clarify it and translate it into something others can look to for guidance. By asking you questions to clarify what they’re hearing, a key team member can help you get even clearer and more confident that what’s in your head can become a reality. And in the process, they’ll get excited about it too.

4. Accountability

When you share your vision for the future, you deepen your commitment to making it happen. Discussing plans begins to make them real and creates accountability. With a team of people aligned about the future they’re building and sharing in the responsibility for making it happen, you’ll greatly increase your chances of reaching your goals.

This article orginally appeared in the semiannual newsletter, Strategic Seasonings issue 10, 2003 [144KB PDF].