Part of my job now is to sit in on business leaders’ meetings with their teams to observe how they come across and interact with their colleagues. I am not there to criticise or to nit-pick, I am there as an impartial observer who can then pass on my tips as a speaker as to how they can improve their presenting style to get their teams motivated and buying into the company vision or goal.
One of the most common omissions I keep seeing made again and again is the failure of properly sharing a vision, the goal, the target being aimed for. This then makes it much harder for others to aspire to the vision and put their full effort into making it happen.
As the great Simon Sinek says, “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.”
Do you have a properly defined vision?
You may have a great, huge, wonderful vision of what you want to strive for but if you cannot share and articulate it properly no-one else is going to buy into it. Or, as I suspect may be the case for the majority, you may not have clearly defined what your vision is apart from knowing that you need to do more of something to get more of something else which is simply too vague for anyone to get on board with.
It’s the basis of every talk and workshop that I do. I paint a picture as to what I am going to be sharing and that provides a clear end result as to what I am trying to achieve with that particular engagement. Everything else, the rest of the content, the steps, the tasks all fall into place from this one vision. The result is that my audience buys into the overall vision from the start, they are inspired and motivated to act to achieve what it is I have set out as the ultimate goal.
Always start with your vision
When you think about it it’s the same for writing an article such as this. Without having a clear vision as to the point you are trying to make and get across, the rest will be extremely hard work, confusing and may completely miss the target.
Every business meeting, brainstorming session, discussion or general planning chit chat should always start with the vision. The vision must be something that you have sat down and thought about prior and then be able to clearly see it in your mind’s eye. You should write down exactly what that vision looks like, feels like, even sounds and smells like. Don’t worry about how it is going to be achieved just define it precisely and then share it with your team/colleagues in such a way that they too can clearly see it.
In this way you build enthusiasm towards achievement and have a team that it pulling with and for you rather than fragmenting or pulling against you.