Leadership involves making decisions.
Getting a team to move towards fulfilling its goals involves numerous decisions.
But right from the get-go, there is one important decision that a leader needs to make. This decision will shape the leader and the team in a profound way. It will affect how he or she leads, how the team interact with the leader, the culture of the team, etc.
Your team’s (or organisation, church, and even personal) mission gives clarity to your direction, informs your strategies and, together with your purpose, forms the basis of all your critical decisions.
The mission statement spells out your mission so that stakeholders (the team leader, team members, partners, target audience, customers, etc.) knows what you do. For yourself and your team, it serves as a reminder to help you stay on course. For others, it helps to differentiate you from other teams or organisations.
As I work with teams during the past 20 years, I often come across mission statements that are either so vague that they don’t tell me anything useful, or are so generic that they could just as well be the mission statement of another team!
These vague or generic mission statements are practically useless.
Continue reading “Tips for crafting an effective mission statement”
“What is your team’s mission?” I asked the team members in the room.
They recited their mission statement, verbatim.
“Great! What does it mean?” I asked again.
What followed was several different explanations about the team’s mission. And “Oh, I thought this meant…”, “Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be…”, “I don’t think that’s part of what we do…”, etc.
This wasn’t an isolated incident.
A client recently took over a team at work. It wasn’t a new team. The organisation went through some restructuring, and his boss asked him to lead this restructured team.
Since this wasn’t a new team, they already have existing roles and responsibilities, along with some problems and baggage.
My client’s first action was to try and sort through the problems and figure out ways to resolve them. Several weeks later, he was still at it, and the problems don’t seem to be nearing resolution.
Continue reading “So you’re now leading a team. What should you do next?”
