How do you lead vision and mission development sessions with your team?

2 Establish a positive climate

At the beginning of the session, you want to create a positive and collaborative climate that encourages participation, creativity, and dialogue. You can do this by setting some ground rules and norms for the session, such as respecting different opinions, listening actively, and staying focused. You can also use some icebreakers or warm-up activities to build rapport and trust among your team members. Additionally, you can acknowledge and appreciate the contributions and achievements of your team and celebrate their successes.

4 Facilitate the missioning process

The missioning process is where you help your team to define and communicate their purpose and direction. You can use some guiding questions or prompts to elicit their input, such as: What is our main function or service? Who are our target audience or beneficiaries? How do we meet their needs or solve their problems? What are our distinctive features or advantages? How do we measure our impact or success? You can also use some templates or models to help your team to craft their mission statement, such as the SMART model (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) or the value proposition canvas.

5 Consolidate and refine the statements

After you have collected and generated a lot of ideas and input from your team, you need to consolidate and refine them into concise and coherent statements. You can do this by grouping or categorizing similar or related ideas, eliminating or merging duplicates or redundancies, and prioritizing or ranking the most important or relevant ones. You can also use some criteria or tests to evaluate and improve the statements, such as the clarity test, the relevance test, the uniqueness test, and the feasibility test.

6 Share and validate the statements

The final step is to share and validate the vision and mission statements with your team and other stakeholders. You can do this by presenting or displaying the statements in a clear and attractive way, such as using a slide show, a poster, or a video. You can also invite feedback and suggestions from your team and other stakeholders, such as using a survey, a focus group, or a consultation session. You can also use some strategies to reinforce and embed the statements, such as creating a slogan, a logo, or a song, or incorporating them into your policies, plans, and practices.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?