3 Easy Steps to Help You Clearly Define Your Vision
Curt Mercadante
Helping our clients create impactful influence in their target markets
“To do my best to save the world by helping others fight for lives of freedom and fulfillment.”
That statement clearly defines my vision — that aspirational statement for how I want to live my life.
My vision defines my purpose. It defines my WHY.
Clearly defining my clients’ vision statements is perhaps the most important part of my coaching program. Management guru Tom Peters has said:
“A clear vision of the desired future … is an essential component of high performance.”
He’s absolutely right. A clearly-defined vision provides that target — that destination — for you to aim and aspire. It should guide everything you do.
As I said in this podcast episode, having a clearly defined vision is vital for entrepreneurs and business owners, to keep them focused on the essential things that move them, and their businesses, forward.
Knowing your vision will also help you know what kind of clients you want and what services you will offer. That being said, my recommendation is to define a vision that encompasses your entire life — not just your work, not just yourself, and not just your family.
Not surprisingly, defining a clear vision statement is one of the most challenging activities my clients undertake. That’s why I’ve put together these 3 actionable steps to help you define a clear, effective vision statement:
1 - Craft Your ‘Life Sentence’
It’s been reported that former Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, who also served as an author and U.S. Ambassador, once told President John F. Kennedy that the lives of all great people could be summed up in one sentence.
She called this a person’s “life sentence.”
When you are trying to define your vision statement, I want you to think of this term, “life sentence.”
As macabre as it may sound, try to imagine your funeral. The person providing your eulogy has been limited one or two sentences. What one or two sentences would you want your eulogizer to give that would sum up your life in a way that fulfills you?
Don’t just think about work. Don’t just think about family. Don’t just think about self.
Think about all three and the legacy that you would like to leave behind.
2 - Keep it the SAIM (Short, Aspirational, Inspirational, Motivational)
I’ve seen organizations spend a lot of money and time to create a B.S. “Mission Statement” that takes up five paragraphs and is rarely read or reviewed by anybody in the company.
That’s not a vision statement.
A vision statement should be S.A.I.M (Short, Aspirational, Inspirational and Motivational).
As leadership guru John Maxwell writes:
“Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has a place among the great speeches of American history, yet it was barley three minutes in length ... Slice and dice your vision until it can be shared in a single sentence. The more concise you make your vision, the more memorable it will be.”
Author David Masters also provides some great advice in his article, How to Write Vision and Mission Statements. He writes that an effective vision statement is:
Aspirational in that it’s about your goals.
Inspirational in that it provides life and direction to your day-to-day work (the root of the word “inspiration” relates to breathing life into things).
Motivational in that it provides a reason for the work you do.
3 - Answer these 5 Questions
These give questions can help prime you as you craft your clear, concise, short vision statement:
- What things, people, activities make you feel the most passionate?
- Where would you like to be in 5 years? 10 years? 25 years?
- What are your super powers? How are you leveraging them? How do you wish you could leverage them? (My clients all take the CliftonStrengths assessment, which helps them identify their talent themes so we can leverage them to turn them into Strengths.)
- If you found out you only had one week left to live, what are the one or two things you wish you would’ve done by now, but haven’t?
- What are those one or two things you would want to be said about you at your funeral that would make you feel that you passed on a lasting, fulfilling legacy to your children?
Creating your vision statement is a vital part of my coaching process because, along with your big, audacious objective and your non-negotiable values, it helps you define who you are, what you want to be, and where you want to go with your life.
I hope the above steps help you as you craft your vision statement.
Senior content designer | Driven by empathy | Always learning
6 年Brilliant! Great read. Thanks for sharing.
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6 年Great summary!! Can't wait to go through these questions!
Speak Truth to Power
6 年I am not thinking about my funeral. There won't be one. Keep in mind I had parents who had a magic wand. Most parents do: if only in theory. They envisioned a finished product without explaining the process. My coach turned into a pumpkin. I was told to pick a career. Put on the spot in high school I said "Masters of Business Administration." I liked the sound of it. My father looked at me like I was bizarre asking "Why would you want to do that?" as if an MBA were a bad degree. It worked for John White, MBA among others. I never pursued it and didn't really mention aspirations because they were shot down before and would be discredited again.
I used to make people internet famous. Now, I help B2B entrepreneurs/creators scale to $20k-$80k a month. Ex: 2x Founder, Official Snapchat show host, speaker at TEDx, INBOUND, VidCon
6 年This is killer, my guy!