Sharing Your Vision With Your Team

I interviewed a guest on the Businessology Show podcast recently and he talked about how he shared the vision and core values of his company with his team. He shared the company values because he had been assuming in the past that the team knew the core values. After all, the values were posted on the wall for everyone to see.

He discovered that his team was interpreting the values of the company differently than he intended them. He created cards with the values on them and passed them out to the team. Then he went through them in a team meeting to see if the team knew what they meant. They didn't know the values, or were interpreting them in ways he didn't expect.

Each individual team member runs the values of a company through their own nuanced filter of their life, expectations, and past. Like any key message in a company, it's important to avoid assumptions around whether the team understands the vision and values. Key messages can be made more clear when they are spoken out loud. These messages can't remain in people's heads. It's also good to remember that assumptions and the team's filters change over time. So it's imperative that the vision and values are shared out loud with regularity.

Does your team know where your company is headed?