Have you ever been part of a team where you all have different roles, working on different projects yet still seemed to come together and align your priorities? It’s highly likely that is because you had a shared vision and purpose. It’s important to know that vision and purpose are not the same thing.
A team vision will often stem from the company vision. For example if you work in the hospitality team on Oxford Street and your company’s vision is to serve the best coffee in London, your team’s vision may be something like providing the best customer service on Oxford Street. There will likely be some drivers and strategy that sits behind this vision and will no doubt be the basis of what makes up your individual appraisal targets.
What I really want to talk about is the Purpose! This is the why! Why do we do what we do as a team or service and more importantly why do we do what we do as an occupation. A really simple way to do this is ask the team to to tell each other what they believe their collective purpose is. You can do this with paper and pen or using platforms such as Slido or Jam boards. You should hopefully get a few ideas that are all around the same theme and from this you can collate two or three headlines for the team to vote on. This part is important! It’s not enough to ask and then create the purpose, staff need to be included and engaged in the final say. A purpose for a nursing team may sound something like; We care about helping patients stay healthy and well.
There’s a really useful exercise here to help you define your own purpose to see if it aligns with your team and organisation. Make a selection of lists on a piece of paper broken into three sections.
1. Your Skills 2. Your Attributes 3. Your Ambitions.
Then think about your dream job, you may be currently living it, you may not even be on the right path just yet. That’s ok because dream jobs often take time. Based on your skills, attributes and person you want to be or things you want to achieve you should be able to start thinking about what your life’s purpose is. This is a good task to repeat yearly. We adapt and change as individuals so much, what we were truly passionate about 12 months ago may not fit with us now. My life’s purpose right now is; To teach and support others to grow by demonstrating strength, love and kindness. This currently fits the needs of my job role and my company purpose. Therefore, I am aligned. If your purpose doesn’t fit with your team or organisation ask yourself if you are really living your best life!
Great teams have a vision and purpose, they are working towards the same goals with the same mentality of how to get there!
