Step One: Mutual Purpose.
On the football field, a team huddles before making a play. This is so everyone knows what the upcoming play is. This enables everyone to know what their job responsibility is for the next play. Some teams have a no huddle offense, but even with that, they find a way to communicate to everyone what the next play is. By knowing the play, this gives everyone a mutual purpose. I enjoyed being a football player, because it was one of the few places where you had 11 guys leaving a huddle, all facing one direction, knowing what they wanted to achieve and having a common goal. A great football team has wonderful communication of the upcoming play and everyone knows what their role is. Having this mutual purpose is the first step to team leadership.
It translates over just as well to business. Having a team that knows what their goals are is a great start to having a successful team. Does your team come in daily with a set of assignments that are known? Are there checks and balances where progress can be checked on your team’s progression to their goals? Do you and your team share the same daily, weekly, or monthly purpose? On a great team in the business environment, employees know what their daily tasks and goals are those daily tasks also lead to a weekly goal and those weekly goals link into a monthly goal. This system is repeated even with our long term goals like quarterly and yearly. This allows for focus on the mutual purpose in all levels of goals from daily to yearly.
The mutual purpose is also a key component in our personal lives. In his seminal work, “The Seven Habits of High Successful People”, Stephen Covey reveals the 2nd habit, Begin with the End in Mind. This habit stresses envisioning what the conclusion of your project, your week, or your day will be. Knowing your purpose for your day is vital for your own personal success. By making a reasonable daily list of duties, it focuses you on the overall purpose for the day.
Not having a mutual purpose will wreck you or your team just as fast as having one will aid it. In our football example, if the play is not communicated to the team, the player will be lost and not on the same page, severely lessening the chances for success. While working in the team environment, how many times have you come in to work with no idea what needed to be accomplished or how you were going to do it that day? Having a team that has no purpose will most likely result in the team straying in many directions and thus not accomplishing much. With our own minds, when we are not focused, we don’t get much accomplished. How many times have you dreamt through an entire day at work and then said, “Where did the day go”? That can be totally linked to a lack of purpose.
Find out how to attain this mutual purpose in my upcoming book, "Getting Through the Musical Interlude"
Oginga Carr
CEO Epiphany Consulting LLC
