Are you ready to unlock the secrets of exceptional teamwork and high performance? Building a high-performing team requires more than assembling a group of people with diverse skills and experiences. While diverse expertise and perspectives are crucial to a successful team, a sense of alignment regarding a common purpose, shared goals, and core values is pertinent to cohesion and performance. 

Have you ever thought about a past team that worked so fluidly together that it didn’t feel like work? If not, you’ve only imagined a team or workplace that seamlessly united their collective efforts to new heights. A State of the Workplace study (conducted by Blueboard.com) reported that 80% of employees want to work at organizations where they feel connected to the purpose and the people. 

“Building connections within the organization is essential for effective communication and achieving shared goals and strategies. It's also highly valued. When employees feel connected to their work, they're more engaged, willing to assist others, and more likely to stay with the company.” - Christine Reynolds. 

On the contrary, studies reveal that highly aligned organizations grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable than unaligned organizations. So, fasten your seatbelts as we dive into the game-changing strategies behind building unstoppable teams!

This article explores how aligning purpose, goals, and values can help you create a happy, productive, and successful team. From the Bold Vision Canvas to overcoming obstacles and risks, we'll provide actionable tools and tips to help you achieve team alignment. 

“Achieving alignment can speed up growth and is a crucial foundation for accelerated progress.” - Andrew Edwards. 

Finding Your Purpose & Values Starts With a Bold Vision

One of the most critical components of team alignment is articulating an inspiring and clear picture of the desired future state. Accordingly, this is where a tool like the 5-Step Bold Vision Canvas shines.  

This group activity will help you and your team craft a compelling vision statement that outlines your purpose and identifies values surrounding your vision as “themes.”. The activity also prompts participants to think critically about the supports and barriers that will help or hinder the team as they work to make the statement a reality. 

Completing this activity as a team allows everyone’s voices to be heard and synthesized into a unified vision statement. It sparks thoughtful discussions about the enablers and barriers the team may face.

• The Bold Vision Canvas is a tool to help teams create a shared vision statement.

• The canvas guides you through brainstorming to make the vision tangible and relatable.

• A compelling vision statement can inspire and align the team with its purpose, goals, and values.

• Involving the team in the process fosters ownership and accountability.

• A clear and shared picture of the desired future can lead to a high-performing team and great success.

Check out our article on inspiring creating with a Bold Vision

Our Approach to the 5-Step Bold Vision Canvas:

The 5 Bold Steps Canvas is an excellent team alignment tool to help co-create a bold vision. Use this tool to clarify what supports the vision, what challenges the vision, and whom the team will need to help get there. 

Step 1 | Themes Brainstorm ~5 themes that describe your vision and add them to the small circles labelled themes at the top of the template. You can make notes around the circles if some data points or sub-themes emerge.

Step 2 | Support Challenges Use the bottom grey boxes to identify: What will enable the vision? Who will help us achieve the vision? What might stand in our way?

Step 3 | Bold Steps As a team, discuss the steps you'll need to take to achieve your bold vision. Identify the 5 most essential steps and add them in order of importance in the middle of the template, starting with #1 (the most important).

Set Goals: Identify & Prioritize Bold Steps Toward Your Vision.

The next crucial step in building a high-performing team is identifying and prioritizing the key steps and milestones moving you closer to your vision. Once you clearly understand your desired future state, you must break it down into manageable tasks and objectives that you can achieve over time. This process lets you focus your efforts and resources on the most critical activities that will significantly impact your vision's realization.

To identify the key steps and milestones, you must collaborate with your team to determine what needs to happen first, the next steps, and the most essential actions. It's also vital to decide on the resources, tools, and skills necessary to accomplish each task and the specific team members responsible for each assignment.

Prioritizing the tasks and objectives is equally critical as it helps ensure that everyone on the team focuses on the vital activities that will lead to the most significant impact. By prioritizing tasks, you can also ensure that your team works efficiently and effectively, eliminating unnecessary actions or distractions.

Once you have identified and prioritized your tasks and objectives, you can use them as a roadmap to track progress, measure success, and adjust your plan. This approach will help keep your team on track, motivated, and focused on achieving your vision.

Benefits for your team

• To build a high-performing team, identify and prioritize key steps and milestones.

• Collaborate with your team to determine what needs to happen first and the most essential actions.

• Determine necessary resources, tools, skills, and team members for each task.

• Prioritize tasks to ensure everyone is focused and working efficiently.

• Use the tasks and objectives as a roadmap to track progress, measure success, and adjust the plan.

Imagine the Possible: Unite your stakeholders with a shared picture of your aligned vision. 

As we learned in the previous section, this canvas will guide you through a brainstorming process that enables a meaningful dialogue among your team. By discussing the themes surrounding your vision, identifying your supports and barriers, and ultimately crystallizing the statement and action plan, you create a plan on a page that should be easy for your stakeholders and extended team to get behind and buy into. 

Tools like this help bring a vision to life, making it tangible and relatable for everyone on the team and involved in the process. Using this tool, you can create a vision statement that inspires your team and stakeholders, communicating what you want to achieve and why it's essential. By involving your team in this process, you can also foster a sense of ownership and accountability, making it more likely that everyone will be committed to achieving the vision. With a compelling vision that aligns with your purpose, goals, and values, you'll be on the right track to building a high-performing team that can achieve great success together.

Benefits for your team and stakeholders:

• Provide your team with a clear and shared picture of the desired future state.

• The Bold Vision Canvas is a tool that encourages collaborating and co-creating as a harmonious team.

• The canvas helps guides a fluid brainstorming process, so it's great for beginners or those new to facilitating meetings and workshops.

• A co-designed vision that aligns a team around a common purpose, goals, and values leads to a high-performing team that can achieve great success together.

In our 3-part workshop guide, you will receive everything you need to learn how to collaborate with your stakeholders, empathize with your users, and work towards creating a shared vision. 

• Workshop activities include a facilitator guide with practitioner tips so leaders can design a bold vision with their team.

• Discussions to captivate stakeholders' attention, develop empathy, and facilitate productive brain-storming sessions to elevate a team's vision.

• Learn how co-creating and clearly defining a bold vision can positively impact a team's success.

In conclusion

Building a high-performing team requires more than just assembling a group of people with diverse skills and experiences. It requires aligning everyone on a common purpose, goals, and values. 

By co-creating a bold vision, inspiring your team with a clear and shared picture of the future, identifying and prioritizing key steps and milestones, addressing potential obstacles, and communicating and visualizing your vision and engagingly, you can create a happy, productive, and successful team that will help drive your business forward. 

Remember, you will achieve incredible things when everyone works together towards a common goal, with shared values and a sense of purpose. Let's start aligning our teams today and see the difference it can make.