How to Inspire Your Team with Your Vision

Think about it this way. Your staff are the people you have hired to ensure your vision can be carried out in a successful manner. Execution is the most important part of any business, and one that many companies get wrong. This is often because employees don't fully understand or engage with the organisational strategy, meaning that strategic goals and work are misaligned - this leads to missed opportunities, poor performance and financial overspend as you try desperately to steer everything back towards the intended course.

Inspire your team by committing yourself entirely to your goals, and by including them in your vision, planning and ethos. It is only through this, and by making your interests their interests that you'll inspire them to work towards your goals - whether that's sending an email, taking a meeting or simply sharing a chat with a colleague.

Over the years I have selected a dedicated team of loyal employees to implement my ideas. The strength of our relationship allows me to outline my ideas to them and know that they will implement it in a way that meets our collective high standards. Creating this team and this ethos took time, but it's a relatively straightforward process, and one that I've outlined in several steps below.

Have Core Values that Apply to All Areas of Your Business
You might have your principles in your head, which have enabled you to succeed, but how are your team supposed to know about these without you telling them?

Write down your business's vision, mission and values and circulate these to your employees. At every opportunity, whether discussing past successes or future plans, refer back to these principles and make it clear how following them helps your business succeed.

Signature's values, for example, are quality of product, attention to detail and exemplary customer service. Our employees are all keenly aware of these and use them as a reassuring touchstone in their everyday work, which allows them to be confident that, if their work reflects these, they will be doing a great job.

Live the Values: Be Passionate about Your Idea and Inspire Staff
There is no point in taking the time to do the first step if you don't live by what you say so live your values, and to sell them to your staff at every step. Staff are often most interested in activities and ideas that will benefit themselves, so you need to both show that your principles have made you successful, and offer incentives for those who perform best and help your company meet your goals.

Living your values is particularly important when you're trying to achieve employee buy-in on new ideas. Be passionate about your ideas, but also seek out any fears that employees may have and address them on the spot - decisiveness is key.