Intro to Leadership

There is an ebb and flow to all things in life; relationships, careers, business, passions, joys. In order to successfully navigate the ups and downs you must have a single point to clearly focus all your efforts towards. That beacon is where you’re going. It’s the place where you will achieve success, live dreams, and embrace passion. This beacon can be so far down the way you can’t see it but you know it’s there. Or, it’s so close to you you’re blinded by the brightness. Whichever your situation, it’s important to build your road map with three, foundational elements.

1. Your mission statement – outlining your purpose, values and primary objective(s).
2. Your vision statement – defines what inspires you and what you’ll accomplish in three-, five -, ten-plus years.
3. Finally is your mantra which is a succinct statement that guides your decisions and behaviors.

And what if I don’t?

Many people fail to concretely complete the following exercises claiming ‘it’s too difficult’, ‘no one pays attention to them anyway’, ‘takes too much time to develop them’, and ‘we’re too  small/big to put them into place’. These excuses, or any other, don’t outweigh the benefit of having a clear road map.  The absence of these blocks are lost opportunities for aligning your talents to the purpose, building a unified culture of achievement, and creating processes and systems that support the framework for the rest of your life.

Studies show that businesses with mission and vision statements, mantras, and guiding principles out-perform those companies that forego the exercises. An example of a study A Model of the Impact of Mission Statements on Firm Performance, was conducted by Bart, Bontis, and Tagger in 2001 where the authors determined this “variable” had the “most direct relationship with financial performance.” Applying this concept to personal situations isn’t a far reach when reflecting on your finances. Further studies show that people with a strong life purpose live longer than those people who don’t.