How do you create teams that employees actually want to be a part of and are excited and motivated to participate in? Georgia Feiste of Lead Change Group says that the path to powerful and effective leadership iscommon purpose. She explains:
Leadership Perspective: Building on Common Purpose
Have you experienced organizations that develop a Vision Statement, a Mission Statement, and a Purpose Statement and spend enormous amounts of money to send the message throughout the organization, but the teams and individuals within that organization never commit to them?
On the flip side, have you experienced the joy and excitement of a working within a team that gets it, and moves together as if one?
The obvious next question is: On which team would you rather be a member, and how do you get there?
Many years ago, I was working as a senior analyst within the Information Technology department. We were moving business from one system to another, and the project required a strong understanding of the product, as well as knowledge of how both systems worked, so we could translate from one to the other. We had a team of five people in this project, and we were given three months to accomplish the goal. We were asked to go off site for three months, away from our families, and focus on the task at hand.
We quickly identified the skills and knowledge held by each person on the team, understood what we 
needed to do and in what order, and we walked together by separating to accomplish our individual tasks and coming back together multiple times a day to share information, talk through the challenges, make decisions and quickly move forward.
If an individual on the team did not get their individual tasks accomplished, we either challenged them to stretch more or we jumped in to help. We played while we worked, and we worked while we played. We accomplished our goal, and we did it well.
I have also worked with teams who did not coalesce. Many members of the team were looking out for their own career, did not communicate, and often pointed fingers to shift scrutiny from them to another.
What was the difference between those teams? Common Purpose.
What is common purpose? It is about creating a we culture that is inspired, vibrant, courageous and hard to beat.
This culture says very clearly that:
- Every individual on the team, including the leader, stands side by side with the others
- There has been clear, open and candid conversation with everyone present so that every possible idea, concern, and disagreement is on the table
- The entire team knows the goal and what needs to be done, and
- They know the values and intentions of the organization
More Details: Leadership Perspective: Building on Common Purpose via leadchangegroup.com
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
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I have absolutely experienced this as well. And when you look back on and think about the things that you were a part of, the positive memories come from those teams where things just really came together. Teamwork is a must in any kind of work we are in, whether we are in the government as public servants or in the corporate world.