In business leadership coaching, helping your client answer this fundamental question – “Why exactly are we here?” – is one of the most valuable bits of leadership coaching that you can provide. This might not seem necessary, but businesses often lose their sense of direction and forget the answer to this question. This can lead to bad decisions, unhappy employees, dissatisfied customers and financial losses.

Mission Statements Should Provide a Cause and Consistency

A business’s mission statement answers the question “Why exactly are we here?”If it is compelling, it defines a cause that will inspire everyone in the company and generate a commitment to the success of the organization. Once everyone buys into the mission statement, they will act in a way that contributes to the entire company working to achieve the mission. So when doing business leadership coaching to develop a mission statement, have your client encourage every member of their team to participate. Ask employees at all levels what makes them proud about what the company does and how they contribute to the company doing it. Encourage everyone in the company to “own” the mission statement.

The Basic Structure of a Mission Statement

Often business leadership coaches have a hard time getting started with this. Some mission statements seem very clever or even poetic, but you can easily generate very effective mission statements using this structure. The trick is to keep it simple, and not be afraid of making it profound.

Here is the basic structure:

Our Mission is (i.e. We are here…) to
… (one to three verbs)
… (how we will do it based on our core values)
… (who or what we will do it for).

Follow this structure to create a mission statement for your own business leadership coaching practice.

Address Fundamentals in Your Business Leadership Coaching

By addressing business fundamentals, you can have a profound impact on your clients. Helping to develop and implement Mission Statements, Core Values Lists and Company Visions will help everyone in the organization do a better job and be more successful. In addition, it will bring you very close to the company executives and make you an “insider” that your client won’t want to do without.

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Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach