How to make Vision Boards Work for your Company
One special activity that we do with our organization at 9Dot Education Solutions is building vision boards. As a team, we create and share our visions with each other. This has been a wonderful way for our team to get to know each other better and understand each other’s values, goals, missions, and much more.
An engaged and happy employee is more likely to be a positive and contributing member of the company. One way of fostering growth and productivity in the workforce is creating a time and place for creativity and goal setting both personally and professionally.
Our vision board activity has brought much more employee engagement and has helped spark many conversations — boosting company morale and making professional development seminars much easier.
Why Do It?
- A vision board makes the participant actually think about what they really want in life.
- A vision board can help an employee get out of a rut
- It creates a daily visual reminder of what the individual aspires to and helps keep them on track towards those goals
- It opens your eyes to new possibilities and passions, and allows for creativity in the workplace
However, there are certain arguments against vision boards such as its effect that leaves the creator feeling accomplished without actually completing a step toward their goal.
The Washington Post points out that “The problem with vision boards is that too often, when people assign their dreams to a vision board, they stop doing the hard work to get what they want.”
Despite this, we work with our team to ensure that everyone is making progress (however big or small) is contributing to their goal and the goal of our organization. Nonetheless, vision boards work if you do the work.
According to A Conscious Rethink, “As with most things in life, you get out what you put in.The power of a vision board comes in its ability to motivate you to do the work that is required to make the things you put on it a reality.”
Here are some tips to get the most from your vision board:
- Pair it with a journal to track your progress
- What explicit steps are needed in order to reach your goal?
- Prioritize your actions
- Celebrate the accomplishments
2. Use materials other than the traditional photos and magazine cut outs and get creative!
- Use organic materials
- Pieces of clothing or artwork
- Scents that represent your goal in some form (i.e. a sprig of lavender could represent a vacation in Provence or an employee’s desire to one day open a flower shop, while a piece of pink ribbon could represent wanting to start a family or a charity for breast cancer awareness.)
Despite the looming pandemic and challenges we’re going to face in the future, having a vision board helps to promote emotional well-being and may boost motivation. We recommend putting visions, goals, and ideas down that you desire at the moment. According to Nitika Chopra, a wellness advocate and founder of Chronicon.co, this is a great exercise to distinguish what matters to you in your life and how you want your “internal state” to feel as opposed to your “external state”.
“It’s not about forcing yourself to be positive or forcing an outcome,” says Chopra, but rather “an invitation for some clarity”.
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