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Leadership
Why You Need a Personal Mission Statement
Mission statements aren't just for companies.
Posted July 20, 2022 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
You likely have a company mission statement, a short declaration of your organization’s purpose. Tesla’s mission statement, for example, is “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” For Google, it’s: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
A corporate mission statement is useful because it describes a business’s reason for existence and rallies your team around a shared goal and vision. It can also inspire customers to choose your company over competitors. Consider this: U.S. consumers are over 80% more likely to have a positive image of, trust in, and be loyal to brands that lead with purpose.
While it’s clear that mission statements deliver value at the business level, it’s also crucial to use them as a tool in your day-to-day leadership and career development. A personal mission statement is much like a corporate mission statement: it’s a code of conduct that defines your convictions, what you stand for, and how to lead in a way that embodies your values.
In other words, a thoughtful, well-written personal mission statement becomes your individual definition of success — an expression of your “why.” Think of your personal mission statement like a compass that navigates you toward your deepest motivations.
Benefits of a Personal Mission Statement
A personal mission statement isn’t meant to be written once, then stowed away in your desk to gather dust. Rather, it’s meant to shape your actions on a daily basis and help you attract and retain customers and team members aligned with your approach to life and business.
Here are some additional benefits:
1. Helps you maintain a calm presence. Let’s say you’re feeling drained after a prolonged period of addressing urgent business matters and triaging internal conflicts. Revisiting your personal mission statement can help you manage your emotions and show up with greater presence and command. For example, perhaps you use a personal mission statement “to inspire others through teaching and mentorship” as a check-in to gain perspective and make a conscious choice to provide calm coaching to your team instead of delivering angry, frustration-fueled criticism.
2. Improves decision-making. Your personal mission statement provides a shortcut to help you take action more quickly and confidently. Continuing the example above, if your personal mission statement is “to serve as a leader and live a balanced life,” maybe you lift weights after work to clear your head or decompress by cooking dinner with your family. Touching base with your personal mission statement, particularly in moments of stress or tension, saves valuable mental and emotional energy. It shows you what to say no — or yes — to so that you can focus on what matters most and make more efficient, positive choices.
3. Helps you show up authentically. Embracing your personal mission statement is the practice of self-acceptance and requires that you be okay with fully being seen as a leader. Your mission statement gives you a barometer to assess how well you’re meeting your own definition of success — independent of earnings, board approval, or external accolades. Plus, while your business may drastically change in five or 10 years, your personal mission statement evolves with you as a leader and can give you stability amid change.
How to Create a Personal Mission Statement
Here are several exercises that might help inspire you while creating your personal mission statement:
1. Examine your core values. In my book Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work, I share a comprehensive core values assessment you can take, but as a starting point, reflect questions like:
- What gets you out of bed in the morning?
- What activities inspire your best work or feelings of satisfaction?
- What setbacks have you experienced and what have they taught you?
You can also catalog your peak professional experiences, then look for themes and patterns.
2. Priorities reflect your purpose. That means you can often reverse-engineer a personal mission statement by observing how you spend your time. By paying attention to what you dedicate the most attention to — and how much it gives you energy or takes it away — you can get a concrete sense of where you make the biggest impact. If your current way of prioritizing is not in balance, think about what it would look like if balanced and go from there.
3. Do a DIY 360. Talking to your team, peers, and mentors can be a valuable counterbalance to self-reflection. When devising their personal mission statements, I have my clients conduct an informal 360 evaluation. They send an email to three-to-seven colleagues soliciting feedback as to their top three skills and their number-one strength. Seeing how others describe you can be powerful, eye-opening, and affirming.
Writing Your Personal Mission Statement
Now you’re ready to design your personal mission statement. Keep it concise — about one to two sentences, or under 50 words — and in the present tense. The more specific, visual, and emotional the better.
Here are a few templates to consider:
- To serve in such a way that [contribution you want to make or future you want to see].
- To [what you want to achieve, do or become] so that [reasons why it is important]. I will do this by [specific behaviors or actions you will use to get there].
- To live each day with [choose one to three core values] so that [what living by these values will give you]. I will do this by [specific behaviors you will use to live by these values].
- To bring [impact or result] to [intended audience] through [specific actions].
- To use [skill or expertise] to enable [intended result] for [specific group] so that [ultimate goal].
Remember, your mission statement isn’t set in stone. Revisit it every month or quarter to make sure it feels fresh and relevant to your individual ambition and your business’s goals.
