Book excerpt: Shared Vision : Building Team Success in Highly Competitive Environments Building team success in highly competitive environments requires passion, commitment, and relentless effort throughout your organization. Building the type of passion and commitment necessary for teams and organizations to win; really win, requires all members to align their goals, objectives, hearts, and minds toward a guiding purpose that is larger than each individual, or their sum. Leaders do not decide who leads; followers do by voting with their passion to a purpose that is larger than self. People will not commit themselves to struggle for just anything, or anyone! Arguably, one of the most differentiating qualities of the very best organizational leaders is the ability to create and articulate a vision for the future of which other people want to see themselves be a part. The leaders who clearly separate themselves from the pack are able to paint a picture of the future that can ignite the passion of others, inspire the very best in their constituents, and enlist the hearts and minds of teammates, by moving us and helping us see a better and ideal tomorrow along with our own personal success within. Shared Vision walks Organizational Managers, Executives, Coaches, Student Athletes, and Administrators through the process of self-discovery, and understanding how individual values, attitudes, moods, and emotions inform an organization and its "shared" purpose. Through a thorough understanding individual values, leaders and teams can begin to define "shared values". In understanding individual aspirations, leaders and teams can begin to define and collaborate upon "shared aspirations". Through deliberate practice and reflection, teams create and articulate a "Shared Vision" for their organization, or team, which can guide them toward organizational success. Utilizing the latest leadership theories, real-world examples, stories, and exercises, leaders and followers will engage in a mutual, ongoing collaborative process of raising one another to higher levels of motivation, cohesion, and performance by appealing to common values, beliefs, and attitudes of teammates. Thus, teams create meaningful work, promote well-being, enable one another, and increase satisfaction, resulting in the passion and commitment necessary to compete fiercely.