This document introduces the Firepower Shared Vision consulting program. It discusses how developing a shared vision can help align team members with business goals, strengthen hiring practices, and maximize team contributions. The program explores business challenges, client needs, and team member strengths to formulate a simple shared vision statement. It also addresses developing ongoing team member contributions and collaborations in support of the vision.

1. FIREPOWER SHARED VISION™
FOUNDATIONS
FOR
TEAM SUCCESS
Forming Fully Engaged Business Teams™
2011

2. Breaking Common
Language Barriers
2
 Shared Vision™ is not the same as a
business plan vision.
 It is a simple statement that can be
extracted from your business plan
vision and mission if you already have
one.

3. Speak Easy
3
 A Job versus a Role
 A Staff versus a Team
 My office versus Our Office
 My clients versus Our
Clients

4. A Long Term
requirement
4
Shared Vision™ is written
for your team.
 It is an evolving tool.
 It is for connecting your team to
your future.
 It is for your team to reference at
a regular frequency.

5. Shared Vision™
For Hiring Accuracy
5
Common hiring misfires interrupt the
performance of large and small
organizations.
 Hiring occurs without communicating the
strengths required to succeed in the role.
 Constant hire-rehire cycles.

6. No Vision -
6
 Team members feel accountable to
fulfilling their job description.
 No quantifiable process for
developing long term contributions
to growth.
 Team members do not feel
connected to the firm’s mission.

7. Maximize
Team Contributions
7
This is a common complaint among owners
and decision makers that have enjoyed long
standing teams.
 Why can’t we get our team to think outside the box, get on
board to help us meet our growth goals?
 My team does not stay late to satisfy client needs.
 My team remarks “its not my job” if encouraged to
expand their duties.

8. Warning Signs
8
 We do not have updated job
descriptions and our team is not
clear about requirements for
success.
 The team seems motivated, yet
uninspired or eager to learn.
 They do not have ideas when asked
for input at team meetings.

9. Three Things
You Must Consider
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1. Communicate the role of each team
member in sync with your vision.
2. Develop their ongoing contributions
to your vision.
3. Arrange team collaborations that
are in sync with your vision.

10. The firepower™
Vision Dialogue
10
The FIREPOWER Vision Dialogue explores two
primary planning questions that will help to form a
basis for your Shared Vision™.
Wondering how well your organization understands your
goals? Try asking your associates if they can explain
your company vision.
 Does it match yours?
 Can they express it clearly?
 Do they share it with others ?
Now we can explore the two questions. We will use
your answers to shape your simply stated Shared
Vision™
 What are the specific challenges you aim to solve
in your marketplace?
 Next, describe the clients you currently serve or
(plan to) using these services.

11. The Firepower™
Vision Dialogue
11
Exploring your preferences for your own role(s) is a
critical component of forming your Shared Vision™.
Your team will understand your contribution as you move
toward the future.
 What challenges your ideas about the future of your
business?
 How will your team members help you to meet your
future goals?
 What part of your business energizes you?
 What part of your client processes might you personally
continue, what aspects do you wish to transfer?
 Using your personal strengths as a guide, how will your
role transition from owner sales to working with a new
sales team?

12. Shared Vision™
The Essential Component
12
FIREPOWER™ Team Foundations
1. The process forms your search criteria by targeting
the requirements for the position which you are hiring.
2. Merges all performance considerations to ensure the
likelihood of success.
FIREPOWER™ Team Development
1. Formulate your Shared Vision™ to optimize new and
existing team member contributions.
2. Validate individual problem solving strengths required
for successful performance.
3. Arrange your team capabilities in sync with your
vision, to fuel performance and demonstrate your
unique and identifiable team culture.

13. What is the Firepower™
Consulting brand?
13
“More than anything, we inspire professional teams to expand their client interactions,
increase their market share and grow profits, by using the unique problem solving strengths of
their team as a foundation for growth. We facilitate a renewed business perspective, integrating
the timeless aspects of human performance to connect the entire team to a Shared Vision™.
Together we co-create an exclusive and identifiable business culture that supports the desired
business vision, and using three critical processes we answer the essential business planning
question: Who is on your team?
Over a twenty five year period, the quest has not changed.
Successful practitioners want to achieve sustainability and balance of life and work. They are
inspired by new opportunities to serve clients. They employ their wisdom, their natural talents
and core values as a guiding compass to orient organizational decision making. Aware of the
newest product lines, client management systems, marketing techniques and service
improvements, they realize that systems and processes are not the only considerations
for achieving long term success. Many great ideas for practice enhancements have left
their teams feeling overwhelmed and without actionable guidance, as they attempt to on-board
new processes. Our solution to the challenge; formulate a distinct and shared business vision
and connect the unique abilities of your team in sync with your vision. Once connected, your
team will see clearly how they can continue making revenue generating contributions toward
your shared goals.
People drive your business plan.
Engaging your team’s productive energy and arranging their innate strengths to fuel your
shared business vision is our focus. Your team helps you to enhance your client relationships
and they innovate organizational improvements while they drive their unique passion and
productive strengths into your plan. Your team learns to formulate a contributing role to your
business vision, by using their strengths to power their contributions.
Momentum is everything. It takes dedication by the entire team to achieve your shared
goals, and finding your momentum is often the most difficult component of the transition! Your
team must focus their efforts and maximize individual and collective productivity in order to
power long term success of your strategic plan.
FIREPOWER™ clients want a growth process that is driven by their own authentic abilities.
The want to build and re-energize their teams, to increase market share and to sustain their
new found momentum. They want a partner to navigate the course. We are on site and in
depth, helping your people to fuel performance and achieve your business vision together.

14. The Working Relationship
14
Why work with a consulting partner?
“In the midst of running your business the last thing you need is a
complicated process for knowing who should be on your team, and
what will sustain their motivation toward your vision!”
Successful business owners have an idea of what they want to achieve, yet it is difficult
to know how to get their team connected to the goals; their energies engaged beyond
their job descriptions. As an independent business owner, it is difficult to formulate an
objective viewpoint about meeting your business vision, determine who should be on
your teams, measure their performance, know how they can grow their contribution to
your client relationships and manage the real dynamics of your workplace, while you are
doing your part.
We are asked by owners and key decision makers, how they can formulate objective
expectations for team hiring that will sustain the working relationship. During the early
business building years, most of our clients have hired from job descriptions, without
effective expectations for growing as a cohesive organization. A fortunate few have
enjoyed long standing working relationships and their challenges are growth oriented.
They desire increased contributions. When we examine the natural strengths of their
team members in sync with a Shared Vision™ their efforts demonstrate continuity of
the practice culture, they learn mutual respect for the values of each team member and
they maximize their collaborative participation in the business growth plan.
Business owners need dedicated expertise to define their next phase, provide them wit
the confidence to move ahead while they concentrate on business development.
The right hire and positive alignment of team member capabilities will fuel your
productivity, your client relationships and your revenues, so you can continue to grow.
FIREPOWER™ Team Foundations forms a critical basis for organizational hiring and
selection and team development. To build a team with long term potential is our goal.
Your continued success as you grow, depends on your ability to select and develop
people with the right abilities for your organizational needs. We are your business
partner, providing the tools and processes that will enable you to select and develop
your team with confidence as you grow your business.
The results are Qualitative & Quantitative
We cut through relationship build-up that prevents well established teams from
communicating their values. We determine the required expectations for new positions
so you can communicate them to potential candidates, new team members and existing
teams. With clear expectations for how to succeed in each role, we harness individual
capability, inspire innovation and create synergistic collaborations, so you and your
team will achieve your Shared Vision™.
Instruments are EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) approved, meets
American Psychological Standards and Adult Learning Association Standards.

15. Maria C. Forbes, Founder
FIREPOWER™ Business Catalyst
Kolbe Certified™ , AECS®
Developing Fully Engaged Team Performance
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A twenty-five year consulting career has re-energized the performance of professional
teams in the Midwest and Southeast United States regions. Maria brings awareness to the
unique individual capabilities of the team beyond the job description and integrates these
reliable strengths into the business planning process.
Maria is a Kolbe Certified™ Consultant, using the Kolbe Instruments to validate individual
instinctive problem solving strengths, resulting in a Performance MO™. A guided
exploration of passion and performance bridges the gap between what we know about our
work, and how we instinctively move through challenge, to maximize team contributions and
ignite new energy into a workplace culture.
Using her branded process, FIREPOWER™ Business Catalyst, Maria unites three specific
business capabilities; the owner’s expressed vision for the future, and the way in which
unique abilities of their team can be arranged to sustain client relationships and increase
market share. An accredited expert in consultative sales, AECS® RainmakerDNA, Maria’s
mission is to maximize performance of professional teams by engaging their individual and
collaborative strengths toward a Shared Vision™.
With a degree in Commercial Design from Missouri State University, Maria entered the
corporate space-planning field, managing workspace designs for corporate relocations and
healthcare clinical spaces. From design to the business of design, Maria found her passion
in developing human capability as the competitive business advantage. Realizing the power
of enhanced team roles, she began to help independent business owners in architecture and
related fields to create purposeful and sustainable market appeal. Architectural and design
firms were just the beginning; Maria’s process for fueling team contributions expanded to
education, creative services firms, corporate team development and independent financial
advisory firms.
Maria’s vast experience has led to consulting engagements that re-shape the way business
teams are formed and developed. Incorporating the principles of design to explore business
challenges, express owner vision, and arrange team talents, Maria’s processes reveal the true
purpose of businesses and their unique abilities to maintain relevance. Her work highlights a
unique business culture by merging personal experience and education, and a desire for
success, with problem-solving strengths, to fully engage professional capabilities, both
individually and collaboratively in support of a shared business vision.
Maria is a faculty member of The Life Transitions University™, Atlanta GA
Alliance partner and instructor for Mastermind Power Connection,™ Atlanta GA
Member of The Copernicus Institute, Incubator for Business Innovation
Business Mentor, Catholic Charities Atlanta Georgia
Find your fire. Fuel your business.