The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues (J-B Lencioni Series)

by Patrick Lencioni

“How do you handle apologies, either giving or accepting them?” Look for and ask for specifics. Humble people are not afraid to say they are sorry, and they accept other people's genuine apologies with grace. People who do this usually have specific stories.

“Tell me about someone who is better than you in an area that really matters to you.” Look for the candidate to demonstrat...

Hungry “What is the hardest you've ever worked on something in your life?” Look for specific examples of real but joyful sacrifice.

“What do you like to do when you're not working?” Look out for too many time-consuming hobbies that suggest the candidate sees the job as a means to do other things.

“Did you work hard when you were a teenager?” Look for specifics, usually relating to schoolwork, sports, or jobs. And when it comes to sports, it's not about participation and having fun. Look for examples of difficulty, sacrifice, and hardship.

Smart

Observe how she deals with waiters and waitresses, store clerks, and cab drivers. Some people can mask their social awkwardness during a rehearsed interview, but for a longer period of time in a fluid situation, it is much harder.

“How would you describe your personality?” Look for how accurately the person describes what you are observing and how introspective he is. Smart people generally know themselves and find it interesting to talk about their behavioral strengths and weaknesses.

“What do you do that others in your personal life might find annoying?” Everyone annoys someone, sometimes. Especially at home. Smart people are not immune to this. But neither are they in the dark about it.

“What kind of people annoy you the most, and how do you deal with them?” What you're looking for here are self-awareness and self-control.

“Would your former colleagues describe you as an empathic person?”

whether the candidate seems to understand what others are feeling.

What you're looking for here is an indication that the person values empathy and whether he or she has an understanding of his or her own strengths or weaknesses in this area.

Would I want to work with this person every day? Smart candidates generally seem like the kind of people you'd enjoy spending time with on a regular basis.

Put the Reference Provider at Ease It's critical that a reference not feel that he is holding the future of the candidate in his hands,

Explain that the purpose of your call is not simply to ask if the candidate was a good employee, but rather whether she would thrive in the job she's interviewing for.

ensure that there is a fit that will ben...

Assure the reference that he or she isn't the only person providing input and that everything will be kept confidential and discreet.

start by asking the reference to give you three or four adjectives that best describe the candidate.

Adjust the interview questions from the previous section, and see how they match up with what the candidate said.

Focus on Areas of Doubt

get to questions that reveal specific behaviors rather than general assessments.

Pay Attention to References Who Don't Respond

Ask What Others Would Say

Application #2: Assessing Current Employees

there are three outcomes of this evaluation: (1) confirming that the employee is an ideal team player, (2) helping the employee improve and become one, or (3) deciding to move the employee out.

Manager Assessment

Humble Does he genuinely compliment or praise teammates without hesitation? Does she easily admit when she makes a mistake? Is he willing to take on lower-level work for the good of the team? Does she gladly share credit for team accomplishments? Does he readily acknowledge his weaknesses? Does she offer and receive apologies graciously? Hungry Does he do more than what is required in his own job? Does she have passion for the “mission” of the team? Does he feel a sense of personal responsibility for the overall success of the team? Is she willing to contribute to and think about work outside of office hours?

Smart Does he seem to know what teammates are feeling during meetings and interactions? Does she show empathy to others on the team? Does he demonstrate an interest in the lives of teammates? Is she an attentive listener? Is he aware of how his words and actions impact others on the team?

Employee Self-Assessment

the vast majority of employees really are willing to own up to their limitations, as long as the process is aimed at improvement instead of punishment and assuming that the work environment is not completely dysfunctional.

Ask team members to simply rank the three virtues for themselves, starting with the one they feel they demonstrate most clearly, followed by the second, and then the third. This allows everyone to call out their relative weakness without having to admit the extent of that weakness,

Application #3: Developing Employees Who Are Lacking in One or More of the Virtues

The most important part of the development process, and the part that is so often missing, is the leader's commitment to constantly “reminding” an employee if she is not yet doing what is needed.

In most situations, here's how it works. The manager tells her difficult employee that he needs to change—to become more hungry, let's say. Then she sees him slacking off, and maybe she reminds him once. Then she sees it again, and she complains to her husband, or to her colleagues, or worse yet to other members of the team she leads. This goes on for weeks or months, with passive-aggressive comments here and there, until she's finally had enough. Then she sits down with the employee and announces that he's going to be let go, and he seems shocked. Yes, shocked. How can this be? Well, in the mind of the manager, this guy has been told and he knows that he's not hungry enough. In the mind of the employee, he feels like he was told once, maybe twice, and that he hasn't heard any other complaints so he must be doing okay.

the solution is to constantly, repeatedly, kindly, constantly (yes, I said it twice) let the employee know that he's got to get better. Trust me. He'll almost always get better or opt out on his own.

some members of a team are going to be stronger at humility than others. Get them to coach the ones who would like to improve in this area. The same is true for hungry and smart. When every ideal team player is coaching and being coached, the development process not only improves team members individually, but it also creates a stronger sense of commitment and accountability for the entire team.

Developing Humility Humility is the most sensitive of the three virtues, which is why the process of improving in this area is often the most psychologically nuanced. That's because the source of a lack of humility is always related in some way to insecurity, and for most people, insecurity is rooted in childhood and family issues that go way back beyond their first day on the job or the team. Now, all of us are insecure in one way or another. It's important that someone trying to improve his capacity for humility understands this, otherwise he's likely to feel too ashamed or overwhelmed to begin. If a manager or coach can demonstrate his or her own challenges with humility, it makes it a lot easier for an employee to do so.

employees can make progress simply by acting like they are humble. By intentionally forcing themselves to compliment others, admit their mistakes and weaknesses, and take an interest in colleagues, employees can begin to experience the liberation of humility. This happens because they suddenly realize that focusing on others does not detract from their own happiness, but rather adds to it. After all, humility is the most attractive and central of all virtues.

having employees practice the very behaviors that they struggle with, so that they can come to understand the benefits to themselves and others.

the employee to make a list of the desired behaviors related to their area of development and then track their own actions over a period of time. Sometimes having a manager involved in that process is helpful for the purposes of encouragement and verification.

teammates coach the employee, providing encouragement and immediate feedback when the desired virtues are demonstrated or lacking.

it's pretty powerful when a teammate kindly says, “Hey, I think you're doing that bragging thing again, and you asked us to help you by letting you know when we see it.”

Leader Modeling Another important aspect of development for an employee is knowing that his manager values humility and does her best to demonstrate it. Even if the manager struggles, her willingness to admit it and continue working on it will go a long way toward encouraging the employee to do the same.

Developing Hunger

Unlike hunger, no one really prefers to lack humility, as this inevitably causes pain and suffering for him or her and those around them. Only the most self-delusional person would claim that lacking humility is a benefit. Deep down inside, we all know it's miserable. The same is true about being smart. No one would intentionally choose to have a lack of social awareness or interpersonal adeptness. The costs of not being smart, from embarrassment to unintended insensitivity, are great, and there are no benefits.

Plenty of people who lack hunger would like nothing more than to be fully engaged and more productive in their work. The point here is that some people actually do seem to prefer a sense of detachment and routineness, and pouring into them is not going to yield significant returns.

The key is to find out which people who lack hunger really like being that way and which don't, and then to support the ones who want to change, and to lovingly help the others find a job that doesn't require hunger.

The first and most important part of helping that person become hungry is to find a way to connect her to the importance of the work being done. Until this is accomplished, a manager cannot expect much change.

employees struggle to become hungry because they don't understand the connection between what they do and the impact it has on others, be they customers, vendors, or other employees. Asking someone to be a more engaged and invested team member won't do much if that employee doesn't think the work she does matters to someone.