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

by Patrick Lencioni

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.

First, the employee will finally break through, determined not to keep hearing those reminders.

The other likely outcome will be that she will finally decide that being humble or hungry or smart is not her thing, and she'll decide on her own to leave.

There is a third outcome that should happen very rarely. In some cases, an employee decides that she will tolerate the constant reminding from her manager about her issues, and she won't leave. In that case, formal action will be necessary to move her off the team, and that's usually a bureaucratic and painful process for everyone.

Developing Humility

employees can make progress simply by acting like they are humble.

Developing Hunger

Hunger is the least sensitive and nuanced of the three virtues. That's the good news. The bad news is, based on my experience, it's the hardest to change.

Passion for the Mission and the Team

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.

Clear Expectations

Another indispensable part of developing hunger in an employee (assuming he or she has the required tools and skills) is to set clear behavioral expectations for them and then hold them accountable for those expectations.

Not-Too-Gentle Reminders

What that employee needs is someone to give him immediate and unambiguous feedback so that he can quickly digest the pain and translate it into a desire for change.

Encouragement

When a non-hungry employee starts to exhibit signs of hunger, praise her publicly and have teammates do the same.

Developing Smarts

The key to helping someone become smarter is to make it clear, to everyone involved, that a deficiency in this area is not about intention. Employees who lack people smarts have no desire to create interpersonal problems with their teammates. They just don't understand the nuances of interpersonal situations, and they don't seem to realize how their words and actions impact others. If that person and his teammates know this and remind themselves about it, the process of helping him become smarter will be much easier and more effective.

Basic Training

Application #4: Embedding the Model into an Organization's Culture

Be Explicit and Bold

Catch and Revere

Detect and Address

Connecting the Ideal Team Player Model With the Five Dysfunctions of A Team

First, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team book, online team assessment, and other products all focus on how a group of people must interact in order to become a cohesive team. This book, however, focuses on an individual team member and the virtues that make him or her more likely to overcome the dysfunctions that derail teams.

Second, any team that has invested time and energy in the five dysfunctions methodology can use the humble, hungry, smart model as a tune-up.

Finally, the ideal team player model and tools presented in this book provide yet another opportunity for team members to be vulnerable with one another. By sitting down and acknowledging their strengths and weaknesses—remember, the leader should always go first—a team can develop greater levels of trust among members, which make conflict, commitment, accountability, and results that much more likely.

But I must admit that apart from the other two virtues, humility stands alone. It is, indeed, the greatest of all virtues and the antithesis of pride, which is the root of all sin, according to the Bible. The most compelling example of humility in the history of mankind can be found in Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity. He attracted people of all kinds when he walked the earth, and continues to do so today, providing an example of humility that is as powerful as it is countercultural. And so, it is my hope that readers of this book will take something else away with them and apply it in their lives: an appreciation for the true gift that it is to be humble and the divine origins of that virtue.