The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues - By Patrick Lencioni

Date read: 2017-03-18
How strongly I recommend it: 9/10
(See my list of 150+ books, for more.)

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Quick read on teamwork lessons built around a fable and then followed up with tactful advice on how to build great teams and companies. Simple concepts that are often overlooked (humility, hunger, and people smarts) and great interview questions on finding people with all three characteristics. Must read for hiring managers.

My Notes

"The right people" are the ones who have the three virtues in common - humility, hunger, and people smarts, with humility the most important out of the three.

HUMBLE
Defined as those that lack excessive ego or concerns about status and are quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek attention for their own. They share credit, emphasize team over self, and define success collectively rather than individually.

There are two basic types of people who lack humility:

People who make everything about them.

People who lack self-confidence but are generous and positive with others. Their lack of understanding of their own worth is also a violation of humility. Truly humble peole do not see themselves as greater than they are, but neither do they discount their talents and contirbutions. Having a disproportionately deflated sense of self-worth often hurts teams by not advocating for their own ideas or by failing to call attention to problems that they see.

"Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less." -C.S. Lewis.

Insecurity makes some people project overconfidence, and others discount their own talents.

HUNGRY
Always looking for more. More things to do. More to learn. More responsibility to take on. Constantly thinking about the next step and the next opportunity.

The healthy kind is a manageable and stable commitment to doing a job well and going above and beyond when it is truly required.

SMART
A person's common sense about people with the ability to be interpersonally appropriate and aware.

They ask good questions, listen to what others are saying, and stay engaged in conversations intently.

They have good judgement and intuition around the subtleties of group dynamics and the impact of their words and actions.

THE IDEAL MODEL CATEGORIES
0 out of 3 - Have little chance of being valuable team members and are very easy to identify and rarely slip through interviews and make it onto teams.

1 out of 3 - An uphill battle-not impossible, but not easy.

Humble Only: The Pawn - Pleasant, kind-hearted, unassuming people who often get left out of conversations and activities, and have little impact on the performance of a team.

Hungry Only: The Bulldozer - Will be determined to get things done, but with a focus on their own interests and with no understanding or concern for how their actions impact others. They stand out and can be easily idenitfied and removed.

Smart Only: The Charmer - Can be entertaining and even likeable for a while, but have little interest in the long-term well-being of the team or their colleagues.

2 out of 3 - Have a little higher likelihood of overcoming their challenges and becoming ideal team players.

Humble and Hungry, but Not Smart: The Accidental Mess-Maker - Genuinely want to serve the team but inadvertently create interpersonal problems on the team. This is the least dangerous type of person to a team.

Humble and Smart, but Not Hungry: The Lovable Slacker - Have limited passion for the work the team is doing and need significant motivation and oversight, making them a drag an the team's performance.

Hungry and Smart, but Not Humble: The Sklillful Politician - The most dangerous of the three types, they are cleverly ambitious and willing to work extremely hard, but only in as much as it will benefit them personally. It's hard for leaders to identify them and address their destructive behaviors as they tend to rise in the ranks of companies where leaders reward individual performance over teamwork.

WARNING: These classifications are reserved only for people who are significantly lacking in one or more of the three traits. Be careful you don't over analyze people.

APPLICATION
Hiring - During the interview process, don't be generic and try to debrief each interview as a team quickly after each interview so you can hone in on specific areas and course correct as you go. Also consider group interviews as some people are much different one-on-one than they are in a group.

Make interviews nontraditional by incorporating interviews with a diverse group of people in everyday situations and that they should be longer than forty-five minutes. Get out of the office with a candidate and see him deal with people in an unstructured environment.

Ask questions more than once. Asking the question again in a different way might get you a different answer. Ask a third time in a more specific way, and you will get a more honest answer.

Ask what others would say about the candidate. Example: "How would your colleagues describe your work ethic?" or "If I were to ask your colleagues to assess your level of humility, what would they say?"

Ask candidates to do some real work.

If you have doubts but can't explain why, keep probing. More than not, there is something causing that doubt.

Scare people with sincerity by telling them that humility, hunger, and people smarts are requirements for the job. Assure them that you are absolutely, fanatically committed to these principles and that if an employee did not share that committment, it would be miserable working here. Let candidates know that they would be called out for their behavior, again and again, and that they'd eventually dread coming to work.

SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Humility

"Tell me about the most important accomplishments of your career" - Look for more mentions of we than I.

"What was the most embarrassing moment in your career? Or the biggest failure?" - Look for whether the candidate celebrates that embarrassment or is mortified by it.

"How did you handle that embarrassment or failure?" - How they accepted responsibility, what they learned from it, and if they actually acted on what they learned.

"What is your greatest weakness?" - Look for answers that are real and a little painful.

"How do you handle apologies, either giving or accepting them?" - 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 them to demonstrate a genuine appreciation for others who have more skill or talent.

Hungry

"What is the hardest you've ever worked on something in your life?" - The candidate isn't complaining, but is grateful for the experience.

"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.

"What kinds of hours do you generally work?" - When a candidate focuses a lot on the hours that he's expected to work, he may not be the kind of hungry team player you need.

Smart
Observe the general behavior during the interview process and the way they answer questions. Put them in situations that are not like traditional interviews. Observe how they deal with waiters and waitresses, store clerks, and cab drivers.

"How would you describe your personality?" - Smart people generally know themselves and find it interesting to talk about their behavioral strengths and weaknesses.

"What do you do that ohters in your personal life might find annoying?"

"What kind of people annoy you the most, and how do you deal with them?"

"Would your former colleagues describe you as an empathic person?" or "Can you give me an example of how you've demonstrated empathy to a teammate?" - An indication that the person values empathy and whether they have an understanding of their own strengths or weaknesses in this area.

Be sure to ask yourself: "Would I want to work with this person every day?"

Candidate References - Put the reference provider at ease by describing the culture of the team the candidate will be joining and find out whether the reference thinks it's a match. Ask about specific behaviors and about how the candidate compared to other people the reference has managed or worked with. Focus on areas of doubt by getting to questions that reveal specific behaviors rather than general assessments. Also pay attention to references who don't respond and ask the reference what others would say about the candidate.

APPLICATION - PART 2
Assessing Current Employees - 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.

Questions managers can ask themselves:
Humility

Does he genuinely compliment or praise teammates without hesitaition?
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?

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?
Is he willing and eager to take on tedious and challenging tasks whenever necessary?
Does she look for opportunities to contribute outside of her area of responsibility?

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?
Is she good at adjusting her behavior and style to fit the nature of a conversation or relationship?

The most effective way to assess employees is often to ask them to evaluate themselves. It allows them to take ownership for their areas of development, and it minimizes the possibility of defensiveness and denial. Ask employees to assess what their teammates would say about them. Also, ask them to simply rank the three virtues for themselves, starting with the one they feel they demonstrate most clearly with.

Developing Employees Who are Lacking in One or More of the Virtues - the leader's commitment to constantly "reminding" an employee if they are not yet doing what is needed. Use other ideal team members as a stable of coaches.

Developing Humility - 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.

Work to identify the general cause of the insecruity and use Myers-Briggs or DiSC profiles to try to predict which people might have a higher likelihood of having humility problems.

Employees can make progress simply by acting like they are humble. Ask them 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. Have teammates coach the employee, providing encouragement and immediate feedback when the desired virtues are demonstrated or lacking.

Developing Hunger - This is the least sensitive and nuanced thus it's hardest to change. Someone who lacks hunger is not a bad person, just a bad team member.

Find a way to connect them to the importance of the work being done and do this as a team. Set clear expectations for them and then hold them accountable for those expectations.

It's even more vital to clarify the behaviors you want from them. Example: You expect her to help her colleagues make their numbers by doing whatever they need, including taking on some addititonal responsibility.

They need immediate and unambiguous feedback and when a non-hungry employee starts to exhibit signs of hunger, praise them publicly and have teammates do the same.

Developing Smarts - Deficiency in this area is not about intention. Like a bad puppy being trained, they need to be quickly and lovingly rapped on the nose with a newspaper whenever they do something non-smart.

Embedding the Model Into an Organization's Culture - Be explicit and bold. Be constantly on the lookout for any displays of those virtues. And when you see those displays you should hold them up as examples for everyone to see.

Whenever you see a behavior that violates one of the values, take the time to let the violator know that their behavior is out of line.

Contents:

My Notes