Leadership Summit favorite, Bestselling Author and Founder of the Table Group, Patrick Lencioni, gave a great talk presenting new content about what to look for and how to be an ideal team player.
The Ideal Team Player
#1 Humble
- More interested in others than yourself
- Lacking self-confidence is a violation of humility
- The recognition of that which is true
- Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself it’s thinking of yourself less
- Pride is the root of all evil and humility is the antidote to pride
#2 Hungry
#3 Smart
- Emotional Intelligence
- Common sense around people
- If you’re intelligent but don’t treat people well you’re not smart
It’s easy to identify the following 3 kinds of people and weed them out:
- The Pawn = Humble but not hungry or smart
- Not effective on a team
- They need our prayers but probably don’t need to be invited to be on our teams
- The Bulldozer = Hungry but not humble or smart
- Leave a trail of dead bodies behind
- The Charmer = Smart but not humble or hungry
If a person has 2 of these it can create serious problems in the organization:
- Accidental Mess-Maker = Humble & Hungry
- They care about people and want to get things done
- They ruffle people’s feathers but their intentions are good
- Not smart about how they deal with people
- Lovable Slacker = Humble and smart
- They are lovable and usually do just enough work to stay around but don’t help the team and don’t go above and beyond
- You like them but they don’t perform
- Skillful Politician = Smart and really driven but not humble
- This one is the most dangerous
- They know how to make themselves look humble
- Charming and driven but not humble
- How to help your team get better at this:
- Help people be honest about what they’re good at and what they’re not good at
- Develop your people – you have to have the courage as leaders to consistently hold people accountable and then people will either get better or they’ll leave on their own. You’re not doing anyone a favor by not calling them on their stuff.
- Hire the right people:
- Change the hiring process a little bit – we over emphasize technical skills and abilities
- Behavior always rises to the top
- Get people out of the office to see them in the real world and see how they deal with real human beings
- Ask people questions more than 1 time
- A big part of humility is forgiveness…can you ask for forgiveness, give and receive forgiveness?
- Stop doing silo interviews…a bunch of people interview them together
- Scare people with sincerity: “we’re fanatical about humility, hungry, and people smarts…we’re so serious about it that if you’re not, you’re not going to like working here and we’re not going to like working with you.”
- People who are workaholics are missing something in their heart and trying to find their identity in their work
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