“The kind of people that all teams need are people who are humble, hungry, and smart: humble being little ego, focusing more on their teammates than on themselves. Hungry, meaning they have a strong work ethic, are determined to get things done, and contribute any way they can. Smart, meaning not intellectually smart but inner personally smart.” Patrick Lencioni
Patrick Lencioni thinks it is time to change the way people prepare for success. Drawing from his book, The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni makes the compelling case that the key to success in an increasingly team-oriented world are Three Simple Virtues:
- Humility – think about others before themselves…putting others before yourselves.
- Hunger – need a innate sense of hunger to get things done.
- Smart – high emotional intelligence…how we use our smarts to get the best out of others (people smarts).
Whether you’re a senior executive or a high school coach, focusing on these deceptively simple virtues can radically improve your personal and professional effectiveness and fulfillment.
The Concept
An ideal team player embodies three virtues: humility, hunger and people smarts. The power this combination yields drastically accelerates and improves the process of building high-performing teams.
- HUMBLE — Ideal team players are humble. They lack excessive ego or concerns about status. They are quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek recognition for their own. They share credit, emphasize team over self, and define success collectively rather than individually.
- HUNGRY — Ideal team players are hungry. They are always looking for more—more things to do, more to learn, more responsibility. Hungry people rarely have to be pushed by a manager to work harder because they are self-motivated and diligent. They are constantly thinking about the next step and the next opportunity.
- SMART — Ideal team players are smart. They are emotionally intelligent and have common sense about people. They tend to know what is happening in a group situation and how to effectively deal with others. They have good judgment and intuition around the subtleties of group dynamics and the impact of their words and actions.
What makes this model so powerful and unique is the required combination of all three attributes together, according to Lencioni. If even one attribute is missing in a team member, teamwork becomes significantly more difficult and sometimes even impossible.
References:
- https://www.tablegroup.com/product/ideal-team-player/
- https://de7pikzj4hvyk.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/14171138/Ideal-Team-Player-Model-and-Summary.pdf
- https://www.tablegroup.com/18-how-dysfunctional-is-your-team/
Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of the Table Group, a firm dedicated to making work more fulfilling by making organizations healthier.