What are the three virtues of Patrick Lencioni’s ideal team player? How does cultivating these qualities in your employees help you level up their performance? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his book The Ideal Team Player<\/em>, Patrick Lencioni explains how to spot, hire, and coach a model team player\u2014someone who is humble, hungry, and smart. Through the fictional story of a man who takes over his uncle\u2019s troubled construction company, he explains how these three simple qualities combined can transform any organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here goes the fable of Patrick Lencioni’s ideal team player model. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n In Patrick Lencioni’s The Ideal Team Player<\/em>, Bob Shanley, founder and owner of Valley Builders, a large Napa Valley construction firm, was approaching retirement and looking for someone to take over his business. His nephew, Jeff Shanley, who\u2019d spent two decades in marketing in Silicon Valley, was looking for a new challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of Bob\u2019s siblings or children was involved in or interested in running the 200-employee company. Meanwhile, Jeff had done some successful consulting work with Valley Builders\u2019 executive team\u2014he and Bob liked and respected each other. So Bob agreed to train his nephew as his successor. Jeff, his wife Maurine, and their children moved to Napa Valley, and Jeff focused on learning the construction business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff\u2019s education in the construction business was short-circuited, however, when Bob developed heart problems; he needed immediate surgery and had to step down. Jeff suddenly found himself becoming the new CEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adding to Jeff\u2019s challenges, Valley Builders had just landed two large projects\u2014a hospital and a hotel. The company had done projects like these before, but it had never done two major projects at the same time. Bob assured Jeff they had the capability\u2014they just needed to significantly increase staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Valley Builders\u2019 top executives, besides Bob, were Clare Massick, head of administration, finance, legal, and HR; and Bobby Brady, vice president of field operations. Jeff had a frank discussion with them. While they acknowledged concerns about Jeff\u2019s inexperience, they felt he was trustworthy and, as a Shanley, would be personally invested in the company\u2019s success. Further, Bobby said he liked the fact that Jeff listened and wasn\u2019t a \u201cjackass\u201d to work with. They agreed to work as a team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The biggest issue immediately facing the company was labor. For the new hospital and hotel projects, they\u2019d need to add 60 people in the next two months. In addition, progress was stalling on the Oak Ridge building site, a problematic shopping center project that Valley Builders was trying to finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feeling the pressure, Jeff talked one evening with his wife Maurine, who expressed confidence that Jeff could handle the challenges. Still, Jeff worried that the job could affect his relationship with his family if he screwed it up. Maurine advised him to just tackle one issue at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff learned more from Clare and Bobby about their staffing issues. The company had been experiencing significant turnover (33%) on its projects, so Bobby advised that they hire 80 people to get 60, since 20 would likely quit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019d be able to fill the lower-level jobs without a problem, Clare said, but finding a manager for the hospital project and three foremen would be more difficult\u2014they\u2019d lost two foremen a few months ago, so they were already behind. The foremen had quit because one of the two managers for the Oak Ridge project, Nancy Morris, was difficult to get along with and allowed problems to fester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the founder of Valley Builders, Bob had always stressed teamwork (he\u2019d hired Jeff in the past to do teamwork training with his executives), but the concept hadn\u2019t been pushed beyond the management team. So the company was being hamstrung by morale and turnover problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, when Jeff questioned Clare and Bobby, he realized they couldn\u2019t define what teamwork meant at Valley Builders or how they knew whether potential hires would be team players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only criterion seemed to be the one Bobby had used in describing Jeff: they tried to avoid hiring \u201cjackasses\u201d that others wouldn\u2019t like working with. They couldn\u2019t define jackass, however, and acknowledged they had relied on Bob\u2019s intuition for who would be a good fit for the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff knew he had a lot to learn about construction, but he was clear on one thing: they needed to only hire team players. <\/strong>Also, they had to find out how many non-team players they had working for them and get them to change or leave. Otherwise, they wouldn\u2019t complete the hospital and hotel projects\u2014or even keep Valley Builders in business in the long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first step would be figuring out how to identify a team player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That afternoon, Jeff talked with his cousin Ben, a school teacher and basketball coach (and Bob\u2019s son) to get his thoughts on essential characteristics of team players. Ben said the key qualities were that they worked hard and weren\u2019t prima donnas\u2014they focused on helping the team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, Jeff and his two top managers went through a list of people the company had let go or had problems with in the past few years, looking for common denominators among non-team players. They came up with a fairly predictable list of negative traits: negative, lazy, self-centered, insensitive, and irresponsible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff, Clare, and Bobby soon got to test their own ability to identify team players: They decided to add a fourth top executive to their team, to help get the two big building projects done on time. Bobby had a highly qualified candidate in mind: Ted Marchbanks, a former division chief for a big construction company, who had retired recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They had a get-acquainted lunch with Ted and he came across as smooth and knowledgeable. Bobby wanted to hire him immediately, but Jeff and Clare didn\u2019t have a sense yet of whether he\u2019d be a team player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, they tried to figure out what they wanted in a team player by examining the opposite\u2014a non-team player or jackass. They came up with: overbearing, inappropriate, and clueless\u2014which seemed to describe Nancy, the problematic manager on the Oak Ridge project. Clare commented that Nancy wasn\u2019t upsetting people intentionally\u2014she just wasn\u2019t \u201csocially smart\u201d when it came to dealing with others. Regarding Ted, they agreed that he seemed smart about dealing with people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having people skills seemed important to being a team player, but Jeff thought there was more to it. Based on their analysis of past and current employees, plus his conversation with his cousin Ben (the basketball coach), three key qualities began to gel in Jeff\u2019s mind: lack of ego, willingness to work hard, and being smart about people.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ted\u2019s formal interview was scheduled for the next day. Before meeting with him, the three senior executives further refined the three team player qualities that Jeff had identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They decided that working hard meant more than just putting in a certain number of hours<\/strong>\u2014it also meant having motivation, passion, and a sense of urgency about the work. It meant going beyond what was expected\u2014being <\/strong>hungry<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The other quality they\u2019d talked about, being smart<\/em> about people, was different from being intelligent. It was knowing how to act and what to say and not say, plus being aware of the impact of your words and actions on others. It was something like emotional intelligence but less complicated. But a person who was smart could still be a non-team player or jackass, by charming or manipulating people for his own ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third quality they\u2019d identified was a lack of ego. People with big egos were the opposite of a team player: focused on themselves and were arrogant. The opposite of arrogance is humility, which was the quality they were looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So an ideal team player would be humble, hungry, and smart.<\/strong> They planned to use the model for evaluating job candidates, starting with Ted. Since they knew he was smart or skilled at dealing with people, their goal would be to determine whether he was humble and hungry (driven).<\/p>\n\n\n\n A number of managers met with Ted and, between the interviews, they discussed their impressions and determined what issues the person scheduled to meet with Ted next should dig into more deeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Craig, the Oak Ridge project manager, thought Ted was hungry; he definitely wanted the job, and he wanted to be busy again. Clare couldn\u2019t get a read on whether he was humble or not. But she did notice something that stuck with her\u2014he hadn\u2019t bothered to learn her receptionist, Kim\u2019s, name although Kim had been escorting him around the building all day. Still, she thought they should hire him, as did Bobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Jeff asked Kim for her impressions of Ted, she noted that Ted had waited in the lobby for 15 minutes that morning without noticing her. His only comments to her throughout the day were to ask her where the restroom was and if she could charge his phone. Jeff felt that treating administrative staff dismissively suggested that Ted lacked humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When he interviewed Ted over lunch, Jeff looked for indications that Ted was humble. He asked Ted how his former coworkers would describe him. Ted said he was well-liked by coworkers, but he got slightly annoyed when Jeff asked if that included administrative staff. He said he\u2019d never had any problems with people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff explained to build a culture of teamwork<\/a>, Valley Builders only hired people who were humble, hungry, and smart about dealing with others. Anyone who didn\u2019t share these values would be uncomfortable<\/a> working at the company. Finally, Jeff asked Ted for names of people he could talk to at Ted\u2019s old company about whether he\u2019d be a good fit for Valley Builders. Ted hesitated; he said he\u2019d send a few names in the afternoon. But by the end of day, he hadn’t done so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Clare called the HR director at his previous company, who was noncommittal about Ted\u2019s attitude toward the staff there. Then Jeff got a call from Ted, who said he\u2019d decided to withdraw from consideration because he wasn\u2019t ready to give up retirement and go back to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When they learned that Ted had backed out, Clare and Bobby questioned whether they were being too idealistic or simplistic with their model and had chased away a good candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That night, Jeff talked it over with Maurine, who said the fact that the model was simple didn\u2019t mean it was wrong. Besides, she said, Ted sounded like a total politician\u2014and when you hire a politician, you get someone with an ego who creates complications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To further test the team player model, Jeff decided to see whether evaluating people against the model would help them understand and solve their problems at the Oak Ridge site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff, Clare, and Bobby discussed the on-site managers. Nancy was humble and hungry, but definitely not smart about people. She inadvertently created a lot of problems that had to be cleaned up. Of her two foremen who had quit, Pedro was a complete team player, while Carl lacked hunger or motivation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They decided that Craig, the other project manager, was also humble, hungry, and smart. Suddenly, Bobby had an epiphany: they should promote Craig to the executive team\u2014he\u2019d definitely fit in better than Ted. At that moment, they all realized that hiring Ted would have been a mistake. Further, Craig was the right choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Jeff met with Nancy to determine whether she recognized her weakness and would be willing to do what it took to become a team player. He invited her to his office and explained the three qualities they were looking for in a team player: humility, hunger, and people skills. They agreed that her strongest area was working hard (being hungry); she also felt she was humble, or at least not arrogant. But she acknowledged that she focused on getting things done more than on being nice, and therefore wasn\u2019t good at social interaction. She was willing to work on getting better at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The employees were overwhelmingly positive about Craig\u2019s promotion, and he did well in the new position. Meanwhile, two references\u2014an administrative employee at Ted\u2019s old company and also one of his former clients\u2014called and told Jeff that Valley Builders had dodged a bullet by not hiring him: Ted always put his own interests first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clare created a new hiring program; all hiring managers were trained in how to hire<\/a> team players. They hired some strong senior managers and this made hiring the right people<\/a> at other levels easier. One of the biggest pluses was rehiring the foreman Pedro, who had left in disgust. Nancy had contacted Pedro and admitted she\u2019d let him down by being difficult to work with and not confronting personnel issues, but said she was working to do better in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff met with each of the company\u2019s 17 foremen and project leaders, as he had with Nancy, to talk about the need for teamwork and the qualities everyone needed to demonstrate. Only one person ended up leaving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Craig became an effective leader, working closely with Bobby on oversight of the hospital and hotel projects, both of which Valley Builders completed successfully. Nancy became Craig\u2019s best employee. The three team player qualities became part of the regular conversation at Valley Builders, and teams were more effective in delivering results.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Fable<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Challenges<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s a Team Player? <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A Test Run<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Things Come Together<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A Few Months Later<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A Year Later<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n