The Ideal Team Player

In the second half of his book The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues, Lencioni (2016) describes the right people as ones who have “humility, hunger and people smarts” (p. 155). These virtues define team players. How? First up is humility: this is the virtue that is opposite of pride. A humble person is one who is willing to recognize the achievements of others before focusing on his own. Humble people are not self-seeking. A team player is one who wants to support others—and that is a humble person. Second is hunger. A team player has to have drive. Hunger is the passion that makes a person want to dive in and get wet—it is the motivation for wanting to pursue goals and keep at a task until it is accomplished. A hungry team member is one you can count on to not quit until the goal is reached. He is self-motivated and a self-starter. Third is people smarts. People smarts are needed because these help a person know how to read others and get along with them in a positive and encouraging way. Individuals with people smarts know how to communicate, have emotional and social intelligence, and don’t make situations awkward.
The fact that Lencioni (2016) covers these points in detail makes the book worth reading. It is informative and insightful and gives a lot of good reinforcement regarding how an individual should approach the prospect of working in a team. For that reason, this book is just as helpful for team leaders who are building a team as it is for team members who are looking to be selected to be on a team. If a person wants to be chosen, he should follow the advice of Lencioni (2016) and demonstrate humility, hunger and people smarts. Show that you are not all about your own ego, that you have drive and want to work hard, and that you are intelligent when it comes to understanding how to get along with others. Those characteristics are what team leaders will be looking for when they go to hire.
If you are a team leader, Lencioni (2016) gives some useful tips that you can use when assembling your team. First, you have to be able to look for the three attributes described above. You have to know how to spot them and you have to know how to find the individuals who have them. It’s about asking the right questions and getting people to talk: that is how you learn about them. Some tips that Lencioni (2016) gives when conducting interviews include:
· Be specific with your questions so that you can get a good idea of how the interviewee might react in a given situation; this helps you to target specific behaviors and characteristics that you are looking for.
· Do not go the interview process alone: go in with a team; after the interview is conducted, talk to your team members about what they observed in case you missed something or in case they saw something that you did not.
· Put a potential hire in a real world situation and see how they respond. This will give you a good idea of whether they actually have the skills to succeed or whether they are all talk.
· Pay attention to what your instincts are saying. Sometimes you may not be able to tell why you like or don’t like a potential candidate. Trust your instincts. They can sense things and are often right.
Lencioni (2016) also notes that if you really want to surround yourself with and put people on your team who have humility, hunger and people smarts, always be on the lookout for these qualities no matter where you are. Don’t wait for applicants to come knocking. Whenever you identify a person with the skills and characteristics you want on your team, start recruiting. That is the best way to make sure you are going to have a great team.
The first half of the book tells the “fable” side of how Lencioni (2016) came to arrive at his ideas. It relates the story of several characters coming together at a construction firm to form a team of 80 people. They begin the process of trying to vet individuals and find out what they themselves are actually looking for. It is colorful and eventful and gives some good examples of how people will behave in the real world—but the best part of the book comes in the second half when Lencioni (2016) gets into the lessons that are meant to be learned from the fable of the first half.
The book is well worth reading and could be applied in virtually any industry, sector or organization. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry there are many companies that could benefit from team members who have humility, hunger and people smarts. Pharmaceutical industries attract scientific types—people who are talented with chemicals and know how to develop drugs in the labs. But there is more to forming a successful team than just bringing in the brainiest people. As the fable half of Lencioni’s (2016) book shows, people with talent can also be petty, egotistical, poor communicators, and non-starters. They can be lazy, uninterested in reaching goals on time, and have no real ethical or moral foundation. They might know a laboratory like the back of their hand, but if they don’t have humility or hunger or people smarts, they are not likely to be of much use to you.
A pharmaceutical company like Merck & Co or GlaxoSmithKlinie will have a lot of teams working on drugs and patents, doing research, and carrying out tests in order to get drugs to market in a timely way and before the competition gets their product their first. People’s lives may be depending on some of these products, and the company’s profits may also hang in the balance. If either of these companies have egotistical workers on their teams who are only interested in themselves and in always getting the recognition they feel they deserve, the company is not going to succeed in its aims because it will always be having to deal with these petty people’s problems. The teams will be dysfunctional because the egotistical members will try to undercut and undermine their rivals and communication will fail. For a big time company like Merck, this type of team membership simply will not do.
Not only do team members have to be humble, therefore, but they also have to be able to facilitate communication among a diverse set of people, which is going to be the case in any environment but especially in the pharmaceutical industry, for instance, where scientists literally come from all over the world to work together towards accomplishing a common aim. Having team members who have people smarts will make a huge difference in the success of the company because these individuals will know how to get the group going in the right direction without causing unnecessary problems or getting hung up on slights when individuals without people smarts make mistakes that can be potentially offensive. In diverse environments, there are bound to be multiple sets of cultures on any one team, and it is unlikely that all team members will understand the different cultures or know what to expect from individuals who do not share their same background. That is why it is important for a team to have at least a few team members who have people smarts and can detect when a culture conflict might arise: the can work to de-escalate a situation or deflect a potential issue that could turn the entire team into a fighting match otherwise.
Lencioni (2016) covers all these aspects and more in his book and that makes it a must read for any professional in the field. Whether one is a team builder or just a team member, it helps to be aware of the type of real world situations you will find yourself in when you start working with others for a company that relies on teams reaching goals at a continuous and steady pace. The book’s fable half can give you an example of how it all works in real life; and the book’s second half breaks it all down into easy-to-understand guides that will be useful when you want to start thinking more about how you can be most effective at your job.
In conclusion, I would highly recommend Lencioni’s (2016) The Ideal Team Player. It is a work that combines realistic examples of team building in the real world with insightful tips and advice on what to look for in a team player and what to cultivate in your own approach to work and colleagues. The ideal team player will be an individual who isn’t full of himself but knows enough to be humble about achievements and to support others for their hard work. He will be one who is self-motivated and knows when and how to get started on tasks. He will be one who knows how to communicate effectively with others and to keep situations from spiraling out of hand as a result of miscommunications, petty slights, or offenses. The best team player will be the individual who helps the team to stay on task, to stay motivated, leads by example, and embodies the virtues that make people most successful in life—humility, drive, and people smarts.
References
Lencioni, P. (2016). The ideal team player: How to recognize and cultivate the three essential virtues. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.