Patrick Lencioni (of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team fame) in The Ideal Team Player How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues shares the following through a story/fable. In this post I can only summarize a few of the excellent points.
- The analysis of their current employees is enlightening and an approach we could use
- Define what qualities make for a good team player
- Stop hiring those that don't make good team players
- Identify your current great people and those that should be moved on and do so
- The analysis results are when team members possess these three qualities significant humility, hunger and people smarts they are more likely to be:
- Vulnerable and build trust
- Engage in productive but uncomfortable conflicts with team members
- Commit to group decisions even if they initially disagree
- Hold their peers accountable when they see performance gaps that can be addressed
- Put the team ahead of their own needs
- If the person does not possess all three qualities they will be
- Humble only = the pawn
- Hungry only= the bulldozer
- Smart only = the charmer
- Humble and hungry but not smart = the accidental mess-maker
- Hungry and smart but not humble = the skillful politician
- Where do each of your current people fit
- Application
- Hiring
- Don't be generic-be specific about what you need
- Debrief each interview as a team as a group decision will generally be better than individual’s decision
- Make interviews nontraditional by involving diverse people such as nurses, physicians and unstructured such as tours
- Ask what others would say about them
- Ask the candidate to do some real work
- Don't ignore hunches and keep probing
- Assessing current people
- Humble do they genuinely compliment or praise teammates without hesitation
- Do they easily admit when they make mistakes
- Are they willing to take on lower-level work for the good of the team
- Do they gladly share credit for team accomplishments
- Do they readily acknowledge their weaknesses
- Do they offer and receive apologies graciously
- Developing people
- Often the lack of humility is related to insecurity so be sure they achieve the recognition they deserve and they see you as the leader role modeling humility
- People sometimes struggle to become hungry because they don't understand the connection between what they do and the impact it has on others
- People smarts also comes from observing other successful people and coaching when they aren’t people smart
- Embedding the model
- Be explicit and bold-say what you expect as a leader so expectations are clear
- Catch and revere-acknowledge/recognize the behaviors you want
- Detect and address-whenever you see behavior that violates one of the values and take the time to let the person know not just in egregious situations
- Be a constant role model of the values and ensure your leadership team does so as well
Feel free to share your thoughts