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The Ideal Team Member

By Sara White posted 10-23-2016 09:33

  

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

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