The Ideal Team Player
A short review of the book “The Ideal Team Player”, written by Patrick Lencioni
Humble, Hungry, and Smart.
Recently, I finished reading the book The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues, and, as you may have noticed, those above are the three virtues of an ideal team player.
When I first opened the book, I thought “how can one write 240 pages only about team play?”. As it turned out, I was happily surprised. The author, Patrick Lencioni, slowly introduces the idea and the concepts of team playing, and he does so through a fable-like story, illustrating the struggles of a company when facing huge challenges in the market.
The way the main characters of the story find the three essential virtues is pretty fun and unexpected: they try to define the concept of a jackass. And the conclusion is: the opposite of a jackass would be a person who is humble, hungry, and smart.
For a person to be a good team player, that is, not to be a jackass, they must have all of the three values, at least to a certain degree. Nobody is 100% humble, 100% hungry, and 100% smart. But one can always improve themselves in those traits. Says the author:
What makes humble, hungry, and smart powerful and unique is not the individual attributes themselves, but rather the required combination of all three.
These are not permanent characteristics embedded in a person’s DNA; rather, they are developed and maintained through life experiences and personal choices at home and at work.
But what do those three concepts actually mean when it comes to team players? Well, we could define them roughly like this:
Humble: lack of excessive ego, emphasis on team over self.
Hungry: great desire to do and to learn, self-motivation, willingness to grow.
Smart: understanding and being in synchrony with people, being emotionally intelligent.
Even though the three of them are necessary, there is a hierarchy of importance. For the author, being humble is in the first place. A humble person is the one who puts the team’s needs before their own.
As the author says, “humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player”. A humble person is not egocentric, but that does not mean that they lack confidence.
[There are] people who lack self-confidence but are generous and positive with others. They tend to discount their own talents and contributions.
Truly humble people do not see themselves as greater than they are, but neither do they discount their talents and contributions. (Lencioni, P.)
The second virtue in the hierarchy is being hungry. This is a characteristic of a person who has the drive to achieve and contribute to the team’s success.
Hungry people almost never have to be pushed by a manager to work harder because they are self-motivated and diligent. (Lencioni, P.)
Finally, the third virtue in importance (but still important) is being smart. The smart person is the one who has the ability to understand and work effectively with others.
It is not about intellectual capacity. In the context of a team, smart simply refers to a person’s common sense about people. (Lencioni, P.)
In the second part of the book, the author provides tools for both employees and employers, team members and managers. There are tips for hiring, managing, coaching, and being ideal team players. The book is suitable for anyone who works in a team or leads one, regardless of the industry or size of the organization. The author explains, and I quote:
There are four primary applications of the ideal team player model within an organization: (1) hiring, (2) assessing current employees, (3) developing employees who are lacking in one or more of the virtues, and (4) embedding the model into an organization’s culture.
In conclusion, we can say that the book is a valuable source for anyone who wants to improve their teamwork skills and create a culture of collaboration and trust. That is why I totally recommend this book.
In 2021 I wrote another article about teamplay, in which I created a parallel between the workplace and the gaming world. It is called What e-sports taught me about teamwork: The importance of cooperation to achieve the best results. You can read it here.
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