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1-Page Summary of The Ideal Team Player

Overview

In his book, Patrick Lencioni argues that it’s important to be a team player in order to succeed. As such, business leaders should seek out people who have the three virtues of being hungry, humble and smart. He uses an example of a hypothetical company named Valley Builders as an extended metaphor for how businesses can apply these principles.

Bob Shanley’s company, Valley Builders, is about to have their two biggest projects ever. However, his nephew Jeff wants nothing to do with it because he has a good job in Silicon Valley and doesn’t want the risk of taking over the company from his uncle.

Jeff turns to Bobby Brady, who runs VB’s field operations. Clare Massick, head of finance, legal and HR are also present. They agree that what they need first is more staff because the jobs in question have high turnover rates due to certain members of the team not being ideal team players. This causes truly ideal team players to leave.

There are three key virtues of an ideal team player. These include hunger, humility, and people smarts. The leaders at this company promote employees who posses these traits to leadership positions. They also fire those who lack them or have the wrong ones in place. One employee is promoted after he demonstrates his hunger for success and humbleness when another candidate with good qualifications withdraws their application because they don’t want to work under him. Another leader has a frank discussion with her boss about how she lacks people skills which is causing problems on one of the company’s key contract job sites. She works hard to improve her people skills and becomes one of the most valuable employees within 30 days.

A fable about the Valley Builders illustrates that it’s not enough to be good at just one virtue; you need all three and in equal measure. Each of those virtues is important, but they’re effective only when they work together as a team. The ideal team player model can be used for hiring new employees, evaluating existing ones, and developing them professionally. It also shows the importance of teamwork throughout an organization so that everyone—employees, vendors, partners, customers—can see it firsthand.

Key Takeaways

Organizations that value teamwork must be able to identify ideal team players.

The best team players have three core virtues: they are humble, hungry, and smart. It is most important for them to be humble because arrogant people can’t appreciate or recognize their own self worth. Being too hungry can also hurt a team’s performance because it can create an unhealthy competition between members. Smart people may not use their social intelligence to help the group as much as they should. The criteria of what makes a good team player can first be applied within an organization by hiring new employees that fit this description.

You can also use the criteria for what makes a good team player to evaluate and develop employees.

Key Takeaway 1: Organizations that make teamwork one of their core values must be able to identify and hire ideal team players.

Valley Builders is a company that values teamwork. The culture of the company is such that if you don’t work well with others, you won’t last long there. However, when Jeff asks Bobby and Clare what being a good team player means to them, they can only say that it means not being an asshole.

Organizational culture is the product of various ingredients. Some are chosen by management, while others aren’t. Ultimately, organizational culture reflects an organization’s values both in theory and practice. Infrastructure, policies and processes can help to uphold or dismantle an organization’s culture; for example, they can assist in making teamwork possible within a health care facility. However, even if all these things are in place, employees’ attitudes and behaviors will determine whether the company has a team-oriented work environment or not. Therefore it’s important to identify (and hire) people who fit into this kind of environment because they’re likely to reinforce that environment with their attitudes and behaviors as well