Almost everything that gets done in business gets done by teams.\u00a0 Even the road warrior sales person who is out there, far from the office and hunting his next prey, needs the support of a sales team.\u00a0 Keynote speaker and best-selling business author, Patrick Lencioni, talks extensively about teams in his book, \u201cThe Ideal Team Player.\u201d\u00a0 In that book, he describes the characteristics of people who will help to make a team strong and effective as well as those that will make a team weak and dysfunctional.\u00a0 To learn more about what Lencioni says are the three hallmarks of a great team player, please continue reading below.<\/p>\n
\u201cA key to achieving success is to assemble a strong and stable management team.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>~ Vivek Wadhwa<\/em><\/p>\n According to Lencioni, the three essential characteristics (he calls them \u201cvirtues\u201d) of a great team player are:<\/p>\n The most important of these is humility, so we\u2019ll deal with that one first.<\/p>\n Humility.<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0 We sometimes may equate a \u201chumble\u201d person with someone who is shy, withdrawn, or weak.\u00a0 Not so here.\u00a0 In this context, being humble is simply not being arrogant.\u00a0 A team player who shows humility is demonstrating an ability to subordinate his or her ego to the greater good of the group.\u00a0 Great team players are unconcerned about status or about who gets credit.\u00a0 They are generous in giving credit for success to the entire team.\u00a0 Their language is peppered with \u201cwe\u201d and \u201cus\u201d rather than \u201cI\u201d and \u201cme.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to note that \u201chumility\u201d and \u201cself-confidence\u201d are not mutually exclusive terms.\u00a0 On the contrary, a humble person can also be extremely self-confident.\u00a0 Or said another way, a humble person may simply be so confident in her abilities that she doesn\u2019t feel the need to prove herself to anybody.\u00a0 As C.S. Lewis once said, \u201cHumility isn\u2019t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.\u201d<\/p>\n Hunger.<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0 Think drive, determination, and motivation.\u00a0 It\u2019s continuous improvement, an unending quest to make the team, its tools and processes, better.\u00a0 Hungry people rarely need to be pushed by their team leader because they are already on the prowl for that next big challenge, and they will pounce on it when they find it.\u00a0 We\u2019re not talking here about a hunger that would drive a person and his or her teammates to exhaustion.\u00a0 We\u2019re talking about a healthy level of hunger that recognizes, and celebrates, that there\u2019s always more to do, more to learn, and more to improve.<\/p>\n People smarts.<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0 Lencioni says this is nothing more than using common sense to guide your interactions with other people.\u00a0 Some of us refer to this as \u201cemotional intelligence.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s being aware of, and sensitive to, actions and language that could cause a negative response from another team member or from the entire team at large.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t to say that we can\u2019t have disagreements within the team.\u00a0 In fact, robust discussions with differing points of view are essential to a high-functioning team.\u00a0 But those discussions and disagreements must use language that is tolerant and respectful, and that does not impugn the integrity of anyone on the team.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>As individual attributes . . . humility, hunger, and people smarts . . . all are worthy and desirable.\u00a0 But when we put these into the context of a team, we see that the real power is in the combination of all three.\u00a0 Two out of three won\u2019t cut it.\u00a0 If, for example, a team member shows the requisite amount of humility and people smarts, but is lacking a fire in the belly (drive, self-motivation), he or she will bring the whole team down.<\/p>\n In his best-selling book, \u201cGood to Great,\u201d Jim Collins talks about the need to get the right people on the bus, meaning hiring the people who are a good fit with the company\u2019s culture.\u00a0 So if you want to build great teams, make sure humility, hunger, and people smarts are embraced within your culture and within your hiring practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost everything that gets done in business gets done by teams.\u00a0 Even the road warrior sales person who is out there, far from the office and hunting his next prey, needs the support of a sales team.\u00a0 Keynote speaker and best-selling business author, Patrick Lencioni, talks extensively about teams in his book, \u201cThe Ideal Team<\/p>\n\n