One of the most important ways to succeed in business and life is by developing the ability to be a team player. Yet ideal team players are uncommon. As leaders, we say we want team players, but we often can’t clearly define the individual qualities we’re looking for.
In The Ideal Team Player, author and business consultant Patrick Lencioni describes the model team player and explains how to develop current employees into team players and make sure you hire team players in the future.
He defines three essential personal qualities or “virtues” the ideal team player embodies—humility, hunger or drive, and people skills.
With coaching and a relentless organizational commitment to teamwork, most people can learn to be ideal team players. Those who do increase their value to current and future employers. Furthermore, leaders who hire employees who already demonstrate humility, hunger, and people skills (referred to in the book as smarts) get better results and eliminate politics, turnover, and morale issues.
Through the fictional story of a man who takes over his uncle’s troubled construction company, The Ideal Team Player explains how these three simple qualities combined can transform any organization.
In the fable, Jeff Shenley takes over Valley Builders, which has just won two major building projects, at a time when the company is being hamstrung by infighting and lack of clarity about what’s expected of employees. Jeff turns the company around by defining the ideal team player and developing those qualities in employees.
In the book Good to Great, author Jim Collins writes that successful companies prioritize hiring the “right” people—those who fit the company’s culture. But many leaders hire for skills and competence instead. (Shortform note: Read our summary of Good to Great here.)
For organizations committed to a teamwork culture, the right people are ideal team players who are humble, hungry, and smart.
While the virtues sound simple, developing and living them is more complicated. Many people have one or more of the qualities, but fewer possess all three. A team member who lacks just one quality can hold back or derail a team. Here’s a closer look.
Great team players focus on the success of the team rather than personal interests. They lack overbearing egos or an obsession with status. They don’t try to get attention and readily give credit to others.
There are two kinds of non-humble people, who seem different but have a common underlying issue—insecurity:
People who are hungry are driven to seek more work and responsibility. They’re always looking ahead to the next step or opportunity. They’re committed to the work and willing to go above and beyond—for instance, working outside regular hours—when necessary. Managers don’t have to push or monitor them because they’re self-motivated and conscientious.
Being smart in a team context doesn’t refer to intelligence but having common sense when it comes to dealing with people. Those with people skills understand where others are coming from. They ask questions and listen attentively. They are aware of group dynamics and of the impact of their words and actions on others, and they act appropriately for the circumstances.
You can improve the effectiveness of a team by assessing how people measure up to the virtues of an ideal team player, and by helping those who fall short to develop the right qualities or move on to something else. People typically fall into the following categories:
1) None of the virtues: People who lack all three aren’t likely to develop into team players. They’re rarely hired, however, because they stand out as the jackasses that no one wants to work with.
2) One of the virtues: Someone who has only one of the three qualities will have a tough time developing the other two, but it’s possible. These people can be:
3) Two of three virtues: People with two out of three virtues have a good chance of becoming ideal team players. They can be:
The best way to strengthen teamwork is to make sure everyone you hire is an ideal team player. By focusing your interviews on behaviors that demonstrate the three virtues, you can usually identify team players. There are many guides available for framing behavioral questions. Beyond that, here are some ways to structure the interview process:
For employees to improve, leaders must consistently point out when they’re not doing what’s needed. It’s uncomfortable to repeatedly tell employees they’re missing the mark, but it’s the only way to get results. They’ll succeed or decide to leave—or you’ll have to terminate them.
To help people develop one of the virtues, here are some approaches:
Humility: Some employees can improve if they simply start acting differently, practicing the behaviors they need to develop. For instance, they can push themselves to compliment someone or admit a mistake. Have teammates encourage the employee by highlighting the positive behaviors—for instance, a coworker might say, “I appreciated your compliment the other day …”
Hunger: Everyone, but especially unmotivated people, should have performance goals.
But beyond telling someone to meet certain production goals, managers should set behavioral expectations. Tell unmotivated employees that they also need to help colleagues or the team meet their goals. This may include taking on additional responsibilities or working more hours. With specific goals, the employee will either step up or find another job.
People skills: Those who lack interpersonal skills aren’t usually intentionally being difficult or trying to cause problems. They just don’t pick up on how their words and actions affect others.
When they do the wrong thing, immediately call attention to it. For example, you might say, “Your email really upset your coworkers. Before you send an email next time, you might want to have someone look over it and help you reword it.”
Besides helping individuals become humble, hungry, and smart, it’s important to embed these values in your company’s culture. Here are some ways to do that:
1) Reward people for teamwork: Managers often don’t say anything when employees do what they want them to, but they’re missing an opportunity. Praise rewards and motivates the employee and reminds everyone else of what’s expected.
2) Address violations: When you see behavior that goes against one of the values, whether the misstep is major or minor, let the violator know. Don't miss opportunities for learning.
3) Talk about teamwork constantly: Talk about your commitment to the three virtues to everyone—customers, partners, vendors, and job candidates. This helps establish the expectation among people dealing with the company that employees will be humble, hungry, and smart and encourages employees to behave that way. As word gets around, the organization becomes known for its culture, and it’s easier to find employees who are a good fit.
While it may sound simplistic or contrived to some, the organizations that are most explicit about a teamwork culture are the most successful in building it.
One of the most important ways to succeed in your workplace and life is by developing the ability to be a team player. Being able to work effectively with others to achieve a group goal is more important than ever in an interdependent and changing world.
Yet ideal team players are uncommon. As leaders, we say we want team players, but we can’t clearly define the individual qualities we’re looking for—and so we end up hiring people who undermine teamwork (it doesn’t take many to destroy a team). In addition, many leaders and organizations pay lip service to teamwork, but they don’t devote serious attention to making it part of their culture.
In The Ideal Team Player, author and business consultant Patrick Lencioni describes the model team player and explains how to develop current employees into team players and make sure you’re hiring team players.
Building on a previous book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which focused on group dynamics, this book defines three essential personal qualities or “virtues” the ideal team player embodies—humility, hunger or drive, and people skills. (Shortform note: Read our summary of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team here.)
Here’s how they’re defined:
While they sound simple, developing and living the virtues is more complicated. Many people have one or more of the qualities, but fewer possess all three. A team member who lacks just one quality can hold back or derail a team.
However, with coaching and a relentless organizational commitment to teamwork, most people can learn to be ideal team players. Employees who develop these virtues increase their value to current and future employers. Leaders who hire employees who already demonstrate humility, hunger, and people skills (referred to in the book as smarts) get better results and eliminate politics, turnover, and morale issues.
Through the fictional story of a man who takes over his uncle’s troubled construction company, The Ideal Team Player explains how these three simple qualities combined can transform any organization.
Bob Shanley, founder and owner of Valley Builders, a large Napa Valley construction firm, was approaching retirement and looking for someone to take over his business. His nephew, Jeff Shanley, who’d spent two decades in marketing in Silicon Valley, was looking for a new challenge.
None of Bob’s siblings or children was involved in or interested in running the 200-employee company. Meanwhile, Jeff had done some successful consulting work with Valley Builders’ executive team—he and Bob liked and respected each other. So Bob agreed to train his nephew as his successor. Jeff, his wife Maurine, and their children moved to Napa Valley, and Jeff focused on learning the construction business.
Jeff’s education in the construction business was short-circuited, however, when Bob developed heart problems; he needed immediate surgery and had to step down. Jeff suddenly found himself becoming the new CEO.
Adding to Jeff’s challenges, Valley Builders had just landed two large projects—a hospital and a hotel. The company had done projects like these before, but it had never done two major projects at the same time. Bob assured Jeff they had the capability—they just needed to significantly increase staff.
Valley Builders’ top executives, besides Bob, were Clare Massick, head of administration, finance, legal, and HR; and Bobby Brady, vice president of field operations. Jeff had a frank discussion with them. While they acknowledged concerns about Jeff’s inexperience, they felt he was trustworthy and, as a Shanley, would be personally invested in the company’s success. Further, Bobby said he liked the fact that Jeff listened and wasn’t a “jackass” to work with. They agreed to work as a team.
The biggest issue immediately facing the company was labor. For the new hospital and hotel projects, they’d need to add 60 people in the next two months. In addition, progress was stalling on the Oak Ridge building site, a problematic shopping center project that Valley Builders was trying to finish.
Feeling the pressure, Jeff talked one evening with his wife Maurine, who expressed confidence that Jeff could handle the challenges. Still, Jeff worried that the job could affect his relationship with his family if he screwed it up. Maurine advised him to just tackle one issue at a time.
Jeff learned more from Clare and Bobby about their staffing issues. The company had been experiencing significant turnover (33%) on its projects, so Bobby advised that they hire 80 people to get 60, since 20 would likely quit.
They’d be able to fill the lower-level jobs without a problem, Clare said, but finding a manager for the hospital project and three foremen would be more difficult—they’d lost two foremen a few months ago, so they were already behind. The foremen had quit because one of the two managers for the Oak Ridge project, Nancy Morris, was difficult to get along with and allowed problems to fester.
As the founder of Valley Builders, Bob had always stressed teamwork (he’d hired Jeff in the past to do teamwork training with his executives), but the concept hadn’t been pushed beyond the management team. So the company was being hamstrung by morale and turnover problems.
In fact, when Jeff questioned Clare and Bobby, he realized they couldn’t define what teamwork meant at Valley Builders or how they knew whether potential hires would be team players.
The only criterion seemed to be the one Bobby had used in describing Jeff: they tried to avoid hiring “jackasses” that others wouldn’t like working with. They couldn’t define jackass, however, and acknowledged they had relied on Bob’s intuition for who would be a good fit for the company.
Jeff knew he had a lot to learn about construction, but he was clear on one thing: they needed to only hire team players. Also, they had to find out how many non-team players they had working for them and get them to change or leave. Otherwise, they wouldn’t complete the hospital and hotel projects—or even keep Valley Builders in business in the long term.
Jeff visited the Oak Ridge building site to get a feel for the problems there. He introduced himself to the difficult project manager, Nancy Morris, who was reticent in answering his questions. She said her part of the work was on schedule; if he wanted to know about the rest of it, he needed to ask the other manager, Craig. She didn’t know what Craig was doing because he’d stopped inviting her to his meetings.
Jeff knew Craig because their kids went to the same school, and Craig was more welcoming than Nancy had been. When Jeff asked about the problems on the site, Craig said that while Nancy was quite capable, she couldn’t get along with anyone; she always seemed to say things that angered or upset someone. Craig had told her to stop coming to meetings if she was going to upset people, so she quit coming.
Back at the office, Jeff spoke with several administrative employees in the lunchroom about whether they thought the company tried to hire team players. The conversation affirmed Jeff’s impression that while the company wanted team players, people didn’t really know what that meant. Hiring was hit or miss.
Jeff felt they could turn things around if they could weed out the counterproductive people.
This wouldn’t necessarily mean having to hire more people—they could get more done with fewer people if the ones that remained were real team players.
If there were problem employees who wanted to stay, they’d have to commit themselves to becoming team players, which required being able to admit mistakes, engage in healthy conflict, and be accountable. It was especially important to ensure that managers were team players, because they would tend to hire people like themselves.
The first step would be figuring out how to identify a team player.
That afternoon, Jeff talked with his cousin Ben, a school teacher and basketball coach (and Bob’s son) to get his thoughts on essential characteristics of team players. Ben said the key qualities were that they worked hard and weren’t prima donnas—they focused on helping the team succeed.
Next, Jeff and his two top managers went through a list of people the company had let go or had problems with in the past few years, looking for common denominators among non-team players. They came up with a fairly predictable list of negative traits: negative, lazy, self-centered, insensitive, and irresponsible.
Jeff, Clare, and Bobby soon got to test their own ability to identify team players: They decided to add a fourth top executive to their team, to help get the two big building projects done on time. Bobby had a highly qualified candidate in mind: Ted Marchbanks, a former division chief for a big construction company, who had retired recently.
They had a get-acquainted lunch with Ted and he came across as smooth and knowledgeable. Bobby wanted to hire him immediately, but Jeff and Clare didn’t have a sense yet of whether he’d be a team player.
Again, they tried to figure out what they wanted in a team player by examining the opposite—a non-team player or jackass. They came up with: overbearing, inappropriate, and clueless—which seemed to describe Nancy, the problematic manager on the Oak Ridge project. Clare commented that Nancy wasn’t upsetting people intentionally—she just wasn’t “socially smart” when it came to dealing with others. Regarding Ted, they agreed that he seemed smart about dealing with people.
Having people skills seemed important to being a team player, but Jeff thought there was more to it. Based on their analysis of past and current employees, plus his conversation with his cousin Ben (the basketball coach), three key qualities began to gel in Jeff’s mind: lack of ego, willingness to work hard, and being smart about people.
Ted’s formal interview was scheduled for the next day. Before meeting with him, the three senior executives further refined the three team player qualities that Jeff had identified.
They decided that working hard meant more than just putting in a certain number of hours—it also meant having motivation, passion, and a sense of urgency about the work. It meant going beyond what was expected—being hungry.
The other quality they’d talked about, being smart about people, was different from being intelligent. It was knowing how to act and what to say and not say, plus being aware of the impact of your words and actions on others. It was something like emotional intelligence but less complicated. But a person who was smart could still be a non-team player or jackass, by charming or manipulating people for his own ends.
The third quality they’d identified was a lack of ego. People with big egos were the opposite of a team player: focused on themselves and were arrogant. The opposite of arrogance is humility, which was the quality they were looking for.
So an ideal team player would be humble, hungry, and smart. They planned to use the model for evaluating job candidates, starting with Ted. Since they knew he was smart or skilled at dealing with people, their goal would be to determine whether he was humble and hungry (driven).
A number of managers met with Ted and, between the interviews, they discussed their impressions and determined what issues the person scheduled to meet with Ted next should dig into more deeply.
Craig, the Oak Ridge project manager, thought Ted was hungry; he definitely wanted the job, and he wanted to be busy again. Clare couldn’t get a read on whether he was humble or not. But she did notice something that stuck with her—he hadn’t bothered to learn her receptionist, Kim’s, name although Kim had been escorting him around the building all day. Still, she thought they should hire him, as did Bobby.
When Jeff asked Kim for her impressions of Ted, she noted that Ted had waited in the lobby for 15 minutes that morning without noticing her. His only comments to her throughout the day were to ask her where the restroom was and if she could charge his phone. Jeff felt that treating administrative staff dismissively suggested that Ted lacked humility.
When he interviewed Ted over lunch, Jeff looked for indications that Ted was humble. He asked Ted how his former coworkers would describe him. Ted said he was well-liked by coworkers, but he got slightly annoyed when Jeff asked if that included administrative staff. He said he’d never had any problems with people.
Jeff explained to build a culture of teamwork, Valley Builders only hired people who were humble, hungry, and smart about dealing with others. Anyone who didn’t share these values would be uncomfortable working at the company. Finally, Jeff asked Ted for names of people he could talk to at Ted’s old company about whether he’d be a good fit for Valley Builders. Ted hesitated; he said he’d send a few names in the afternoon. But by the end of day, he hadn't done so.
Meanwhile, Clare called the HR director at his previous company, who was noncommittal about Ted’s attitude toward the staff there. Then Jeff got a call from Ted, who said he’d decided to withdraw from consideration because he wasn’t ready to give up retirement and go back to work.
When they learned that Ted had backed out, Clare and Bobby questioned whether they were being too idealistic or simplistic with their model and had chased away a good candidate.
That night, Jeff talked it over with Maurine, who said the fact that the model was simple didn’t mean it was wrong. Besides, she said, Ted sounded like a total politician—and when you hire a politician, you get someone with an ego who creates complications.
To further test the team player model, Jeff decided to see whether evaluating people against the model would help them understand and solve their problems at the Oak Ridge site.
Jeff, Clare, and Bobby discussed the on-site managers. Nancy was humble and hungry, but definitely not smart about people. She inadvertently created a lot of problems that had to be cleaned up. Of her two foremen who had quit, Pedro was a complete team player, while Carl lacked hunger or motivation.
They decided that Craig, the other project manager, was also humble, hungry, and smart. Suddenly, Bobby had an epiphany: they should promote Craig to the executive team—he’d definitely fit in better than Ted. At that moment, they all realized that hiring Ted would have been a mistake. Further, Craig was the right choice.
Meanwhile, Jeff met with Nancy to determine whether she recognized her weakness and would be willing to do what it took to become a team player. He invited her to his office and explained the three qualities they were looking for in a team player: humility, hunger, and people skills. They agreed that her strongest area was working hard (being hungry); she also felt she was humble, or at least not arrogant. But she acknowledged that she focused on getting things done more than on being nice, and therefore wasn’t good at social interaction. She was willing to work on getting better at it.
The employees were overwhelmingly positive about Craig’s promotion, and he did well in the new position. Meanwhile, two references—an administrative employee at Ted’s old company and also one of his former clients—called and told Jeff that Valley Builders had dodged a bullet by not hiring him: Ted always put his own interests first.
Clare created a new hiring program; all hiring managers were trained in how to hire team players. They hired some strong senior managers and this made hiring the right people at other levels easier. One of the biggest pluses was rehiring the foreman Pedro, who had left in disgust. Nancy had contacted Pedro and admitted she’d let him down by being difficult to work with and not confronting personnel issues, but said she was working to do better in the future.
Jeff met with each of the company’s 17 foremen and project leaders, as he had with Nancy, to talk about the need for teamwork and the qualities everyone needed to demonstrate. Only one person ended up leaving.
Craig became an effective leader, working closely with Bobby on oversight of the hospital and hotel projects, both of which Valley Builders completed successfully. Nancy became Craig’s best employee. The three team player qualities became part of the regular conversation at Valley Builders, and teams were more effective in delivering results.
Turnover declined, morale improved, and client satisfaction grew. Instead of using outside recruiters and headhunters to identify job candidates, they found they could easily fill positions by word of mouth and employee referrals. Valley Builders had become known not only as a great place to work but, as Bobby put it, as a jackass-free zone.
This section of the book further explains the ideal team player model and how to use it in your organization.
In the book Good to Great, author Jim Collins writes that successful companies prioritize hiring the “right” people—those who fit the company’s culture. (Shortform note: Read our summary of Good to Great here.) But instead, many leaders hire for skills and competence.
For organizations committed to a teamwork culture, the right people are ideal team players who are humble, hungry, and smart.
Great team players focus on the success of the team rather than personal interests. They lack overbearing egos or an obsession with status. They don’t try to get attention and readily give credit to others.
Humility is the most important team player attribute, yet many managers put up with self-centered people because of their skills, and don’t call out their arrogance even though it undermines the team’s performance.
There are two kinds of non-humble people, who seem different but who have a common underlying issue: insecurity.
1) Arrogant, ego-driven people who try to make themselves the center of attention. They are less confident than they appear, so they try to overcompensate with bluster. They undermine teamwork by stirring resentment, creating division, and playing politics.
2) People who lack self-confidence and downplay their contributions and abilities. Others may see them as humble because they’re self-effacing, but people who are truly humble neither overrate nor underrate themselves. People with low self-worth deprive teams of their ideas and insights.
People who are hungry are driven to seek more work and responsibility. They’re always looking ahead to the next step or opportunity. They’re committed to the work and willing to go above and beyond—for instance, working outside regular hours—when necessary. Managers don’t have to push or monitor them because they’re self-motivated and conscientious.
Nonetheless, some types of hunger can be negative. Some highly motivated people are driven by self-interest rather than a desire to support the team’s mission. Their interests may conflict with the team’s. Or, work can become all-consuming and become a person’s identity and life.
A lack of hunger or drive on someone’s part is usually obvious because they produce less, which creates frustrations among other team members who have to pick up the slack. So leaders have to spend time pushing and monitoring them.
Being smart in a team context doesn’t refer to intelligence but to having common sense when it comes to dealing with people. Those with people skills understand where others are coming from. They ask questions and listen attentively. They are aware of group dynamics and of the impact of their words and actions on others, and they act appropriately.
Some smart people can be dangerous when they use interpersonal skills to manipulate or mislead others for their own purposes. So it’s important for hiring managers to look beyond what candidates say and take note of how they behave around others.
The three virtues may seem simple in and of themselves, but their combination in a team player makes that person unique and uniquely effective. If a team member is substantially lacking in even one area, they can hold back or detail the team.
The three virtues aren’t inherent or permanent characteristics. They’re developed through work and life experiences, choices, training, and coaching.
Many leaders and organizations say they want teamwork, but they can’t define what they mean by a team player, or prioritize identifying team players in their hiring process.
How important is a teamwork culture in your organization? How can you tell?
What employee qualities does your company value most? How does the company convey this to employees?
Think of a “star” employee in your company—how does that person measure up in terms of humility, hunger, and people skills?
You can improve the effectiveness of a team by assessing how people measure up to the virtues of an ideal team player, and by helping those who fall short to develop the right qualities or move on to something else.
People typically fall into the following categories:
1) None of the virtues: People who aren’t humble, hungry, or smart aren’t likely to develop into team players. They’re rarely hired, however, because they stand out as the jackasses or jerks that no one wants to work with.
2) One of the virtues: Someone who has only one of the three qualities will have a tough time developing the other two, but it’s possible. These people can be:
3) Two of three virtues: People with two of the three virtues have a good chance of becoming ideal team players if they acknowledge and focus on fixing their weakness. However, if their failing is major and not corrected, they can be a major impediment. People with two of three virtues can be:
4) Three out of three virtues: People with all three virtues are ideal team players. They don’t need attention or credit for their efforts, and they’re driven to work hard and do whatever they can for the good of the team. Because they’re attentive to others, their coworkers like working with them.
Pegging people isn’t necessarily easy, and it shouldn’t be done cavalierly. Wrongly labeling someone could be unfairly damaging to their career. Also, it’s possible to mislabel someone who is particularly strong in one area, but still strong enough in all three to be a team player. The above classifications are intended for people significantly lacking in one or two areas.
There are four ways to use the ideal team player model to strengthen your organization:
The first way to strengthen teamwork is to make sure everyone you hire is an ideal team player. There’s no perfect tool for identifying them, but through focused interviewing and reference checking you can usually identify and hire team players.
Focus your interview process on asking behavioral questions that uncover the three virtues as well as reveal red flags. There are many guides available for framing behavioral questions. Beyond that, here are a few ways to structure the interview process:
Ask specific questions that uncover whether the candidate has the qualities and behaviors of a team player (examples to come). Typical interviews follow a generic format and questions that provide only a general sense of the candidate—for instance, you come away thinking, “She seems capable.”
Debrief managers immediately after an interview on whether the candidate seemed humble, hungry, and smart. Then use the next interview to ask follow-up questions on concerns or issues raised in the first. For example, if the first two interviewers agree that the candidate is hungry and smart, the third interviewer should focus on assessing humility. In many companies, various managers interview the candidate separately, and they don’t discuss what they learned until the interview process has ended.
Including group interviews in your process allows multiple people on the hiring team to hear the same things and compare their perspectives—for example, “How did you interpret what he said …” Group interviews also reveal how a candidate behaves in a group, which is a requirement for teamwork. Some people are better one-on-one than they are in groups, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it’s something you should be aware of.
To get a better sense of a candidate, have someone take her out of the office to see how she acts in an unstructured environment—for instance, take her along on an errand. Remember to look for indications that she is humble, hungry, and smart.
In contrast, most interviews follow the same predictable, often awkward format as they did 40 years ago. They focus on answers to stock questions that don’t tell you whether the person is a good fit for the company.
The first time you ask a question, you often get a generic answer. If you ask again in a different way, you may get more details or a different answer. If you ask a third time, but you’re more pointed, you may get the most honest response.
Ask candidates what others would say about them—for instance, instead of asking someone if he considers himself a hard worker, ask how colleagues would describe his work ethic or his level of humility. Candidates tend to give more honest answers to questions framed this way, perhaps because they think you might ask their colleagues the same question and compare answers.
If you have a hunch that a candidate isn’t humble, hungry, or smart, keep digging until you resolve your doubt. Looking back on an interview, managers often recall red flags and regret ignoring them or not exploring them more fully.
At the end of the interview process, tell candidates that you’re looking only for people who are humble, hungry, smart. Stress that if a candidate lacking one of these critical qualities is hired, they’ll be miserable working for you if they don’t change. However, if they’re an ideal team player, they’ll love the job and the company’s culture. People often try to gloss over their weaknesses in an interview, but they may be less likely to do so if you stress that your company holds people accountable.
Here are some sample interview questions for assessing each team player virtue.
Observing a person’s behavior in different situations is a better way to gauge interpersonal skills than asking questions—for instance, noticing how she deals with waiters, receptionists, and potential coworkers. However, questions like the following can add information:
After the interview, ask yourself whether you’d want to work with the person every day. People with strong interpersonal skills obviously are easy and fun to work with. This question doesn’t fully address whether the person is humble or hungry, but it tells you your gut feeling about them.
Reference checks that merely verify employment aren’t usually useful. But if a reference seems willing to go beyond rote answers, you may get valuable information, especially concerning hunches. Here are some things to keep in mind:
Most interviews follow the same predictable, often awkward format as they did 40 years ago. They focus on answers to stock questions that don’t tell you whether the person is a team player.
As a manager, what is your process for interviewing job candidates? What does it tell you about candidates?
How could you change your process to make it more revealing (such as incorporating group interviews or holding part of the interview outside the office)?
What specific questions could you add to your repertoire to help you assess whether a candidate is humble, hungry, and smart? Add your favorites from the previous chapter.
Another way to use the team player model is to evaluate current employees. The possible results are:
Assessing humble, hungry, and smart qualities also can help a manager identify the problem when struggling with an employee. The employee may be creating or having problems due to a major shortcoming in one of the three areas. You’ll either solve the problem with an employee improvement program or terminate the employee.
If you can’t decide whether an employee has what it takes to improve, keep working with them until you know for sure. That way you won’t make the mistake of writing off someone who could become a valuable contributor in time. More often, managers know when an employee isn’t a good fit, but don’t do anything about it.
Here are some approaches for evaluating people for the team player attributes:
Managers or team leaders can assess an employee by answering questions like the following:
For an ideal team player, the answer to every question would be yes. Answering questions like these can add clarity even when a manager or team leader already knows an employee’s strengths and weaknesses.
Asking employees to evaluate themselves may be an even more effective way to assess whether they’re team players or have the potential to become team players. Most employees will do self-assessments if the purpose is to improve, and shortcomings won’t be held against them. It’s also a chance for them to take ownership of their development.
Use the questions in the manager assessment above, but rephrase them to ask how coworkers would rate the employee—for instance, “Would a coworker say... I’m quick to praise teammates for accomplishments?” or “Would a coworker say … I readily admit it when I make mistakes?” and so on.
A simple, alternative self-evaluation method is to ask employees to rank how strong they are in the three virtues from best to worst.
Having teammates meet as a group and share their individual strengths and weaknesses is another way to encourage change and support.
Ideal team players are humble, hungry. and smart. They readily share credit, and they’re driven to work hard and do whatever they can for the good of the team. They’re attentive to coworkers.
Of the three qualities, which is your strongest? Why do you say that? Describe a time recently where you demonstrated your strongest quality.
Which quality would you most like to improve and why? What steps can you take to improve?
Think of a situation where you didn’t get along with someone—what people skills could you have used more effectively in the situation?
For employees to improve, leaders must consistently point out when they’re not doing what’s needed. It’s uncomfortable to repeatedly tell employees they’re missing the mark, but it’s the only way to get results. They’ll succeed or decide to leave—or you’ll have to terminate them.
Unfortunately, what often happens is that a manager points out problems a few times, but then stops and the employee thinks she must be doing OK or it’s not important anymore. Finally, the manager gets fed up and comes down hard on the employee, who is surprised because she thought things were fine. Consistency is key.
To help those who are significantly lacking in one of the virtues, here are some approaches:
Talking to an employee about a lack of humility can be uncomfortable because it stems from insecurity (insecure people either overstate or understate their abilities) and is deeply personal. If a manager talks about her own challenges with humility—everyone is insecure at some level—it may help the employee feel more comfortable discussing the problem.
Also, if you can help the employee identify the reason they lack humility without trying to be a psychologist, it may be easier for them to improve. Sometimes, lack of humility can be a result of personality type (assessments like Myers-Briggs may be helpful). Knowing that others with their personality type have the same issue can be a relief and a motivation to improve.
Some employees can improve if they simply start acting differently, practicing the behaviors they need to develop. For instance, they can push themselves to compliment someone, show interest in others, or admit a mistake. One method is for employees to make a list of desired behaviors and track how often they practice them. When employees see the benefits of humility for themselves and others, they’ll be motivated to continue and it will become automatic.
Having teammates encourage the employee by highlighting the positive behaviors can help reinforce them as well—for instance, a coworker might say, “I appreciated your compliment the other day …”
It’s easier to talk to an employee about developing hunger than about humility, but hunger is harder to develop because it involves attitude. Lack of motivation is obvious and measurable—people who lack hunger typically do less or produce less. But pointing out the need to do more isn’t enough.
People who are unmotivated often choose to be this way because it’s to their benefit—not being the one who offers to do more means less pressure and responsibility and more time to do what they prefer doing. Some people prefer a predictable routine at work, so they can focus their energy on outside interests.
People who don't want to change need to find jobs where hunger isn’t important; managers can only help those who want to be more successful in a teamwork culture. Here are some additional steps managers can take:
To be hungry, people need to understand the importance of the work they’re doing. Managers can help build motivation by connecting the work with its impact on others—for instance, on customers, vendors, or other employees. Show employees that their work matters to people.
Also, team members can help spread their passion to less-motivated coworkers by sharing their sense of mission. Non-hungry employees may get on board, or at least feel more motivated to help coworkers.
Another way to motivate an employee is to set specific goals and hold her accountable for meeting them. Everyone, but especially unmotivated people, should have performance goals.
But beyond telling someone to meet certain production goals, managers should set behavioral expectations. Tell unmotivated employees that they also need to help colleagues or the team meet their goals. This may include taking on additional responsibilities or working more hours. With specific goals, employees will either step up or find another job.
It takes time to break old habits. Helping people succeed requires “tough love,” or calling out unmotivated employees for behavior that needs to change. This should be done tactfully, constructively, and regularly.
Waiting until a performance review is too late—reviews criticize behavior that occurred in the past, which the employee wasn’t given a chance to correct. Employees need immediate, explicit feedback so they can act. And they need to hear it repeatedly until their behavior changes.
When an unmotivated employee shows hunger, managers and teammates should praise and encourage him. In time, extra encouragement won’t be needed, but it can make a difference in the early stages.
Helping someone become smarter about dealing with people isn’t as sensitive as developing the other qualities, but it still can be challenging. It’s easier if managers and teammates remember that those who lack interpersonal skills aren’t usually intentionally being difficult or trying to cause problems. They just don’t pick up on how their words and actions affect others. But with help, they can change.
When they do the wrong thing, immediately call attention to it as you would with a puppy in training. For example, you might say, “Your email really upset your coworkers but I know you didn’t mean to sound so harsh. Before you send an email next time, you might want to have someone look over it and help you reword it.”
People who are really interested in improving appreciate such feedback.
People who are already ideal team players may still want to improve because they’re hungry.
The best way to help is to enlist other strong team players as coaches.
For instance, a team player with outstanding people skills could coach a teammate who wants to improve in that area. Likewise, another teammate could coach the person with people skills on humility. When team players are coaching each other, both individuals and the team improve—the process strengthens everyone’s accountability and commitment.
To create and maintain a team culture, managers must help employees who struggle with one of the three virtues to improve. This includes consistently pointing out instances where they’re not doing what’s needed.
On your team, which employee needs help developing into an ideal team player? What is that person's weak trait?
What strategies can you implement to help the employee develop that trait?
What strategies can you implement generally to help all employees develop?
Besides helping individuals become humble, hungry, and smart, it’s important to embed these values in your company’s culture. Here are some ways to do that:
Leaders who believe in teamwork should talk about their commitment to the three virtues to everyone—customers, partners, vendors, and job candidates. That helps establish the expectation among people dealing with the company that employees will be humble, hungry, and smart and encourages employees to behave that way. And as word gets around, the organization becomes known for its culture, and it’s easier to find employees who are a good fit.
While it may sound simplistic or contrived to some, the organizations that are most explicit about a teamwork culture are the most successful in building it.
Managers often don’t say anything when employees do what they want them to, but they’re missing an opportunity. When employees act in ways that show humility, hunger, or people skills, leaders should call attention to it. Praise rewards and motivates the employee and reminds everyone else of what’s expected.
When you see behavior that goes against one of the values, whether the misstep is major or minor, let the violator know. Employees are often unaware of small slip-ups and learn the most from them when a manager or team leader points them out. This doesn’t mean treating minor and major missteps the same—managers need to use good judgment. The important thing is, don't miss opportunities for learning
For those who have read the author’s previous book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, this section looks at how the three virtues relate to that model. (Shortform note: Read our summary of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team here.)
The Ideal Team Player is about the qualities of individual team members, while The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is about team dynamics.
The five biggest problems that teams need to overcome to work effectively are:
These problems are less likely and easier to overcome when team members are humble, hungry, and smart about dealing with people. For example, a person with strong people skills will be better at engaging in healthy conflict.
Having members do self-assessments and work on personal development can improve team functioning. Also, talking as a group about everyone’s personal development goals can increase trust among team members.
Humility, hunger, and people skills are as important in life as they are in workplaces and organizations. Parents, friends, and neighbors who embody these qualities will have better relationships, get more things done, and serve others better.
But of the three qualities, humility, which has divine origins—the concept is taught in the Bible and embodied by Christ—stands out. It is a gift and a powerful way to influence others.