Patrick Lencioni Quotes

Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they're doing it because they care about the team.

Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.

Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.

It's as simple as this. When people don't unload their opinions and feel like they've been listened to, they won't really get on board.

If everything is important, then nothing is.

Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.

Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.

If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.

When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer.

If people don’t weigh in, they can’t buy in.

Some people are hard to hold accountable because they are so helpful. Others because they get defensive. Others because they are intimidating. I don’t think it’s easy to hold anyone accountable, not even your own kids

A team that is not focused on results ... • Stagnates/fails to grow • Rarely defeats competitors • Loses achievement-oriented employees

If we don’t trust one another, then we aren’t going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict.

So many people there are so concerned about being socially conscious and environmentally aware, but they don't give a second thought to how they treat the guy washing their car or cutting their grass.

the fear of conflict is almost always a sign of problems.

. . . his biggest problem was his need for a problem.

A fractured team is just like a broken arm or leg; fixing it is always painful, and sometimes you have to rebreak it to make it heal correctly. And the rebreak hurts a lot more than the initial break, because you have to do it on purpose P.37

there is no such thing as too much communication.

No one on a cohesive team can say, Well, I did my job. Our failure isn’t my fault.

Ego is the ultimate killer on a team

I don’t think anyone ever gets completely used to conflict. If it’s not a little uncomfortable, then it’s not real. The key is to keep doing it anyway

teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice—and a strategic one.

The enemy of accountability is ambiguity

the fundamental attribution error is the tendency of human beings to attribute the negative or frustrating behaviors of their colleagues to their intentions and personalities, while attributing their own negative or frustrating behaviors to environmental factors.

What clients want more than anything is to know that we’re more interested in helping them than we are in maintaining our revenue source.

executives must put the needs of the higher team ahead of the needs of their departments.

The single greatest advantage any company can achieve is organizational health.

Most organizations exploit only a fraction of the knowledge, experience, and intellectual capital that is available to them.

Every human being that works has to know that what they do matters to another human being.

most of a leadership team’s objectives should be collective ones.

there cannot be alignment deeper in the organization, even when employees want to cooperate, if the leaders at the top aren’t in lockstep with one another

organizations learn by making decisions, even bad ones.

If we don’t trust one another, then we aren’t going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict. And we’ll just continue to preserve a sense of artificial harmony.

Every endeavor of importance in life, whether it is creative, athletic, interpersonal, or academic, brings with it a measure of discomfort,

The only way for the leader of a team to create a safe environment for his team members to be vulnerable is by stepping up and doing something that feels unsafe and uncomfortable first. By getting naked before anyone else, by taking the risk of making himself vulnerable with no guarantee that other members of the team will respond in kind, a leader demonstrates an extraordinary level of selflessness and dedication to the team. And that gives him the right, and the confidence, to ask others to do the same.

When a group of intelligent people come together to talk about issues that matter, it is both natural and productive for disagreement to occur. Resolving those issues is what makes a meeting productive, engaging, even fun.

The ultimate test of a great team is results. And considering that tens of thousands of people escaped from the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., there can be no doubt that the teams who risked, and lost, their lives to save them were extraordinary.

Human beings need to be needed, and they need to be reminded of this pretty much every day. They need to know that they are helping others, not merely serving themselves.

every organization must contribute in some way to a better world for some group of people, because if it doesn’t, it will, and should, go out of business.

Most people are generally reasonable and can rally around an idea that wasn’t their own as long as they know they’ve had a chance to weigh in.

No action, activity, or process is more central to a healthy organization than the meeting.

Hiring without clear and strict criteria for cultural fit greatly hampers the potential for success of any organization.

Trust is the foundation of real teamwork.

An organization has to institutionalize its culture without bureaucratizing it.

Leaders who can identify, hire, and cultivate employees who are humble, hungry, and smart will have a serious advantage over those who cannot.

Teams have to eliminate ambiguity and interpretation when it comes to success

To achieve results. This is the only true measure of a team P.42

Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in

The five behavioral manifestations of teamwork: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results

I honestly believe that in this day and age of informational ubiquity and nanosecond change, teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped.

Great teams make clear and timely decisions and move forward with complete buy-in from every member of the team, even those who voted against the decision. They leave meetings confident that no one on the team is quietly harboring doubts about whether to support the actions agreed on.

Members of teams that tend to avoid conflict must occasionally assume the role of a “miner of conflict”—someone who extracts buried disagreements within the team and sheds the light of day on them. They must have the courage and confidence to call out sensitive issues and force team members to work through them. This requires a degree of objectivity during meetings and a commitment to staying with the conflict until it is resolved. Some

Because people who aren't good at their jobs don't want to be measured, because then they have to be accountable for something. Great employees love that kind of accountability. They crave it. Poor ones run away from it.

Healthy organizations believe that performance management is almost exclusively about eliminating confusion. They realize that most of their employees want to succeed, and that the best way to allow them to do that is to give them clear direction, regular information about how they’re doing, and access to the coaching they need.

If you ask me, the best thing that's happened in the last year is that we've almost become a jackass-free zone. No matter what happens, and what challenge we might face, give me a roomful of people who aren't jackasses, and I'll be happy to take it on.

When it comes to your career, you want to strive to become the type of person Patrick Lencioni describes in his book The Ideal Team Player: someone who is hungry (a motivated go-getter), humble (knows who they are and what they bring to the table), and smart (expertly manages relationships). Isn’t that the kind of person you want to work with?

Firing someone is not necessarily a sign of accountability, but is often the last act of cowardice

leaders confuse the mere transfer of information to an audience with the audience’s ability to understand, internalize, and embrace the message that is being communicated.

the best way to ensure that a message gets communicated throughout an organization is to spread rumors about it.

The most well-intentioned, well-designed departmental communication program will not tear down silos unless the people who created those silos want them torn down.

when leaders fail to tell employees that they’re doing a great job, they might as well be taking money out of their pockets and throwing it into a fire,

The hard truth is, bad meetings almost always lead to bad decisions, which is the best recipe for mediocrity.

find someone who can demonstrate trust, engage in conflict, commit to group decisions, hold their peers accountable, and focus on the results of the team, not their own ego.

trust is not the same as assuming everyone is on the same page as you, and that they don’t need to be pushed.

Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

Direct, personal feedback really is the simplest and most effective form of motivation.

Great organizations, unlike countries, are never run like a democracy.

implementation science is more important than decision science.

Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.

Push with respect, and under the assumption that the other person is probably doing the right thing. But push anyway. And never hold back.

Most organizations I’ve worked with have too many top priorities to achieve the level of focus they need to succeed.

Second, there is no substitute for discipline. No amount of intellectual prowess or personal charisma can make up for an inability to identify a few simple things and stick to them over time.

A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings.

Nowhere does this tendency toward artificial harmony show itself more than in mission-driven nonprofit organizations, most notably churches. People who work in those organizations tend to have a misguided idea that they cannot be frustrated or disagreeable with one another. What they’re doing is confusing being nice with being kind.

How many of you would rather go to a meeting than a movie?” No hands went up. “Why not?” After a pause, Jeff realized that her question was not a rhetorical one. “Because movies are more interesting. Even the bad ones.” His peers chuckled. Kathryn smiled. “Right. But if you really think about it, meetings should be at least as interesting as movies.

At the heart of vulnerability lies the willingness of people to abandon their pride and their fear, to sacrifice their egos for the collective good of the team. While this can be a little threatening and uncomfortable at first, ultimately it becomes liberating for people who are tired of spending time and energy overthinking their actions and managing interpersonal politics at work.

Great team players lack excessive ego or concerns about status. They are quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek attention for their own. They share credit, emphasize team over self, and define success collectively rather than individually. It is no great surprise, then, that humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.

The only way for people to embrace a message is to hear it over a period of time, in a variety of different situations, and preferably from different people. That’s why great leaders see themselves as Chief Reminding Officers as much as anything else. Their top two priorities are to set the direction of the organization and then to ensure that people are reminded of it on a regular basis.

The healthier an organization is, the more of its intelligence it is able to tap into and use. Most organizations exploit only a fraction of the knowledge, experience, and intellectual capital that is available to them. But the healthy ones tap into almost all of it.

Keep in mind that a real team should be spending considerable time together in meetings and working sessions. In fact, it is not uncommon that as much as 20 percent of each team member’s time is spent working through issues and solving problems with the team as a whole. p. 105

When team members trust one another, when they know that everyone on the team is capable of admitting when they don’t have the right answer, and when they’re willing to acknowledge when someone else’s idea is better than theirs, the fear of conflict and the discomfort it entails is greatly diminished. When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer. It is not only okay but desirable.

Because when a team recovers from an incident of destructive conflict, it builds confidence that it can survive such an event, which in turn builds trust. This is not unlike a husband and wife recovering from a big argument and developing closer ties and greater confidence in their relationship as a result.

An organization has integrity—is healthy—when it is whole, consistent, and complete, that is, when its management, operations, strategy, and culture fit together and make sense.

few groups of leaders actually work like a team, at least not the kind that is required to lead a healthy organization.

A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization.

it is far more natural, and common, for leaders to avoid holding people accountable.

Conflict is about issues and ideas, while accountability is about performance and behavior.

a leader’s first priority is to create an environment where others can do these things and that cannot happen if they are not having effective meetings.

last frontier of competitive advantage will be the transformation of unhealthy organizations into healthy ones,

A rigid, one-size-fits-all approach usually ends up fitting no one

Putting together an agenda before a staff meeting is like a marriage counselor deciding what issues she’s going to cover with a couple prior to meeting with them.

people in a healthy organization, beginning with the leaders, learn from one another, identify critical issues, and recover quickly from mistakes.

Becoming a healthy organization takes a little time. Unfortunately, many of the leaders I’ve worked with suffer from a chronic case of adrenaline addiction, seemingly hooked on the daily rush of activity and firefighting within their organizations. It’s as though they’re afraid to slow down and deal with issues that are critical but don’t seem particularly urgent.

One of the best ways to achieve clarity is to answer, in no uncertain terms, a series of basic questions pertaining to the organization: Why does the organization exist, and what difference does it make in the world? What behavioral values are irreplaceable and fundamental? What business are we in, and against whom do we compete? How does our approach differ from that of our competition? What are our goals this month, this quarter, this year, next year, five years from now? Who has to do what for us to achieve our goals this month, this quarter, this year, next year, five years from now?

On a cohesive team, leaders are not there simply to represent the departments that they lead and manage but rather to solve problems that stand in the way of achieving success for the whole organization. That means they’ll readily offer up their departments’ resources when it serves the greater good of the team, and they’ll take an active interest in the thematic goal regardless of how closely related it is to their functional area.

Therefore, it is key that leaders demonstrate restraint when their people engage in conflict, and allow resolution to occur naturally, as messy as it can sometimes be. This can be a challenge because many leaders feel that they are somehow failing in their jobs by losing control of their teams during conflict. Finally, as trite as it may sound, a leader’s ability to personally model appropriate conflict behavior is essential. By avoiding conflict when it is necessary and productive—something many executives do—a team leader will encourage this dysfunction to thrive.

The kind of trust that is necessary to build a great team is what I call vulnerability-based trust. This is what happens when members get to a point where they are completely comfortable being transparent, honest, and naked with one another, where they say and genuinely mean things like “I screwed up,” “I need help,” “Your idea is better than mine,” “I wish I could learn to do that as well as you do,” and even, “I’m sorry.” When everyone on a team knows that everyone else is vulnerable enough to say and mean those things, and that no one is going to hide his or her weaknesses or mistakes, they develop a deep and uncommon sense of trust. They speak more freely and fearlessly with one another and don’t waste time and energy putting on airs or pretending to be someone they’re not. Over time, this creates a bond that exceeds what many people ever experience in their lives and,

Because the purpose of an interview should be to best simulate a situation that will give evaluators the most accurate view of how a candidate really behaves, it seems to me that getting them out of the office and doing something slightly more natural and unconventional would be a better idea. Heck, even taking a walk or going shopping is better than sitting behind a desk. The key is to do something that provides evaluators with a real sense of whether the person is going to thrive in the culture of the organization and whether other people are going to enjoy working with him or her.

Ironically, for peer-to-peer accountability to become a part of a team’s culture, it has to be modeled by the leader. That’s right. Even though I said earlier that the best kind of accountability is peer-to-peer, the key to making it stick is the willingness of the team leader to do something I call “enter the danger” whenever someone needs to be called on their behavior or performance. That means being willing to step right into the middle of a difficult issue and remind individual team members of their responsibility, both in terms of behavior and results. But most leaders I know have a far easier time holding people accountable for their results than they do for behavioral issues. This is a problem because behavioral problems almost always precede results. That means team members have to be willing to call each other on behavioral issues, as uncomfortable as that might be, and if they see their leader balk at doing this, then they aren’t going to do it themselves.

The first dysfunction is an absence of trust among team members. Essentially, this stems from their unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust. This failure to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments. A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings. Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team. Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.