The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues

This book sets out to answer these questions. The author presents a powerful framework for defining the ideal team player, walking you through the underlying virtues that distinguish a great team member from an average one. And he presents strategies you can use to identify, recruit and develop great team players.

You can use these strategies in any environment where teamwork matters, whether you lead a marketing department or manage a soccer team, whether you're a CEO or just starting out. They'll help you build a team that's free of worries about ego or status; a team that pushes itself to achieve; a team that supports its members.

Unusually, most of this book is written as a fable. So instead of the usual facts and figures you might expect in a business book, we hear the story of Jeff Shanley's efforts to define the ideal team player and build a great team.

The author uses Shanley's story to demonstrate that individuals need humility, hunger and what he calls "people smarts" to be an ideal team player, and to show that not everyone possesses all three virtues. Some people have one or two of them, and just need some guidance or a push in the right direction to bring out their team-playing potential. Not everyone will want to change, though, and people with none of these virtues may have little chance of ever becoming valuable team members.

The beauty of the fable is that it walks us through a work-in-progress, from an uncertain beginning to its successful ending. It's an approach that Lencioni has used in his previous books, but for newcomers to his work it's likely to be a novel presentation in more ways than one.

You may be a little skeptical about it at the outset. We had misgivings, too, but we found that it's worth sticking with it. This may be fiction, but it gives you a fascinating glimpse into the struggles, the reasoning, and the trial and error involved as the characters define the ideal team player and implement their model. Think of it as an extended fictional case study. It's an unusual approach, but it's refreshing, light-hearted and insightful – and it works.

Lencioni founded The Table Group, a management consulting firm that specializes in helping executive teams improve their organizations' health. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Bloomberg Businessweek, and he's also a prolific author with 10 other business books to his name, including "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" and "The Advantage." You can find Book Insights for both these books on the Mind Tools site.

So keep listening to find out why the author rates humility as the greatest attribute of team players, how to apply the "three virtues" in the real world, and how individual behavior relates to team dynamics.

"The Ideal Team Player" comes in at 220 pages and is divided into two sections. The first runs to nearly two-thirds of the book and features the business fable. The second, shorter section is devoted to Lencioni's "Three Virtues" model – his framework for identifying, hiring and developing team players.

At the start of the fable we meet Jeff Shanley, a talented but jaded consultant who's looking for a fresh challenge after spending 20 years working in Silicon Valley. His uncle Bob runs Valley Builders, a building contractor in the Napa Valley. We learn that Bob plans to retire in a few years' time, and he calls his nephew Jeff to ask whether he knows anyone who might be interested in taking over from him. Jeff immediately spots the new direction he's been looking for. He puts himself forward, and joins his uncle to learn the ropes of running a construction company.

But within months of joining, Jeff's life takes an even more unexpected turn. Bob discovers that he has health issues, so he makes his nephew the company's new CEO. Jeff's new to the industry and inexperienced in the role, but he discovers the worst news is still to come. Bob delivers the bombshell that Valley Builders has just landed two huge contracts – projects that are bigger than the company can deliver in its current form.

Jeff is in a desperate situation, but he immediately sees how important teamwork will be if the company's going to meet its commitments. He knows he'll need a solid leadership team in place and that he's going to have to deal with some problem employees. He also knows he has to quickly recruit a new army of workers.

As the drama unfolds, we see Jeff and his executive team grapple with the challenge of hiring the right people to deliver their projects – engineers, foremen, project managers. We share their worries as they strive to recruit great new team members – and make better team players of their existing staff – without really knowing what they're looking for or how to do it.

They attempt to balance reason with intuition, and they narrowly avoid making mistakes. The executive team gradually boils down the characteristics it's looking for into three key "virtues."

The first of these is humility. Lencioni says this is also the greatest virtue, because a humble person won't have a big ego or be preoccupied with his or her status within a team. He won't be arrogant, or self-centered. A humble team member will be quick to acknowledge colleagues' work, to share credit, and to define success collectively.

The second virtue is hunger. Lencioni defines hungry people as those who always want more things to do and new things to learn. Hungry people never need to be pushed. Too much hunger, though, can be a bad thing. It's unhealthy when people become so obsessed with their work that it takes over their lives. But a manageable commitment to going beyond the call of duty is a sign of a great team player.

The third virtue is what the author calls smarts. In this context, "smarts" doesn't mean intellectual ability. Rather, it refers to the level of common sense that a person has about others. It's about being interpersonally appropriate and aware – listening actively, engaging intently, and dealing with people sensitively. To show what he means by "smarts," Lencioni often uses the term "people smarts." Others might call it emotional intelligence.

The strength of these three virtues lies in how they work together. Ideal team players possess all three. Even if just one of the virtues is missing in a colleague, the team will have to work harder to compensate. The fictional hero, Jeff Shanley, and his team go to great lengths to ensure that the people they recruit are humble, hungry and smart. They also develop existing employees, so they too become ideal team players.

So how does the fable end?

Eventually, the executive team's hard work pays off and the construction projects are a success. The experience has embedded teamwork within the company culture, and morale within Valley Builders rises to an all-time high.

After reading Jeff's story, you'll probably have an idea of how you stand against the Three Virtues model. You may also have gained new insights about the people who work in your teams.

You've already heard how the combination of all three virtues creates the ideal team player. In the second part of the book, we read more detail about what happens when someone possesses just one or two of them.

People who are humble and hungry but not smart are labeled "accidental mess-makers." These individuals are well meaning. They work hard for the team and share credit, but their lack of awareness of their colleagues can lead to interpersonal problems.

People who are hungry and smart but not humble are dubbed "skillful politicians" – ambitious hard-workers who put themselves before their teams.

"Bulldozers" are hungry, but not humble or smart. They get things done, but only to feed their own needs. They're not really interested in how their actions affect other people.

When you can accurately identify these different types of people, you can work out a strategy to help them develop into the ideal team player.

To that end, the author gives us four applications for the Three Virtues model. First comes "hiring," including tips for the interview process. Some are fairly predictable, like being specific about targeted attributes. Others are less obvious. For example, he suggests making interviews "nontraditional" – getting out of the office with candidates to observe them in grocery stores and shopping malls, to see how they behave when they're not answering formal questions.

Lencioni doesn't neglect formal questions, though, and he suggests some that are targeted specifically toward uncovering humility, hunger and smarts.

The second application of the model is in assessing current employees. The advice here will help you decide whether someone is already an ideal team player, has the potential to become an ideal team player, or is unlikely to ever become one.

The third application will help you develop those with potential. Lencioni argues that none of the three values are permanent characteristics. We can develop and maintain them through the choices we make and the things we focus on.

But he makes no bones about hunger being the hardest of the values to cultivate, and he offers several strategies for doing so. These range from setting expectations and giving clear feedback to explaining connections between a person's work and the impact that it has on other people.

The last application is about embedding the model into organizational culture. Here again, the author offers some tips. For example, he suggests that you're bold and upfront about how strongly you value teamwork. If you make it clear to employees, vendors, customers, and potential team members that you're looking for humility, hunger and smarts, you'll attract people who fit the organization's culture and ward off people who don't.

Lencioni closes the book by discussing how "The Ideal Team Player" connects to his earlier book, "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team."

While "The Ideal Team Player" is about individual team members, "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" is about improving the dynamics of groups, and the two work together. For example, the absence of trust and a fear of conflict are two dysfunctions that can sound the death knell for team working. Someone who wants to become more humble will show more vulnerability, which helps to generate trust. Likewise, someone who decides to improve their people smarts will find it easier to overcome their fear of conflict. By working on your individual virtues, you'll help your team work more effectively together.

So what's our last word on "The Ideal Team Player"?

Well, we like that it's as practical as it is engaging. It distills the characteristics you need to be an effective team player into three simple ideas. Crucially though, it shows before it tells. The fable makes it easy to understand the points the author's making well before you dive into the more theoretical aspects of the book.

The fictional narrative structure won't appeal to everyone, and it does make the book feel a little simplistic at times. And while the story is based on the author's own experiences, it would have been interesting to read some examples of real-world applications of the model.

That said, its simplicity is this book's strength. There's nothing here to get bogged down in, and even the strategies and tips are straightforward. The book is easy to grasp and highly accessible, while not short on insight.

All things considered, this is a useful book that you can learn from no matter what kind of team you belong to, whether you're a top executive or a regular team member. The lessons may be simple, but they're powerful, and they might just show you how to become an ideal team player yourself.

"The Ideal Team Player," by Patrick Lencioni, is published by Jossey-Bass.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.