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The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues (J-B Lencioni Series) Hardcover – May 10, 2016

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 5,636 ratings

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In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player.

In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues.

Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.

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Popular Highlights in this book

From the brand


From the Publisher

the ideal team player book, patrick lencioni, team building, human resources management
the ideal team player book, patrick lencioni, team building, human resources management

MEET JEFF SHANLEY

Jeff Shanley is a leader desperate to save his uncle's company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues.

With enough time, patience and attention from a good manager, almost anyone can learn to become a team player, but some people are better at teamwork than others. These are the kind of people who add immediate value in a team environment and require much less coaching and management to contribute in a meaningful way.

Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues.

ARE YOU AN IDEAL TEAM PLAYER?

the ideal team player book, patrick lencioni, team building, human resources management

the ideal team player book, patrick lencioni, team building, human resources management

the ideal team player book, patrick lencioni, team building, human resources management

HUMBLE

Ideal team players are humble. They lack excessive ego or concerns about status. They are quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek recognition for their own. They share credit, emphasize team over self, and define success collectively rather than individually.

HUNGRY

Ideal team players are hungry. They are always looking for more—more things to do, more to learn, more responsibility. Hungry people rarely have to be pushed by a manager to work harder because they are self-motivated and diligent. They are constantly thinking about the next step and the next opportunity.

SMART

Ideal team players are smart. They are emotionally intelligent and have a common sense about people. They tend to know what is happening in a group situation and how to effectively deal with others. They have good judgement and intuition around the subtleties of group dynamics and the impact of their words and actions.

the ideal team player book, patrick lencioni, team building, human resources management

the ideal team player book, patrick lencioni, team building, human resources management

the ideal team player book, patrick lencioni, team building, human resources management

the ideal team player book, patrick lencioni, team building, human resources management

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"You guys really dropped the ball on the teamwork project."

They didn't say anything, so Jeff continued, focusing on Bobby. "You said it wasn't just posters and t-shirts, but what else was it?" Before they could answer, he went on. "Because you don't seem to know what you mean when you talk about team players."

"We didn't say " Clare wanted to explain, but Jeff wouldn't let her.

"Oh wait. I forgot." Jeff was being sarcastic, but not rude. "You do have one clear definition. A person can't be a jackass."

They laughed, but in a guilty sort of way.

In his classic best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking, new approach for attacking the dangerous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here, he turns his focus to the individual member of a team, revealing the three indispensable virtues that make some people better team players than others.

Lencioni's latest page-turning fable is the story of a leader desperate to save his company by cracking the code on the virtues that define a true team player. Jeff Shanley takes over his family's locally revered construction firm and realizes that the only way to deliver on the two biggest projects in the company's history is to rapidly build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues.To do that, he'll have to confront and risk losing talented employees who don't know how to work on a team, and convince his fiery VP of operations not to lower the company's hiring standards in the face of short-term business pressure.

Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a powerful framework and easy-to-use tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players in any kind of organization.Whether you're a leader striving to create a culture of teamwork, a human resources professional looking to hire real team players, or an employee wanting to make yourself an invaluable team member, The Ideal Team Player will prove

to be as practical as it is compelling.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Ideal Team Player

"No business author alive today packs more wisdom per page than Patrick Lencioni. This book is elegant in its simplicity and will radically alter what it means to be a true team player."
Travis Bradberry, co-author, Emotional Intelligence 2.0

"I've used this model with my executive team, and it flat out works!"
Steve Smith, CEO, Equinix, Inc.

"In his signature story-telling style, Lencioni brings to life the three foundational virtues of a real team player. Let everyone in your organization read this book and watch your results soar."
Verne Harnish, founder of Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO); author, Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)

"Determining who will join the team is critical to an organization's competitive advantage. In The Ideal Team Player, Pat Lencioni simplifies that process and empowers leaders to make great people decisions."
Dee Ann Turner, 30-year vice president of talent, Chick-fil-A, Inc.

"Pat Lencioni tells this story with simplicity, common sense, and amazing wisdom. It's a must-read for everyone from CEOs to first time employees."
Bob Ladouceur, legendary football coach, De La Salle High School; subject of the movie When The Game Stands Tall

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jossey-Bass; 1st edition (May 10, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1119209595
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1119209591
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.6 x 1 x 8.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 5,636 ratings

About the author

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Patrick M. Lencioni
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Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to helping leaders improve their organizations’ health since 1997. His principles have been embraced by leaders around the world and adopted by organizations of virtually every kind including multinational corporations, entrepreneurial ventures, professional sports teams, the military, nonprofits, schools, and churches.

Lencioni is the author of ten business books with over three million copies sold worldwide. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, and USA Today.

Prior to founding The Table Group, Lencioni served on the executive team at Sybase, Inc. He started his career at Bain & Company and later worked at Oracle Corporation.

Lencioni lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and their four sons.

To learn more about Patrick and The Table Group, please visit www.tablegroup.com.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
5,636 global ratings
Great book / Sloppy shipping
4 Stars
Great book / Sloppy shipping
I took advantage of a great deal to get these books as gifts for a meeting I am leading. Unfortunately a strip of the packaging was left in between two of the books which damaged the jacket leaving it covered in very sticky glue. If I return them I’ll miss out on the sale. So I am hoping the seller will have some extra jackets and can help me fix the problem.The content of this book is excellent. I highly recommend it and doubt anyone would encounter the same problem. Five stars for Patrick Lencioni … minus one star for the seller’s mistake.
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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2024
Simple get effective approach to being an ideal team player and working better as a team. Helped me discover things about myself.
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2017
The Ideal Team Player starts as a fable and makes the beginning very real and insightful. After the fable, Lencioni dives into the details that make up the ideal team player - hungry, humble and smart.

For any organization to have a successful culture, their important virtues need to be clearly defined and of upmost importance in the hiring process and in the refining process of their current employees. Lencioni argues that hungry, humble and smart are the three keys for building a successful team and that each member MUST possess these three traits.

1. Hungry - these are people who always look for more and rarely have to be pushed to work harder. Healthy hunger is a manageable and sustainable commitment to doing a job well and going above and beyond when it is truly required. These employees finish their tasks and look for ways to support the rest of the team or look for ways to grow. *Be aware - in an interview - candidates can project a false hunger

2. Humility - this is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player. Too many leaders, who value teamwork, tolerate arrogant employees - not understanding the effect it has on the rest of the team.

There are Two types of People who Lack Humility:
1. Overtly arrogant - they boast and soak up attention - these are easy to spot
2. Those who lack self confidence - they are generous and positive with others but they discount their own talents and contributions. They are mistakenly seen as humble - their lack of understanding of their own worth is a violation of humility. They hurt teams by not advocating for their opinion or not calling out issues. *Insecurity is what both types have in common*

C.S. Lewis "Humilty isn't thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less"

3. Smart - NOT intelligence - this is common sense about people. They ask good questions, listen to others, stay engaged in conversations intently

pg. 166-173 warns us of the different types of people. DO NOT hire or keep someone who lacks all of these characteristics or only has 1 of them. IF they have 2 of the 3, having humble and hungry is the least dangerous to a team as they can take feedback well and often want to improve

*Be careful of what he calls the "skillful politician" who has hungry and smart - they can ruin a team and we have all worked with someone who speaks a good game but is only in it for themselves

*Be careful how you label people as well. These traits don't have to be equally strong, but they all need to be relatively strong to be an ideal team player. If they are severely lacking in one area, that is of concern

pg. 174-186 discusses how to apply this to the interview process and offers good questions to use to assess the humble, hungry, smart. *Key point - BEFORE making an offer to a candidate assure them how absolutely committed you are to these virtues and anyone who does not share them would be miserable working here but if they do share them, it will be a fantastic fit. As he says "many people will try to get a job even if they don't fit the company's stated values, but very few will do so if they know they're going to be held accountable, day in and day out, for behavior that violates the values".

pg. 187-191 is assessing your current team to either make corrections or let people go. "Too often, leaders know that an employee really doesn't belong and would be better elsewhere, and they fail to act because they lack courage

pg. 195-206 discusses how to develop these attributes.
1. Humility - A leader should always model humility, even if the manager struggles, admit it and continue to work on it. This will encourage the others to do the same. A lack of humility is always related to an insecurity and for most, is rooted in a childhood or family issue that took place well before their first day on the job. So, helping an employee IDENTIFY the root cause and then putting them through EXPOSURE by requiring them to "act" humble (complimenting others, admitting mistakes, etc...) can have a major impact
2. Hunger - this is often hard to change. First and most important step is finding a way to connect them to the importance of the work they are doing. Then set clear behavioral expectations for them and hold them accountable to it. MORE THAN THAT - tell them that you expect them to help their colleagues do what needs to be done once their work is completed, including taking on additional responsibilities, working more hours (if possible), or doing additional research until problems are solved
3. Smart - the key to developing people smarts is to make it clear, to everyone involved, that a deficiency in this area is not about intention. Then, if someone is rude or insensitive, QUICKLY and LOVINGLY correct and encourage them. Remember, their intentions are not bad they are often just unaware

pg. 207-211 discusses how to embed these into a culture.
1. Be Explicit and Bold - if you believe it is important, come right out and say so
2. Catch and Revere - constantly be on the lookout for any displays of these virtues and when you see them, hold them up as examples for everyone to see. *"What we are failing to realize is that the point of praise is not only to reinforce the behavior in that employee, but also to reinforce it in everyone else"
3. Detect and Address - When you see a behavior that violates the values, take the time to let the violator know he is out of line, and not just in egregious behaviors

Overall, this book offers an incredible and thorough explanation of the importance of having ideal team players and the ways to find, train and refine them. This is a great read for anyone who is hiring, has employees, is an employee, or just about anyone
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Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2024
I'm not usually one to read a professional development book. However, this one was offered as a read-along with a group at work and I wanted to participate.

What I ended up loving about this book, it wasn't just suggestions on how to be a better team player. It wasn't a design on building better teams made out of diagrams and whiteboard discussions. It was a story involving a company and several likeable characters. It felt like we got to watch a group of coworkers actually working together and putting a plan into action. We even got to see the success of the plan come together in the end.

Overall, the story was very enjoyable. I was fully invested in the outcome of VB as a company and wanted to see Jeff succeed in the role he was thrown into. Will definitely be moving on to the next book by this author.
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2016
Effective organizations—whether they’re multinational corporations, professional sports franchises, or local churches—practice teamwork. When people work together on a common goal, they achieve more than they could do individually and experience a measure of personal satisfaction. When people work against one another, however, the result is organizational ineffectiveness and personal frustration.

In his 2002 bestseller, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni outlined five ways teamwork goes awry: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. While that book identified the interpersonal dynamics of effective teams, it did not identify the personal qualities of effective team members. Lencioni’s new book, The Ideal Team Member, picks up where Five Dysfunctions left off and outlines three essential “virtues”: An ideal team member is humble, hungry, and smart.

Humility comes first because it is “the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.” Humble team players are not “overtly arrogant,” of course, but they do not “lack self-confidence” either. Rather, quoting C. S. Lewis, Lencioni writes, “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” Humility makes collective action possible. Without it, teams don’t work effectively, because each member is either out for themselves ( due to overt arrogance) or unable to propose solutions (because of lack of self-confidence).

“Hungry people are always looking for more,” writes Lencioni. They are “self-motivated and diligent.” For a team to work effectively, each team member must proactively contribute to the overall effort. No slackers are allowed.

Smart doesn’t pertain to “intellectual capacity,” though it’s similar to emotional intelligence. Lencioni defines it as “a person’s common sense about people…the ability to be interpersonally appropriate and aware.” Ideal team members are people-smart.

After defining these three virtues, Lencioni outlines why and how they must work together. “If even one is missing in a team member, teamwork becomes significantly more difficult and sometimes not possible.” A team member who is only humble and hungry, for example, becomes an “accidental mess-maker” because they are constantly—albeit unintentionally—stepping on others’ toes. One who is only humble and smart is a “lovable slacker,” liked by all, but only willing to exert minimum necessary effort. Someone who is only hungry and smart is a “skillful politician,” which Lencioni describes as being “cleverly ambitious and willing to work extremely hard, but only in as much as it will benefit them personally.”

Although Lencioni wrote The Ideal Team Member for the secular business world, my description of its contents should convince ministers that it has application to the work of local churches as well. (Indeed, Lencioni—a devout Catholic—notes that Jesus Christ is the “most compelling example of humility in the history of mankind.”) The humble-hungry-smart model gives senior pastors and ministers who lead volunteers valuable insights into who to hire, how to assess their performance, what can be done to develop them when they lack one or more of the virtues, and how to embed those virtues in a church’s organizational culture. Consequently, I highly recommend this book to ministers and ministry leaders.

One final note: As with The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Ideal Team Player begins with what Lencioni calls “a leadership fable.” He tells the story of the CEO of a family-owned building company who discovers these three virtues in the course of taking over the reins of the company from his uncle. Only after telling the fable does Lencioni describe the humble-hungry-smart model in propositional terms. This narrative way of approaching the subject shows before it tells. This makes Lencioni’s points concrete and easy to understand. The show-then-tell approach is also, it seems to me, a great way to preach…though that is a subject for another time.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2024
So glad I got this book at such a time as this. Practical help on how I can define the culture of my team. I highly recommend this to anyone who is keen on building a healthy team culture

Top reviews from other countries

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Guilherme Paranhos
5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful book!
Reviewed in Brazil on February 15, 2022
This book is simple to read, filled with insights! It will create a new point of view for leadership. Totally recommend
One person found this helpful
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Angie
5.0 out of 5 stars Humorous and a real eye-opener
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2022
Amazing book, found it transformed my thinking and shed light onto why a team doesn't work properly and how to address this. Written in a humorous style with plenty of practical examples and materials at the end which are useful.
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read
Reviewed in Mexico on June 24, 2019
Patrick always impresses we are implementing his theory into our HR program and this has helped us better understand our staff and filter all of are new prospects.
J. S. Wilson
5.0 out of 5 stars Changing your corporate culture to embracing effective teams!
Reviewed in Canada on April 22, 2019
This book has been sitting by my bedside for almost two years and on my must read list. So when I finally sat down over the Easter Weekend and read this book - followed by Lencioni’s follow-up book (written 14 years later I believe) I was blown away!

I strongly recommend that you read “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable“ and the follow-up book “The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues” one after the other.

Patrick Lencioni’s fables are fabulously crafted and help to bring the reader directly into the mindset of two leaders facing conundrums - how do I turn a company’s culture around to recognize the power of effective teams.

The fables are easily to visualize within your imagination., and you will likely find many of Patrick’s characters familiar from your own career!

Patrick’s first book highlights why teams often fail - and then shows how through strong but loving leadership Kathryn, the CEO starts to move her executive team into one powerful unit. All team members are absolutely focused on a common goal; with no time for “look at me - I am more important” or “my project is more important than your project” egos; and where team members hold each other accountable for meeting their stated responsibilities, function and outcomes.

The second book’s fable follows Jeff, a character from the first book, as he finds himself suddenly thrust into the CEO’s role - and with his HR and Operations manager through trial and error (and some excellent background research) discover the three key traits that each team member MUST have.

Both books show the important impact that each person must play in effecting the change necessary to turn their part of a company or organization into a team-based group.

Leaders must show the same three traits as their team members; and walk the talk through: encouraging the growth of each of the three traits in their direct reports; hiring individual who show the three traits; and making it extremely uncomfortable for individuals on the team who aren’t prepared to change their weaknesses.

I hope that you read these two books together and that you find them as fun and informative as I did.

Best wishes to all of you who want to help lead your teams effectively or work in an organization where these traits are embraced!
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Bundeskanzler
5.0 out of 5 stars Der beste Ratgeber - unterhaltsam und hilfreich
Reviewed in Germany on January 26, 2020
Der Ratgeber war ein Tipp eines Freundes aus dem Management. Mittlerweile verschenke ich das Buch ebenfalls und besetze meine Stellen danach. In dem Buch sind viele spannende Tipps enthalten, die jedem Arbeitgeber, aber auch Arbeitnehmer in Verantwortung die Augen öffnen. Zudem ist das Buch dank der Praxis-Beispiele unterhaltsam zu Lesen.