The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues • A Leadership Fable

We were assigned this book for preparation for our quarterly manager's roundtable and I'm pretty confident that Lencioni is my favorite business book author. His use of fictional scenarios and tying them easily to the principles he's trying to teach is endearing and puts it well above other business books I've been assigned.

The "fable" parts humanize theory, I'm engaged in how the story progresses and when the second part of the book references specific characters, the ideas really click in mind. I will be using "hungry, humble, smart" for my own team evaluation and am very keen to read other Lencioni books in this genre.

Lencioni believes that people who embody the three virtues of being “humble, hungry,
and smart,” make better team members. And leaders that are able to identify, hire and cultivate
employees that have these three virtues are able to build stronger teams, faster, and reduce costs
associated with politics, turnover, and morale. The goal of Lecioni’s book, The Ideal Team
Player: How To Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues, is to demonstrate how the
combination of these three simple attributes can accelerate the process of making teamwork a
reality, bring with it all the associated benefits. For Lencioni, the success of an organization
hinges on getting “the right people on the right bus.”
The book is structured into several parts. Two main parts and subsections of the main
parts. The main parts are “The Fable” and “The Model.” In “The Fable,” part of the book
Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley taking over his uncle Bob’s construction business at a
very critical time. Because of Bob’s health, Jeff stepped into a leadership role, just as the
company had to take on two large projects at the same time, demanding that the company hire
many new employees and demonstrate superb teamwork if they had any hope of finishing the
two major projects on time and on budget.
The Fable follows Steve, and the other two executives at Valley Builders, Clare and
Bobby, as they seek to emphasize the company culture of teamwork by employing ideal team
players throughout the organization. It shows how they are able to use the three virtues of
“humble, hungry, and smart,” during the hiring process. It also shows how they used the virtues
in making decisions of who should be promoted, who needs help, and who needs to be let go.
Using the Fable, Lencioni is able to show the logic of the three virtues. Within the story,
the three executives working together come up with these three virtues, as they are seeking how
to describe people who make good team players and are not “jackasses.” Throughout the fable,
the reader is able to get see how the virtues were formulated throughout the discussion between the
executives, why they were important, and how they implemented them in various areas to
achieve their goal of having ideal team players throughout the company.
The second major section of the book, “The Model,” helps the reader understand the
“Ideal Team Player” model that was “developed” by the executives in The Fable. Lencioni
defines each of the virtues, and discusses the combination of the three. Lencioni emphasizes
here and throughout the book that it is not the individual virtues of humble, hungry and smart
that are important or powerful, but the combination of the three, which makes the ideal team
player.4
The book also gives an explanation of various categories of people. Those who have
one or two of the virtues, but not all three. Lincioni’s description of these people help a leader
reading the book be able to understand what one of their team members is lacking, where as
often times it is hard to put your finger on exactly where a team member is falling short. Lastly
the book gives practical advise for implementing the Ideal Team Player model in the organization,
including hiring, current employee assessment, employee development, how to embed the model
in an organization’s current culture.