600 Best Patrick Lencioni Quotes: Leading Teams (2023)
1. “A core value is something you're willing to get punished for.”
2. “I define accountability as the willingness of team members to remind one another when they are not living up to the performance standards of the group.”
3. “Make dumb suggestions.”
4. “Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time.”
5. “Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they're doing it because they care about the team.” - Patrick LencioniInfographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
6. “Most leaders prefer to look for answers where the light is better . . . And the light is certainly better in the measurable, objective, and data-driven world of organizational intelligence than in the messier, more unpredictable world of organizational health.”
7. “Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team.”
8. “It is dangerous if our identity as a leader becomes more important than our identity as a child of God.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
9. “erring on the side of the client when it comes to fees. Because you’re interested in a long-term relationship with a client, it is in your best interest to show them that you are more focused on helping them than you are in maximizing your short-term revenue.”
10. “One of the best ways for leaders to raise the level of healthy conflict on a team is by mining for conflict during meetings.”
11. “Employees know that they ultimately pay the price when their manager doesn’t get along with or cooperate with managers of other departments, leaving the staff to navigate the treacherous and bloody waters of organizational politics.”
12. “They put every candidate through at least five interviews. They insist on using a core set of behavioral questions, asked in slightly different ways by different people. And then they make all the interviewers get together in a room and debrief.” Jamie paused. “They do this for vice presidents, consultants, even receptionists.”
13. “The healthier an organization is the more of its intelligence it is able to tap into and use.”
14. “Meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure. Too many organizations have only one kind of regular meeting, often called a staff meeting. Either once a week or twice a month, people get together for two or three hours of randomly focused discussion about everything from strategy to tactics, from administrivia to culture. Because there is no clarity around what topics are appropriate, there is no clear context for the various discussions that take place.”
15. “Great organizations, unlike countries, are never run like a democracy.”
16. “A core value is something you’re willing to get punished for.”
17. “enduring, successful companies adhered strictly to a fundamental set of principles that guided their behaviors and decisions over time, preserving the essence of the organization.”
18. “the only thing that really matters is this: are they holding back their opinions? Members of great teams do not.”
19. “If everything is important, then nothing is.”
20. “Trust is the foundation of teamwork. • On a team, trust is all about vulnerability, which is difficult for most people. • Building trust takes time, but the process can be greatly accelerated. • Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time.”
21. “Someone once told me that the best way to know if you should hire a person is to go on a cross-country business trip with him. See how he handles himself in stressful, interactive situations and over long periods of time. While that isn't necessarily practical, I do believe that interviews should incorporate interaction with diverse groups of people in everyday situations and that they should be longer than forty-five minutes.”
22. “3 most dangerous mistakes leaders make: 1- Becoming a leader for the wrong reason. 2- Failing to embrace vulnerability. 3- Making leadership too important.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
23. “I have found that most leaders spend the majority of their time and energy making their organizations smarter, with relatively little effort directed toward making them healthier.”
24. “It’s all about standing there naked in front of the client. It’s about building trust. And in the end, that means the client trusts them and takes care of them.”
25. “The fundamental attribution error is simply this: human beings tend to falsely attribute the negative behaviors of others to their character (an internal attribution), while they attribute their own negative behaviors to their environment (an external attribution).”
26. “The hard truth is, bad meetings almost always lead to bad decisions, which is the best recipe for mediocrity.”
27. “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.”
28. “More than a third of Rich’s fifty-five-hour workweeks (fifty was just not realistic for him) was spent interviewing potential hires.”
29. “momentum.”
30. “The key, of course, is to define our goals, our results, in a way that is simple enough to grasp easily, and specific enough to be actionable.”
31. “As difficult as it is to build a team, it is not complicated.”
32. “Ego is the ultimate killer on a team”
33. “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.”
34. “He wrote a simple question on a piece of paper: WHAT IS THE ONE THING I DO THAT REALLY MATTERS TO THE FIRM?”
35. “Scare People with Sincerity”
36. “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.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
37. “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.”
38. “Teamwork begins by building trust.”
39. “The healthier an organization is, the more of its intelligence it is able to tap into and use.”
40. “The most important part of the development process, and the part that is so often missing, is the leader's commitment to constantly “reminding” an employee if she is not yet doing what is needed. Without this, improvement will not occur.”
41. “Building a cohesive leadership team is the first critical step that an organization must take if it is to have the best chance at success.”
42. “Most people don’t really want to change the world, they want to become known as the person who changed the world.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
43. “1. What makes your family unique?”
44. “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.”
45. “and experienced executives than our competitors,”
46. “Scare people with sincerity.”
47. “Team members have to be focused on the collective good of the team. Too often, they focus their attention on their department, their budget, their career aspirations, their egos.”
48. “For all the talk about hiring for fit, there is still too much emphasis on technical skills and experience when it comes to interviewing and selection.”
49. “Ripping the Band-Aid off quickly” is”
50. “I'd say that I'm good at solving problems, doing analysis—stuff like that. What I'm not so good at is communicating with human beings.” He stopped. “I mean, it's not that I can't do it, but I really prefer people who aren't sensitive. I like to have conversations with people on a purely intellectual level and not have to worry about what they're feeling or anything like that. Does that make sense?”
51. “even though clients require us to be competent enough to meet their needs, it is ultimately our honesty, humility, and selflessness that will endear us to them and allow them to trust and depend on us.”
52. “when team members reveal aspects of their personal lives to their peers, they learn to get comfortable being open with them about other things. They begin to let down their guard about their strengths, weaknesses, opinions, and ideas.”
53. “Rich didn’t care if people liked the guy. He knew that most people at this level had learned how to be likable during interviews. “What did Rita think?”
54. “Avoiding the issues that merit debate and disagreement not only makes the meeting boring, it guarantees that the issues won’t be resolved. And this is a recipe for frustration. Ironically, that frustration often manifests itself later in the form of unproductive personal conflict, or politics.”
55. “People who lead healthy organizations sign up for a monumental task – and a very selfless one.
56. “the first circle, I had written the word ideation, and above the third was implementation. The middle circle is what we found most fascinating, or perhaps novel, and above it was the word activation. We labeled this the “Three Stages of Work.” Each circle was filled with half a dozen other words to describe what it meant.”
57. “Well,” he was clearly thinking out loud, “probably someone who wants to be at practice. I love gym rats, but not just the kind who want to play one-on-one all day. I like the kids who come early and do extra drills. And watch film even when they don't have to.” He paused before adding, “And who kind of hate to lose.” “Sore losers?” Ben shook his head. “No, not at all. I mean, the kind who come to practice wanting to work as hard as they can to avoid losing. Coaching them is easy.”
58. “we have to ideate, activate, and implement.”
59. “While it is true that much of the time we currently spend in meetings is largely wasted, the solution is not to stop having meetings, but rather to make them better. Because when properly utilized, meetings are actually time savers. That’s right. Good meetings provide opportunities to improve execution by accelerating decision making and eliminating the need to revisit issues again and again. But they also produce a subtle but enormous benefit by reducing unnecessarily repetitive motion and communication in the organization.”
60. “When we fail to acknowledge our humanity, our people will fail to trust us.”
61. “If team members are never pushing one another outside of their emotional comfort zones during discussions, then it is extremely likely that they’re not making the best decisions for the organization.”
62. “So you have to be confident enough to do something that is potentially client-threatening.” It”
63. “We have to speak the kind truth.”
64. “Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
65. “How would you describe your personality?” Look for how accurately the person describes what you are observing and how introspective he is. Smart people generally know themselves and find it interesting to talk about their behavioral strengths and weaknesses. People who seem stumped or surprised by this question might not be terribly smart when it comes to people.”
66. “It is at once shocking and understandable that intelligent people cannot see the correlation between failing to take the time to get clarity, closure, and buy-in during a meeting, and the time required to clean up after themselves as a result.”
67. “What is the single most important behavioral characteristic or quality demonstrated by this person that can sometimes derail the team?”
68. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
69. “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.”
70. “All too often in life, we see people do what we want them to do and we say nothing, assuming that the behavior has become natural for them, an easy standard.”
71. “Hiring without clear and strict criteria for cultural fit greatly hampers the potential for success of any organization.”
72. “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.”
73. “People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed.”
74. “As difficult as it is to build a team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical, whether you run the executive staff at a multi-national company, a small department within a larger organization, or even if you are merely a member of a team that needs improvement.”
75. “Meetings are boring because they lack drama. Or conflict.”
76. “To hold someone accountable is to care about them enough to risk having them blame you for pointing out their deficiencies.”
77. “Organizational health is so simple and accessible that many leaders have a hard time seeing it as a real opportunity for meaningful advantage. After all, It doesn’t require great intelligence or sophistication, just uncommon levels of discipline, courage, persistence, and common sense.”
78. “Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they're doing it because they care about the team.”
79. “All things to all people is nothing to everyone.”
80. “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.”
81. “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.”
82. “The agenda should be based on what everyone is actually working on and how the company is performing against its goals, not based on the leader’s best guess forty-eight hours prior to the meeting.”
83. “An absence of accountability is an invitation to team members to shift their attention to areas other than collective results”
84. “My job and employees are not more important than my family.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
85. “I believe that teamwork is not a virtue, but rather a choice. It's a strategic decision and an intentional one, which means that it's not for everyone.”
86. “Commitment is about a group of intelligent, driven individuals buying in to a decision precisely when they don’t naturally agree. In other words, it’s the ability to defy a lack of consensus.”
87. “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.”
88. “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.”
89. “Tell me about someone who is better than you in an area that really matters to you.” Look for the candidate to demonstrate a genuine appreciation for others who have more skill or talent. Humble people are comfortable with this. Ego-driven people often are not.”
90. “Trust is the foundation of real teamwork. And so the first dysfunction is a failure on the part of team members to understand and open up to one another. And if that sounds touchy-feely, let me explain, because there is nothing soft about it. It is an absolutely critical part of building a team. In fact, it’s probably the most critical.”
91. “Moments of truth are best handled face-to-face P.30”
92. “Though I can’t be sure, I suspect that at some point about thirty years ago a cleverly sadistic and antibusiness consultant decided that the best way to really screw up companies was to convince them that what they needed was a convoluted, jargony, and all-encompassing declaration of intent. The more times those declarations used phrases like “world class,” “shareholder value,” and “adding value,” the better. And if companies would actually print those declarations and hang them in their lobbies and break rooms for public viewing, well, that would be a real coup.”
93. “Almost all of the time and energy in Half Moon Bay was being directed toward consulting to paying clients. Those clients in turn became the sales engine for the firm, and even when we did an occasional cold call, it was the references from clients that shortened the sales cycle considerably. I’m not even sure I’d call it a sales cycle at all.”
94. “Building a strong team is both possible and remarkably simple. But it is painfully difficult.”
95. “We’ve learned over the years that having a bad client is worse than having none.”
96. “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.” - Patrick LencioniInfographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
97. “Conflict is about issues and ideas, while accountability is about performance and behavior.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
98. “Implementation science is more important than decision science.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
99. “Ken always says that his job is to create the best team possible, not to shepherd the careers of individual athletes.”
100. “It is ironic that so many people avoid conflict in the name of efficiency, because healthy conflict is actually a time saver.”
101. “Stop making the perfect enemy of the good.”
102. “management is an everyday thing. Strategy and financial reporting and planning are not.”
103. “In order to be the kind of leader who demonstrates genuine interest in employees and who can help people discover the relevance of their work, a person must have a level of personal confidence and emotional vulnerability.”
104. “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”
105. “When an executive decides not to confront a peer about a potential disagreement, he or she is dooming employees to waste time, money, and emotional energy dealing with unresolvable issues. This causes the best employees to start looking for jobs in less dysfunctional organizations, and it creates an environment of disillusionment, distrust, and exhaustion for those who stay.”
106. “Direct, personal feedback really is the simplest and most effective form of motivation.”
107. “his job is to create the best team possible, not to shepherd the careers of individual”
108. “Building a strong team is both possible and remarkably simple. But is painfully difficult.”
109. “I think we need to start having a Headline News every day, for five minutes. We could call it a Daily Check-in or something. That means we should get together in a conference room, standing up, and just announce what we’re all doing.”
110. “Like so many other aspects of life, teamwork comes down to mastering a set of behaviors that are at once theoretically uncomplicated, but extremely difficult to put into practice day after day.”
111. “The questions were, ‘What did you accomplish?’ ‘What will you accomplish next?’ ‘How can you improve?’” “That’s it?” “Not quite. The question on the back was, ‘Are you embracing the values?”
112. “Bad meetings are the birthplace of unhealthy organizations.”
113. “No action, activity, or process is more central to a healthy organization than the meeting.”
114. “3. How do you talk about and use the answers to these questions?”
115. “the best way to ensure that a message gets communicated throughout an organization is to spread rumors about it.”
116. “[Trust] requires team members to make themselves vulnerable to one another, and be confident that their respective vulnerabilities will not be used against them.”
117. “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.”
118. “I really want to know what you'd like to change about yourself, or better yet, what your best friends would say you need to work on.” The key to the answer is not what their weaknesses are (unless of course they're an axe murderer), but if they're comfortable acknowledging something real.”
119. “commitment is not consensus. Waiting for everyone on a team to agree intellectually on a decision is a good recipe for mediocrity, delay, and frustration, which is why it amazes me that so many of the teams I work with still seem determined to achieve consensus.”
120. “No quality or characteristic is more important than trust”
121. “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.”
122. “When it comes to establishing a norm for a team, a measure of judgment is required of a leader. While there is no doubt that the person in charge must set the tone based on a personal belief about what will lead to the best results for the organization, the leader also needs to take into account the capabilities and attitudes of the staff members. This is something of a balancing act.”
123. “The most effective and efficient means of maintaining high standards of performance on a team is peer pressure. More than any policy or system, there is nothing like the fear of letting down respected teammates to motivate people to improve their performance.”
124. “Trust is not the same as assuming everyone is on the same page as you & that they don't need to be pushed. Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they're doing it because they care about the team.”
125. “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.”
126. “As important as it is for all members of a leadership team to commit to being vulnerable, that is not going to happen if the leader of the team, whether that person is the CEO, department head, pastor, or school principal, does not go first. If the team leader is reluctant to acknowledge his or her mistakes or fails to admit to a weakness that is evident to everyone else, there is little hope that other members of the team are going to take that step themselves. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be advisable for them to do so because there is a good chance that their vulnerability would be neither encouraged nor rewarded.”
127. “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.”
128. “What is most important is that team members get comfortable letting their colleagues see them for who they are. No pretension. No positioning.”
129. “More than any policy or system, there is nothing like the fear of letting down respected teammates that motivate people to improve their performance.”
130. “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.”
131. “Firing someone is not necessarily a sign of accountability, but is often the last act of cowardice for a leader who doesn’t know how or isn’t willing to hold people accountable.”
132. “humble self- confidence.”
133. “And they don’t worry about whether the potential client will take advantage of their generosity; they know that for every client that does, nine others will appreciate their generosity and start to see themselves as a client even before they formally decide to become one.”
134. “The lack of conflict is precisely the cause of one of the biggest problems that meetings have: they are boring.”
135. “A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization.” - Patrick LencioniInfographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
136. “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.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
137. “From the moment he began using the disciplines on his yellow sheet, Rich was continually narrowing the scope of his responsibilities to a core set of activities. One of the areas that he most adamantly insisted on being involved in, and which had a profound connection to each of the four disciplines, was the hiring of new employees.”
138. “All great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow. This”
139. “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.”
140. “The truth is, the only thing more painful than confronting an uncomfortable topic is pretending it doesn’t exist. And I believe far more suffering is caused by failing to deal with an issue directly—and whispering about it in the hallways—than by putting it on the table and wrestling with it head on.”
141. “avoid, as much as possible, telling clients what they would do if they were to be hired; instead, they just start serving them as though they were already a client. And”
142. “Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in”
143. “ten”
144. “While these are both important problems to be aware of, by far the most common and dangerous challenge in making Weekly Tacticals work is the temptation to get into discussions about long-term strategic issues. Why is this such an important problem to avoid? First , there isn’t enough time during a Weekly Tactical to properly discuss major issues. Important, complex topics deserve enough time for brainstorming, analysis, even preparation.”
145. “Open, frank communication is the lynchpin to teamwork. A fractured team is like a fractured bone; fixing it is always painful and sometimes you have to re-break it to heal it fully – and the re-break always hurts more because it is intentional.”
146. “As it turns out, the primary motive for most young people, and too many older ones, is the rewards that leadership brings with it. Things like notoriety, status, and power. But people who are motivated by these things won’t embrace the demands of leadership when they see little or no connection between doing their duties and receiving those rewards.”
147. “Every endeavor of importance in life, whether it is creative, athletic, interpersonal, or academic, brings with it a measure of discomfort,”
148. “While it is true that much of the time we currently spend in meetings is largely wasted, the solution is not to stop having meetings, but rather to make them better. Because when properly utilized, meetings are actually time savers.”
149. “Building an effective, cohesive team is extremely hard. But it’s also simple.”
150. “teams should commit to doing Daily Check-ins for a set period of time—perhaps two months—before evaluating whether or not they are working.”
151. “Consensus is horrible. I mean, if everyone really agrees on something and consensus comes about quickly and naturally, well that’s terrific. But that isn’t how it usually works, and so consensus becomes an attempt to please everyone.” “Which usually”
152. “When players on a team stop caring about the scoreboard, they inevitably start caring about something else.”
153. “Ricky asks her, “You lost your earrings in the living room?” She shakes her head. “No, I lost them in the bedroom. But the light out here is much better.” And there it is. Most leaders prefer to look for answers where the light is better, where they are more comfortable. And the light is certainly better in the measurable, objective, and data-driven world of organizational intelligence (the smart side of the equation) than it is in the messier, more unpredictable world of organizational health. Studying spreadsheets and Gantt charts and financial statements is relatively safe and predictable, which most executives prefer. That’s how they’ve been trained, and that’s where they’re comfortable. What they usually want to avoid at all costs are subjective conversations that can easily become emotional and awkward. And organizational health is certainly fraught with the potential for subjective and awkward conversations.”
154. “No action, activity, or process is more central to a healthy organization than the meeting.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
155. “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.”
156. “An organization has to institutionalize its culture without bureaucratizing it.”
157. “Members of trusting teams accept questions and input about their areas or responsibility, appreciate and tap into one another’s skills and experiences, and look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group.”
158. “Tell the kind truth.”
159. “An organization's strategy is simply its plan for success. It's nothing more than the collection of intentional decisions a company makes to give itself the best chance to thrive and differentiate from competitors.”
160. “Members of trusting teams admit weaknesses and mistakes, take risks in offering feedback and assistance, and focus time and energy on important issues, not politics.”
161. “Clare offered a half-hearted suggestion. “Well, there are coaches I know who do one-on-one counseling.” Bobby shook his head. “No, that doesn't usually work. It takes months and only isolates people. It seems like most of them just use it to prepare for their next job.”
162. “Successful leadership is about core behaviors not the superficial stuff we usually focus on.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
163. “A person should want to be a leader b/c they want to sacrifice themselves for others even w/out a guaranteed return.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
164. “we always have team members go back to their direct reports and share their profile information. This serves three purposes. First, it provides a great opportunity for demonstrating vulnerability with their subordinates. Second, it gives those subordinates real insights into their leaders, so that they’ll feel more comfortable providing feedback and interpreting behavior correctly. Third, it helps the executives develop a better understanding of their own profiles, because teaching is one of the best ways of learning.”
165. “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. And”
166. “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.”
167. “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage.”
168. “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
169. “When people who don’t trust one another engage in passionate debate, they are trying to win the argument. They aren’t usually listening to the other person’s ideas and then reconsidering their point of view; they’re figuring out how to manipulate the conversation to get what they want.”
170. “Trust is the confidence among team members that their peers' intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. Teammates are vulnerable with one another; they are confident that their respective vulnerabilities will not be used against them.”
171. “A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization.”
172. “identify one particular insight from their profile that they feel highlights a weakness that they would like to address for the good of the team.”
173. “Ad Hoc Strategic Meetings In some cases, a strategic or critical issue that gets raised in a Weekly Tactical meeting cannot wait for the next Monthly Strategic meeting on the schedule. Still, that doesn’t mean it should be taken up during that Weekly Tactical.”
174. “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”
175. “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.”
176. “Employees in every organization, and at every level, need to know that at the heart of what they do lies something grand and inspirational.”
177. “I believe that all successful organizations share two qualities: they are smart, and they are healthy. An organization demonstrates that it is smart by developing intelligent strategies, marketing plans, product features, and financial models that lead to competitive advantage over its rivals. It demonstrates that it is healthy by eliminating politics and confusion, which leads to higher morale, lower turnover, and higher productivity.”
178. “Rozbity zespół jest jak złamana ręka lub noga: składanie jest zawsze bolesne, zdarza się nawet, że musisz ją ponownie łamać, by w końcu lepiej się zrosła. A powtórne łamanie boli jeszcze bardziej niż pierwsze, ponieważ musisz zrobić to w sposób zamierzony.”
179. “But no matter what is going on, there has to be something ultimately at stake. A prize, survival, sanity, success, even peace of mind.”
180. “Humble Only: The Pawn”
181. “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.”
182. “The lack of conflict is precisely the cause of one of the biggest problems that meetings have: they are boring”
183. “No one on a cohesive team can say Well, I did my job. Our failure isn’t my fault.”
184. “Meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure.”
185. “That being said, experiential team exercises can be valuable tools for enhancing teamwork as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes.”
186. “Peer pressure and the distaste for letting down a colleague will motivate a team player more than any fear of authoritative punishment or rebuke.”
187. “At its core, organizational health is about integrity, but not in the ethical or moral way that integrity is defined so often today. 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.”
188. “we like to believe that we do bad things because of the situations we are in, but somehow we easily come to the conclusion that others do bad things because they are predisposed to being bad. (Similarly,”
189. “Naked service providers don’t enjoy being wrong; they just realize that it is an inevitability. And”
190. “It is important that leaders prevent against accidental values taking root because they can prevent new ideas and people from flourishing in an organization.”
191. “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.”
192. “When leaders preach teamwork but exclusively reward individual achievement, they are confusing their people and creating an obstacle to true team behavior.”
193. “No quality or characteristic is more important than trust.”
194. “When we forget to invest in relationships with people, we’re throwing money in the fire.”
195. “A job is bound to be miserable if it doesn’t involve measurement.”
196. “Most mission statements have neither inspired people to change the world nor provided them with a accurate description of what an organization actually does for a living.”
197. “No matter how many times executives preach about the “e” word in their speeches, there is no way that their employees can be empowered to fully execute their responsibilities if they don’t receive clear and consistent messages about what is important from their leaders across the organization. There is probably no greater frustration for employees than having to constantly navigate the politics and confusion caused by leaders who are misaligned. That’s because just a little daylight between members of a leadership team becomes blinding and overwhelming to employees one or two levels below.”
198. “Ask dumb questions.”
199. “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.”
200. “The key to managing this challenge, of course, is to identify a reasonable number of issues that will have the greatest possible impact on the success of your organization, and then spend most of your time thinking about, talking about, and working on those issues.”
201. “conflict is productive”
202. “What is the single most important behavioral characteristic or quality demonstrated by this person that contributes to the strength of our team?”
203. “truly nimble organizations dare to create clarity at all times, even when they are not completely certain about whether it is correct. And if they later see a need to change course, they do so without hesitation or apology, and thus create clarity around the new idea or answer.”
204. “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?”
205. “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”
206. “Teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped.”
207. “Casey asked the next question. “But what about people being out of the office? It isn’t realistic or feasible to do this every day, is it?” Will thought about it for a second. “Well, even if there are only three of you in the office on a given day, you should probably still have the Daily Check-in meeting. Because if you think about it, even that would make a difference. For one, those three people would be on the same page. And better yet, if one of the other team members called from the road and wanted to know what someone was doing, any of you could answer them.”
208. “The best performance management systems include only essential information, and allow managers and their employees to focus on the work that must be done to ensure success.”
209. “More than anything else, cohesive teams are efficient. They arrive at decisions more quickly and with greater buy-in than non-cohesive teams do.”
210. “Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.”
211. “Consensus is horrible. I mean, if everyone really agrees on something and consensus comes about quickly and naturally, well that’s terrific. But that isn’t how it usually works, and so consensus becomes an attempt to please everyone.” “Which usually turns into displeasing everyone equally.” Jeff made his remark with a look of pain on his face, as though he were reliving a bad memory. “Exactly. The point here is that most reasonable people don’t have to get their way in a discussion. They just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to.” “So where does the lack of commitment come into play?” Nick wanted to know. “Well, some teams get paralyzed by their need for complete agreement, and their inability to move beyond debate.”
212. “It's important not to misread my advice as permission to tolerate people who don't fit. 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.”
213. “I don’t know how else to say this, but building a team is hard.”
214. “The fact remains that team, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfuctional.”
215. Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/ Patrick Lencioni’s Five Team Dysfunctions “Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they are doing it because They care about the team.” - Patrick Lencioni “Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” - Patrick Lencioni Dysfunction of the Team Absence of Trust Fear of Conflict Lack of Commitment Avoidance of Accountability Inattention to Results Role of the Leader Go First Mine for Conflict Force Clarity and Closure Confront Difficult Issues Force on Collective Outcomes
216. “cohesive teams fight. But they fight about issues, not personalities. Most important, when they are done fighting, they have an amazing capacity to move on to the next issue, with no residual feelings.”
217. “Once a leadership team has become cohesive and worked to establish clarity and alignment around the answers to the six critical questions, then, and only then, can they effectively move on to the next step: communicating those answers. Or better yet, overcommunicating those answers—over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.”
218. “We need to hire people who are hungry. They go beyond what is required. Passionate about the work they're doing. Hungry.”
219. “When people come together and set aside their individual needs for the good of the whole, they can accomplish what might have looked impossible on paper. They do this by eliminating the politics and confusion that plague most organizations. As a result, they get more done in less time and with less cost.”
220. “Naked service providers are so concerned about helping a client that they are willing to ask questions and make suggestions even if those questions and suggestions could turn out to be laughably wrong. They”
221. “Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
222. “All great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow. This is true in marriage, parenthood, friendship, and certainly business.”
223. “Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” - Patrick LencioniInfographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
224. “First, we go figure out how to recognize a real team player, the kind of person who can easily build trust, engage in healthy conflict, make real commitments, hold people accountable, and focus on the team's results. Then, we stop hiring people who can't. Finally, we help the people who are acting like jackasses change their ways or move on to different companies.”
225. “Teams that commit to decisions and standards do so because they know how to embrace two separate but related concepts: buy-in and clarity. Buy-in is the achievement of honest emotional support. Clarity is the removal of assumptions and ambiguity from a situation.”
226. “If you really think about it, meetings should be at least as interesting as movies.”
227. “By demonstrating generosity and trust, you drastically increase the likelihood of making them a client, not to mention proving to them that you can help them.”
228. “Contrary to the assumptions of his rivals, Rich O’Connor had no tolerance for touchy-feely off-site meetings. In fact, his staff had come to refer to his meetings as “hug-free zones,” a term they coined during Telegraph’s first management retreat five years earlier.”
229. “All of this highlights one of the most challenging obstacles that prevents teams from taking the time to work on how they work together: adrenaline addiction. Many if not most of the executives and managers I know have become so hooked on the rush of urgent demands and out-of-control schedules that the prospect of slowing down to review, think, talk, and develop themselves is too anxiety-inducing to consider. Of course, this is exactly what they need, which is what addiction is all about—doing things that are bad for you even when confronted with evidence that they are, well, bad for you.”
230. “Last frontier of competitive advantage will be the transformation of unhealthy organizations into healthy ones.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
231. “The single greatest advantage any company can achieve is organizational health.”
232. “I believe in the old saying that if you can’t measure something, you can’t improve it.”
233. “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,”
234. “Wanting to be popular with your direct reports instead of holding them accountable.”
235. “Collaboration, it turns out, is not a gift from the gods but a skill that requires effort and practice."
236. “Team Number One The only way for a leader to establish this collective mentality on a team is by ensuring that all members place a higher priority on the team they’re a member of than the team they lead in their departments. A good way to go about this is simply to ask them which team is their first priority. I’ve found that many well-intentioned executives will admit that in spite of their commitment to the team that they’re a member of, the team they lead is their first priority. They’ll point out that they hired their direct reports, they sit near them and spend more time with them every day, and they enjoy being the leader of that team. Moreover, they feel a sense of loyalty to the people they manage, and feel that those people want and need their protection. This is absolutely natural, common, and understandable. And dangerous.”
237. “Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
238. “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. As”
239. “An organization’s strategy is simply its plan for success.”
240. “The most justifiable reason to loathe meetings is that they don’t contribute to the success of our organizations.”
241. “BE COHESIVE. BE CLEAR. OVER-COMMUNICATE. REINFORCE.”
242. “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.”
243. “When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
244. “You admit it was a bad idea as soon as you realize it. You laugh at yourself. You take their ribbing. And most important, you don’t stop making suggestions. Most of your ideas won’t be horrible. Even”
245. “Experiential team exercises can be valuable tools for enhancing teamwork as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
246. “Bad meetings, and what they indicate and provoke in an organization, generate real human suffering in the form of anger, lethargy, and cynicism. And while this certainly has a profound impact on organizational life, it also impacts people’s self-esteem, their families, and their outlook on life.”
247. “The Quarterly Off-Site Review is a critical chance to step back from the daily, weekly, monthly grind, and review things from a distance.” “Review what?” For the first time, Will read directly from his notes. “Well, strategy. The competitive landscape. Morale. The dynamics of the executive team. Top performers. Bottom performers. Customer satisfaction. Pretty much everything that has a long-term impact on the success of the company. Stuff you just can’t cover in weekly or monthly meetings.”
248. “When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth.”
249. “How will we succeed? Or put another way, How will we make decisions in a purposeful, intentional, and unique way that allow us to maximize our success and differentiate us from our competitors?”
250. “An organization that has achieved clarity has a sense of unity around everything it does. It aligns its resources, especially the human ones, around common concepts, values, definitions, goals, and strategies, thereby realizing the synergies that all great companies must achieve.”
251. “People will walk through fire for a leader that’s true and human.”
252. “Firing someone is not necessarily a sign of accountability, but is often the last act of cowardice”
253. “Every great movie has conflict.”
254. “Ego is the ultimate killer on a team.”
255. “Meetings are boring because they lack drama. Or conflict. This is a shame because most meetings have plenty of potential for drama, which is essential for keeping human beings engaged. Unfortunately, rather than mining for that golden conflict, most leaders of meetings seem to be focused on avoiding tension and ending their meetings on time.”
256. “Progress Review The next key ingredient for the Weekly Tactical meeting is the routine reporting of critical information or metrics: revenue, expenses, customer satisfaction, inventory, and the like. What is reported depends on the particular industry and organizational situation, of course. The point here is to get into the habit of reviewing progress relating to key metrics for success, but not every metric available.”
257. “For all the talk about hiring for fit, there is still too much emphasis on technical skills and experience when it comes to interviewing and selection. And this happens at all levels. When push comes to shove, most executives get enamored with what candidates know and have done in their careers and allow those things to overshadow more important behavioral issues. They don’t seem to buy into the notion that you can teach skill but not attitude.”
258. “One of the most difficult challenges for a leader who wants to instill accountability on a team is to encourage and allow the team to serve as the first and primary accountability mechanism.”
259. “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.”
260. “At every step in the process, the leader must be out front, not as a cheerleader or a figurehead, but as an active, tenacious driver.”
261. “I've found that, in most cases, managers greatly underestimate the impact that a comment or quick gesture of approval has on employees. They'll spend weeks trying to tweak an annual bonus program or some other compensation system, believing that their employees are coin-operated, but they'll neglect to stop someone during a meeting and say, “Hey, that's a fantastic example of hunger. We should all try to be more like that.” I'm not saying that compensation doesn't matter. But if we want to create a culture of humility, hunger, and smarts, the best way to do it is to constantly be catching people exhibiting those virtues and publicly holding them up as examples. No balloons, pastries, or plastic tchotchkes are necessary, just genuine, in-the-moment appreciation.”
262. “But organizational clarity is not merely about choosing the right words to describe a company’s mission, strategy, or values; it is about agreeing on the fundamental concepts that drive it.”
263. “it is far more natural, and common, for leaders to avoid holding people accountable.”
264. “Clients don’t expect perfection from the service providers they hire, but they do expect honesty and transparency. There”
265. “morale at the company was undeniably higher, and turnover had dropped markedly. But Jeff was adamant that it shouldn't go away completely: “If no one is leaving or being asked to leave, then we're probably not truly living these values.”
266. “When employees at all levels share a common understanding of where the company is headed, what success looks like, whom their competitors are, and what needs to be achieved to claim victory, there is a remarkably low level of wasted time and energy and a powerful sense of traction.”
267. “Well, strategy. The competitive landscape. Morale. The dynamics of the executive team. Top performers. Bottom performers. Customer satisfaction. Pretty much everything that has a long-term impact on the success of the company. Stuff you just can’t cover in weekly or monthly meetings.”
268. “…his biggest problem was his need for a problem.”
269. “The only way to build trust is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
270. “Truth lies at the heart of a functioning, cohesive team. Without it, teamwork is all but impossible”
271. “Consensus is horrible. I mean, if everyone really agrees on something and consensus comes about quickly and naturally, well that’s terrific. But that isn’t how it usually works, and so consensus becomes an attempt to please everyone.”
272. “Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.”
273. “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.”
274. “The most important principle that an executive must embrace is a desire to produce results. As obvious as this sounds, it is not universally practiced by the highest-ranking executives in many companies. Many CEOs put something ahead of results on their list of priorities, and it represents the most dangerous of all the temptations: the desire to protect the status of their careers.”
275. “A team that is not focused on results ... • Stagnates/fails to grow • Rarely defeats competitors • Loses achievement-oriented employees”
276. “In consulting, entering the danger comes into play in those moments when you’re in a meeting and someone says something that is either strange or politically sensitive, and you know that the level of anxiety and discomfort in the room is high. What you’re tempted to do is just be quiet and let the moment pass, but what great consultants do, at least according to Lighthouse, is walk right into the middle of the situation and call it out.”
277. “The key to injecting drama into a meeting lies in setting up the plot from the outset. Participants need to be jolted a little during the first ten minutes of a meeting, so that they understand and appreciate what is at stake.”
278. “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.”
279. “When interviewing, get people out of the office and see how they do in real-world situations.”
280. “fundamental values are not chosen from thin air based on the desires of executives; they are discovered within what already exists in an organization.”
281. “There is something so powerful about a person who in one moment can be confident enough to confront a client about a sensitive personal issue, and then in the next moment humble themselves and take a position of servitude. It’s the paradoxical nature of it all that makes it work.”
282. “I’m not saying we need to be spending more time in meetings, necessarily. But we definitely need to be having more than one type of meeting.”
283. “Within companies that effectively over-communicate, employees at all levels and in all departments understand what the organization is about and how they contribute to its success. They don’t spend time speculating on what executives are really thinking, and they don’t look for hidden messages among the information they receive.”
284. “I knew that these people were not idiots, so the only thing I could attribute their insane response to was a profound lack of courage and intellectual integrity.”
285. “Ironically, most leaders of meetings go out of their way to eliminate or minimize drama and avoid the healthy conflict that results from it. Which only drains the interest of employees.”
286. “executives must put the needs of the higher team ahead of the needs of their departments.”
287. “commitment cannot occur if people are unclear about exactly what is being committed to.”
288. “Second, and this is certainly related, those executives don’t see the company’s reason for existing as having any practical implications for the way they make decisions and run the organization.”
289. “If we hate meetings, can we be making good decisions and successfully leading our organizations? I don’t think so. There is simply no substitute for a good meeting—a dynamic, passionate, and focused engagement—when it comes to extracting the collective wisdom of a team. The hard truth is, bad meetings almost always lead to bad decisions, which is the best recipe for mediocrity.”
290. “Regardless of what position people originally took, once the decision is made, everyone supports it. That’s why it is critical that no one hold anything back during the discussion.”
291. “There was no sense of unity or camaraderie on the team, which translated into a muted level of commitment.”
292. “The single most important reason to reward people is to provide them with an incentive for doing what’s best for the organization.”
293. “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.”
294. “The enemy of accountability is ambiguity”
295. “Let me assure you that from now on, every staff meeting we have will be loaded with conflict. And they won’t be boring. And if there is nothing worth debating, then we won’t have a meeting.” The”
296. “When people self-identify and publicly declare their outlook on conflict, they become much more open to adjusting it to whatever team norms need to be established.”
297. “The key is to take five minutes at the end of staff meetings and ask the question, “What do we need to communicate to our people?” After a few minutes of discussion, it will become apparent which issues need clarification and which are appropriate to communicate. Not only does this brief discussion avoid confusion among the executives themselves, it gives employees a sense that the people who head their respective departments are working together and coming to agreement on important issues.”
298. “Most organizations have too many top priorities to achieve the level of focus they need to succeed.”
299. “All great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow.”
300. “Push with respect, and under the assumption that the other person is probably doing the right thing. But push anyway. And never hold back.”
301. “DISCIPLINE FOUR: REINFORCE ORGANIZATIONAL CLARITY THROUGH HUMAN SYSTEMS.”
302. “If you’re not interested in getting better, it’s time for you to stop leading.”
303. “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.”
304. “Teams have to eliminate ambiguity and interpretation when it comes to success.”
305. “Many organizations make the mistake of using metrics in place of thematic and strategic goals. This is a problem because metrics do not inspire enthusiasm among employees.”
306. “la primera disfunción: la ausencia de confianza. Se”
307. “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.”
308. “Let me assure you that from now on, every staff meeting we have will be loaded with conflict. And they won’t be boring. And if there is nothing worth debating, then we won’t have a meeting.”
309. “There is always that little voice in your head saying, “What about me?” Sometimes that little voice drowns out the cry of the team, and the collective results of the group get left behind.”
310. “Teams that commit to decisions and standards do so because they know how to embrace two separate but related concepts: buy-in and clarity. Buy-in is the achievement of honest emotional support. Clarity is the removal of assumptions and ambiguity from a situation. Commitment is about a group of intelligent, driven individuals buying in to a decision precisely when they don’t naturally agree. In other words, it’s the ability to defy a lack of consensus.”
311. “You can’t get to courage without walking through vulnerability.”
312. “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.”
313. “I believe that teamwork is not a virtue, but rather a choice. It's a strategic decision and an intentional one, which means it's not for everyone.”
314. “Great teams ensure that all members, in spite of their individual responsibilities and areas of expertise, are doing whatever they can to help the team accomplish its goals.”
315. “For cohesive teams, meetings are compelling and vital. They are forums for asking difficult questions, challenging one another’s ideas, and ultimately arriving at decisions that everyone agrees to support and adhere to, in the best interests of the company.”
316. “When it comes to teams, trust is all about vulnerability. Team members who trust one another learn to be comfortable being open, even exposed, to one another around their failures, weaknesses, even fears.”
317. “Most organizations I’ve worked with have too many top priorities to achieve the level of focus they need to succeed.”
318. “Leadership is too important when my being a leader is more important than my being a dad or husband.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
319. “If we don’t trust one another, then we aren’t going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict.”
320. “Firing someone is not necessarily a sign of accountability, but is often the last act of cowardice.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
321. “The Daily Check-in requires that team members get together, standing up, for about five minutes every morning to report on their activities that day. Five minutes. Standing up. That’s it. The purpose of the Daily Check-in is to help team members avoid confusion about how priorities are translated into action on a regular basis. It provides a quick forum for ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks on a given day and that no one steps on anyone else’s toes. Just as important, it helps eliminate the need for unnecessary and time-consuming e-mail chains about schedule coordination.”
322. “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.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
323. “He began, “I know that the next couple of hours might be tedious, and that there are a hundred other things we’d all rather be doing right now. But let’s keep a few things in mind while we’re here today. First, our competitors are hoping we get this wrong. They’re hoping we underallocate resources for advertising, or hire too many administrative staff. And our employees are desperate for us to get this right, because every decision we make today has a profound impact on someone’s job, not to mention their morale. In their minds, our credibility is on the line. And finally, I don’t want to be sitting at my desk nine months from now thinking, ‘Why didn’t I pay closer attention during that budget review?’ So let’s sit forward in our seats and do this right so we can feel good about it for the rest of the year.”
324. “Building a cohesive leadership team is the most critical of the four disciplines because it enables the other three. It is also the most elusive because it requires considerable interpersonal commitment from an executive team and its leader.”
325. “Trust is the foundation of real teamwork. And so the first dysfunction is a failure on the part of team members to understand and open up to one another.”
326. “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.”
327. “The only real payoff for leadership is eternal.”
328. “The leader is going to have to be ready to not only light the fuse of good conflict but to gently fan the flames for a while too.”
329. “All employees who had been with Telegraph for more than a few months knew that no matter how impressive their background or skills might have been, they had made it into the firm because they were found to be humble, hungry, and smart.”
330. “The single biggest structural problem facing leaders of meetings is the tendency to throw every type of issue that needs to be discussed into the same meeting, like a bad stew with too many random ingredients.”
331. “consensus is usually not achievable. The likelihood of six intelligent people coming to a sincere and complete agreement on a complex and important topic is very low.”
332. “The five behavioral manifestations of teamwork: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results.”
333. “It’s not that they go out of their way to tick off their clients. It’s just that they’re so focused on saying and doing whatever is in the best interests of those clients that they stop worrying about the repercussions. They make themselves completely vulnerable, or naked, and don’t try to protect themselves.”
334. “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.”
335. “The fact remains that teams, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfunctional.”
336. “trust is not the same as assuming everyone is on the same page as you, and that they don’t need to be pushed.”
337. “If you don’t think your job is relevant, you cannot love your work.”
338. “It’s about knowing that in certain moments you have to offer yourself up as a minor sacrifice to help them accomplish what they need to accomplish. Letting them abuse you, on the other hand, would be a terrible disservice. I know it seems like a fine line, but it’s a real one, and it can be done.”
339. “The key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage.”
340. “Improving meetings is not just an opportunity to enhance the performance of our companies. It is also a way to positively impact the lives of our people.”
341. “Great teams do not hold back with one another,” she said. “They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”
342. “On a team, trust is all about vulnerability, which is difficult for most people.”
343. “Effective off-sites provide executives an opportunity to regularly step away from the daily, weekly, even monthly issues that occupy their attention, so they can review the business in a more holistic, long-term manner. Topics for reflection and discussion at a productive Quarterly Off-Site Review might include the following: Comprehensive Strategy Review: Executives should reassess their strategic direction, not every day as so many do, but three or four times a year. Industries change and new competitive threats emerge that call for different approaches. Reviewing strategies annually or semiannually is usually not often enough to stay current. Team Review: Executives should regularly assess themselves and their behaviors as a team, identifying trends or tendencies that may not be serving the organization. This often requires a change of scenery so that executives can interact with one another on a more personal level and remind themselves of their collective commitments to the team. Personnel Review: Three or four times a year, executives should talk, across departments, about the key employees within the organization. Every member of an executive team should know whom their peers view as their stars, as well as their poor performers. This allows executives to provide perspectives that might actually alter those perceptions based on different experiences and points of view. More important, it allows them to jointly manage and retain top performers, and work with poor performers similarly. Competitive and Industry Review: Information about competitors and industry trends bleeds into an organization little by little over time. It is useful for executives to step back and look at what is happening around them in a more comprehensive way so they can spot trends that individual nuggets of information might not make clear. Even the best executives can lose sight of the forest for the trees when inundated with daily responsibilities.”
344. “teams, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfunctional.”
345. “Most of a leadership team’s objectives should be collective ones.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
346. “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.”
347. “Yeah, in my last company we called it ‘disagree and commit.’ You can argue about something and disagree, but still commit to it as though everyone originally bought into the decision completely.”
348. “Members of cohesive teams know one another’s strengths and weaknesses and don’t hesitate to point them out. They also know something about one another’s backgrounds, which helps them to understand why members think and act the way they do.”
349. “decisions never seemed to get made; discussion were slow and uninteresting, with few real exchanges; and everyone seemed to be desperately waiting for each meeting to end.”
350. “they make it clear that their focus is on understanding, honoring, and supporting the business of the client. As”
351. “When we avoid necessary pain, we not only fail to experience the gain, we also end up making the pain worse in the long run.”
352. “Well, some teams get paralyzed by their need for complete agreement, and their inability to move beyond debate.”
353. “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.”
354. “healthy companies are far less susceptible to ordinary problems than unhealthy ones. During difficult times, for instance, employees will remain committed to a healthy organization and stay with it longer, ultimately working to reestablish competitive advantage.”
355. “People who don’t like conflict have an amazing ability to avoid it, even when they know it’s theoretically necessary”
356. “organizational clarity allows a company to delegate more effectively and empower its employees with a true sense of confidence.”
357. “In spite of its undeniable power, so many leaders struggle to embrace organizational health (which I’ll be defining shortly) because they quietly believe they are too sophisticated, too busy, or too analytical to bother with it. In other words, they think it’s beneath them.”
358. “And so a leader of a meeting must make it a priority to seek out and uncover any important issues about which team members do not agree. And when team members don’t want to engage in those discussions, the leader must force them to do so. Even when it makes him or her temporarily unpopular.”
359. “If you’re not interested in getting better, it’s time for you to stop leading.”
360. “Really great people rarely leave a healthy organization.”
361. “Our ability to engage in passionate, unfiltered debate about what we need to do to succeed will determine our future as much as any products we develop or partnerships we sign.” It”
362. “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.”
363. “So, I agree that all our favorite movies have conflict. What I don’t get is why our meetings need to have it too. I mean, sure, they won’t be as boring. But how much of a difference is that really going to make in the long run?” Will considered the question, wanting to find the right words. Casey didn’t let him. “Come on now, Matt. If we’re engaged, don’t you think we’re going to be making better decisions? And we’ll probably be more likely to get everyone’s ideas and opinions out on the table.” “And that’s one of the big problems with your meetings now,” added Will. “Every time you guys are on the verge of getting into a crucial conversation about something that might get heated, you seem to bail out.”
364. “if we weren’t willing to tell a client the kind truth, why should they pay us?”
365. “These are the six questions: 1. Why do we exist? 2. How do we behave? 3. What do we do? 4. How will we succeed? 5. What is most important, right now? 6. Who must do what?”
366. “The enemy of accountability is ambiguity.”
367. “Humility is the antidote to pride.”
368. “KEY POINTS—FOCUSING ON RESULTS • The true measure of a great team is that it accomplishes the results it sets out to achieve. • To avoid distractions, team members must prioritize the results of the team over their individual or departmental needs. • To stay focused, teams must publicly clarify their desired results and keep them visible.”
369. “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.”
370. “Weekly Tactical meeting should last between forty-five and ninety minutes, depending on its frequency, and should include a few critical elements, including the following:”
371. “Choose your companions before you choose your road.”
372. “Meeting #3:The Monthly Strategic This is the most interesting and in many ways the most important type of meeting any team has. It is also the most fun. It is where executives wrestle with, analyze, debate, and decide upon critical issues (but only a few) that will affect the business in fundamental ways. Monthly Strategic meetings allow executives to dive into a given topic or two without the distractions of deadlines and tactical concerns.”
373. “high school kids at In-N-Out Burger and Chick-fil-A are doing largely the same job that kids at any other fast-food restaurant are doing, and yet there are a lot fewer miserable jobs at In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A. The difference is not the job itself. It is the management. And one of the most important things that managers must do is help employees see why their work matters to someone. Even if this sounds touchy-feely to some, it is a fundamental part of human nature.”
374. “Teamwork remains a sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped because it is hard to measure (teamwork impacts the outcome of an organization in such comprehensive and invasive ways that it's virtually impossible to isolate it as a single variable) and because it is extremely hard to achieve (it requires levels of courage and discipline that few executives possess) - ironically, building a strong team is very simple (it doesn't require masterful insights or tactics).”
375. “2. What is your family’s top priority—rallying cry—right now?”
376. “When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer.”
377. “Sounds crazy and counterintuitive, I know, but it is true.”
378. “It takes two flints to make a fire."
379. “There is just no escaping the fact that the single biggest factor determining whether an organization is going to get healthier – or not – is the genuine commitment and active involvement of the person in charge.”
380. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”
381. “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”
382. “An organization that is healthy will inevitably get smarter over time.”
383. “When team members do not openly debate and disagree about important ideas, they often turn to back channel personal attacks, which are far nastier and more harmful than any heated argument over issues”
384. “teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice—and a strategic one.”
385. “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.”
386. “ALWAYS CONSULT INSTEAD OF SELL”
387. “The only real payoff for leadership is eternal.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
388. “Hiring without clear and strict criteria for cultural fit greatly hampers the potential for success of any organization.” - Patrick LencioniInfographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
389. “If you first take a minute, an hour or a month to let go of feeling annoyed, frustrated or critical of the person or situation that may be driving you crazy, you set yourself up for much greater leadership and personal success.”
390. “Listen, this is just an unpleasant part of our job sometimes. Those executives know that I took a bullet for them. I’ll make sure they acknowledge that in some way, but I’m not going to punish them for it. Remember, they’re paying us to help them make their company more successful, and if I had to be a trial balloon or a strategic piñata to make that happen, so be it.”
391. “The essence of a cohesive leadership team is trust, which is marked by an absence of politics, unnecessary anxiety, and wasted energy. Every executive wants to achieve this, but few are able to do so because they fail to understand the roots of these problems, the most damaging of which is politics.”
392. “The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.”
393. “organizational health is relatively hard to measure, and even harder to achieve. It feels soft to executives who prefer more quantitative and reliable methods of steering their companies. It also entails a longer lead time to implementation than does a technical or marketing strategy, which yields more immediate results and gratification.”
394. “We have to have the courage as leaders to address the uncomfortable problems in our people.
395. “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.”
396. “Most organizations exploit only a fraction of the knowledge, experience, and intellectual capital that is available to them.”
397. “Instead of asking candidates to self-assess a given behavior or characteristic related to humility, hunger, or people smarts, ask them what others would say about them. For example, instead of asking someone if he considers himself to be a hard worker, ask him “How would your colleagues describe your work ethic?”
398. “The reality remains that teamwork ultimately comes down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.”
399. “Teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice and a strategic one.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
400. “Even if people had nothing else to do with their time, the monotony of sitting through an uninspired staff meeting, conference call, or two-day off-site would have to rank right up there with the most painful activities of modern business culture. And when we consider that most of the people struggling through those meetings do indeed have other things to do, that pain is only amplified.”
401. “Organizational health is the single greatest competitive advantage in any business.”
402. 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.
403. “If this is so powerful, then why don’t all executives create clarity in their organizations? Because many of them overemphasize the value of flexibility. Wanting their organizations to be “nimble,” they hesitate to articulate their direction clearly, or do so in a less than thorough manner, thus giving themselves the deceptively dangerous luxury of changing plans in midstream.”
404. “A healthy organization is one that has less politics and confusion, higher morale and productivity, lower unwanted turnover, and lower recruiting costs than an unhealthy one.”
405. “an organization that has properly identified its values and adheres to them will naturally attract the right employees and repel the wrong ones.”
406. “Every human being that works has to know that what they do matters to another human being.”
407. “The next dysfunction of a team is the lack of commitment and the failure to buy in to decisions.” She wrote the dysfunction above the previous one. “And the evidence of this one is ambiguity, ” which she wrote next to it. Nick was reengaging now.”
408. “organizational health is often neglected because it involves facing realities of human behavior that even the most committed executive is tempted to avoid. It requires levels of discipline and courage that only a truly extraordinary executive is willing to embrace.”
409. “Leaders who pride themselves on expertise and intelligence often struggle to acknowledge their flaws and learn from peers.”
410. “Teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice.”
411. “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.”
412. “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.”
413. “Trust is the foundation of real teamwork. And so the first dysfunction is a failure on the part of team members to understand and open up to one another. And if that sounds touchy-feely, let me explain, because there is nothing soft about it. It is an absolutely critical part of building a team. In fact, it’s probably the most critical.”
414. “There is relatively little emphasis on legal issues and quantitative evaluations, which often distract employees from the critical messages their managers are trying to communicate. What is more, these systems are customized to provoke meaningful discussion between managers and employees about relevant issues that they are dealing with on a daily basis.”
415. “Results-oriented teams establish their own measurements for success. They don’t allow themselves the wiggle room of subjectivity. But this is not easy, because subjectivity is attractive.”
416. “Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”
417. “Teams have to eliminate ambiguity and interpretation when it comes to success”
418. “the naked approach is certainly not limited to our field. It applies to anyone who provides ongoing, relationship-based advice, counsel, or expertise to a customer, inside or outside of a company. Or better yet, it applies to anyone whose success is tied to building loyal and sticky relationships with the people they serve.”
419. “Beyond identifying and admitting the cause of their challenge, people who lack humility need behavioral training in an exposure therapy kind of way. Don't be put off by the clinical sound of this. What I mean is that employees can make progress simply by acting like they are humble. By intentionally forcing themselves to compliment others, admit their mistakes and weaknesses, and take an interest in colleagues, employees can begin to experience the liberation of humility. This happens because they suddenly realize that focusing on others does not detract from their own happiness, but rather adds to it. After all, humility is the most attractive and central of all virtues.”
420. “Well, some teams get paralyzed by their need for complete agreement, and their inability to move beyond debate.” JR spoke up. “Disagree and commit.”
421. “Adrenaline addiction The unwillingness or inability of busy people to slow down and review, reflect, assess, and discuss their business and their team. An adrenaline addiction is marked by anxiety among people who always have a need to keep moving, keep spinning, even in the midst of obvious confusion and declining productivity”
422. “Leaders who can identify, hire, and cultivate employees who are humble, hungry, and smart will have a serious advantage over those who cannot.”
423. “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.”
424. “A rigid, one-size-fits-all approach usually ends up fitting no one”
425. “Harmony itself is good, I suppose, if it comes as a result of working through issues constantly and cycling through conflict. But if it comes only as a result of people holding back their opinions and honest concerns, then it’s a bad thing.”
426. “Too many leaders come to meeting with the unspoken assumption that they are there to lobby for and defend their constituents.”
427. “Organizational health is the single greatest competitive advantage that any organization has. It’s free and is accessible to any leader and yet remains largely untapped.”
428. “The vast majority of organizations today have more than enough intelligence, experience and knowledge to be successful. What they lack is organizational health.”
429. “• Team Effectiveness Exercise. This exercise requires team members to identify the single most important contribution that each of their peers makes to the team, as well as the one area that they must either improve upon or eliminate for the good of the team.”
430. “One of the best ways to recognize a cohesive team is the nature of its meetings. Passionate. Intense. Exhausting. Never boring.”
431. “The key to all of this, then, is to teach team members to get comfortable being exposed to one another, unafraid to honestly say things like “I was wrong” and “I made a mistake” and “I need help” and “I’m not sure” and “you’re better than I am at that” and yes, even “I’m sorry.”
432. “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.”
433. “I believe it’s long past time that we, as individuals and as a society, reestablished the standard that leadership can never be about the leader more than the led.”
434. “To achieve results. This is the only true measure of a team P.42”
435. “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.”
436. “At its core, organizational health is about integrity.”
437. “Contrary to popular wisdom and behavior, conflict is not a bad thing for a team. In fact, the fear of conflict is almost always a sign of problems.”
438. “If people don’t weigh in, they can’t buy in.”
439. “Gut Feel Versus Structure Many leaders, especially those who run smaller organizations, believe that they have the natural skills they need to choose good people without any real process. They look back at their careers and remember the good employees they’ve hired and give themselves credit for having recognized those people’s potential. However, they seem to block out the memories of the unsuccessful hires they’ve made, or they justify those mistakes based on the hidden behavioral deficiencies in the people they later had to fire. Whatever the case, they persist in the belief that they know a good person when they see one and that they can go about the hiring process without much structure.”
440. “What else should leaders be doing besides going to meetings?”
441. “ADMIT YOUR WEAKNESSES AND LIMITATIONS”
442. “Take a bullet for the client. Make everything about the client. Honor the client’s work. Do the dirty work.”
443. “tendency of team members to seek out individual recognition and attention at the expense of results”
444. “I’ve become absolutely convinced that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre or unsuccessful ones has little, if anything, to do with what they know or how smart they are; it has everything to do with how healthy they are.”
445. 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.
446. “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.”
447. “Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust.”
448. “KEY POINTS—BUILDING TRUST • Trust is the foundation of teamwork. • On a team, trust is all about vulnerability, which is difficult for most people. • Building trust takes time, but the process can be greatly accelerated. • Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time.”
449. “Trust is the foundation of real teamwork.”
450. “Real-Time Agenda Once the lightning round and progress review are complete (usually no more than fifteen minutes into the meeting), now it is time to talk about the agenda. That’s right. Counter to conventional wisdom about meetings, the agenda for a weekly tactical should not be set before the meeting, but only after the lightning round and regular reporting activities have taken place.”
451. “small gaps between executives high up in an organization become major discrepancies by the time they reach employees below”
452. “Being a leader means sacrificing yourself for the well-being of others.”
453. “There is no getting around the fact that the only measure of a great team – or a great organization – is whether it accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish.”
454. “A rigid, one-size- fits-all approach usually ends up fitting no one.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
455. “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.”
456. Patrick Lencioni is an American writer of books on business management, particularly in relation to team management. Born: 1965 Education: Claremont McKenna College Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/ Reference: Wikipedia
457. “The idea is that your clients are looking for good suggestions, and they don’t mind sifting through some not-so-good ones as long as they’re offered with good intentions and with no ego attached.”
458. “as odd as it may seem, it is actually more important for leaders to focus on making their organizations healthy than on making them smart.”
459. “We have to have courage to hire behavior over skill.”
460. “We have a strong and natural tendency to look out for ourselves before others, even when those others are part of our families and our teams.”
461. “To make meetings less boring, leaders must look for legitimate reasons to provoke and uncover relevant, constructive ideological conflict.”
462. “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.”
463. “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.”
464. “To make meetings less boring, leaders must look for legitimate reasons to provoke and uncover relevant, constructive ideological conflict. By doing so, they’ll keep people engaged, which leads to more passionate discussions, and ultimately, to better decisions.”
465. “There is no such thing as too much communication.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
466. “Conflict is nothing more than an anxious situation that needs to be resolved.”
467. “And we have to stop focusing on agendas and minutes and rules, and accept the fact that bad meetings start with the attitudes and approaches of the people who lead and take part in them.”
468. “I see a trust problem here in the lack of debate that exists at staff meetings and other interactions among this team.”
469. “That being said, experiential team exercises can be valuable tools for enhancing teamwork as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes. While each of these tools and exercises can have a significant short-term impact on a team’s ability to build trust,”
470. “If you can’t measure something, you can’t improve it.”
471. “I have found that it is remarkably helpful for members of a leadership team to spend time talking about their backgrounds. People who understand one another’s personal philosophies, family histories, educational experiences, hobbies, and interests are far more likely to work well together than those who do not.”
472. “It is no great surprise, then, that humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.”
473. “I am going to be pretty intolerant of behavior that demonstrates an absence of trust, or a focus on individual ego. I will be encouraging conflict, driving for clear commitments, and expecting all of you to hold each other accountable. I will be calling out bad behavior when I see it, and I’d like to see you doing the same. We don’t have time to waste.”
474. “Even cynics understand that groups of people willing to put their individual interests aside for the good of the team will outperform those who do not.”
475. “Most people don’t really want to change the world, they only want to be known as the person who changed the world.”
476. “Trust is just one of five behaviors that cohesive teams must establish to build a healthy organization.”
477. “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,”
478. “The good news is that there is nothing inherent about meetings that makes them bad, and so it is entirely possible to transform them into compelling, productive, and fun activities. The bad news is that in order to do this, we will have to fundamentally rethink much of the way we perceive and manage meetings. That means we cannot keep hating them. And we must abandon our search for technological solutions that will somehow free us from having to sit down face to face. And we have to stop focusing on agendas and minutes and rules, and accept the fact that bad meetings start with the attitudes and approaches of the people who lead and take part in them.”
479. “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 that they're going to be held accountable, day in and day out, for behavior that violates the values.”
480. “I often like to talk with candidates in a room with multiple team members. This allows us to debrief more effectively (e.g., “What did you think he meant when he said . . . ?”). This also gives you a sense of how the candidate deals with multiple people at once, which is a critical skill on a team. Some people are much different one-on-one than they are in a group, and you need to know that.”
481. “this point is critical—no one but the head of an organization can make it healthy.”
482. “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.”
483. “a client is going to remember that one great idea a consultant proposes far more than the not-so-great ones. And”
484. “Second, and even more important, meetings are ineffective. The most justifiable reason to loathe meetings is that they don’t contribute to the success of our organizations.”
485. “Inquiry is rarer and more important than advocacy.”
486. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”
487. “To tear down silos, leaders must go beyond behaviors and address the contextual issues at the heart of departmental separation and politics. The purpose of this book is to present a simple, powerful tool for addressing those issues and reducing the pain that silos cause. And that pain should not be underestimated. Silos—and the turf wars they enable—devastate organizations. They waste resources, kill productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of goals. But beyond all that, they exact a considerable human toll too. They cause frustration, stress, and disillusionment by forcing employees to fight bloody, unwinnable battles with people who should be their teammates. There is perhaps no greater cause of professional anxiety and exasperation—not to mention turnover—than employees having to fight with people in their own organization. Understandably and inevitably, this bleeds over into their personal lives, affecting family and friends in profound ways.”
488. “Jim’s departures were always uncomfortable. ”
489. “Team leaders must give members a reason to care at the beginning of a meeting or discussion. They must raise the anxiety of the team about why the issues about to be discussed matter, and what could go wrong if bad decisions are made. By doing so, they immediately get everyone engaged”
490. “Damn it. I had to respect Michael Casey. I had really hoped that I could keep loathing him.”
491. “Organizations learn by making decisions, even bad ones.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
492. “And what if she says she's up for it?” Bobby asked. “How do we teach her to be smarter?” “That's a high-class problem, my friend,” Clare announced. “If Attila the Hun walked into this office right now and convinced me that he really wanted to get better dealing with people, I know we could do it. Most training and development comes down to how much a person wants to change.”
493. “Another challenge in making strategic meetings work is the failure to do research and preparation ahead of time. The quality of a strategic discussion, and the decision that results from it, are improved greatly by a little preliminary work. This eliminates the all-too-common reliance on anecdotal decision making. The key to ensuring that preparation occurs is to let team members know as far in advance as possible what issues will be discussed during the Monthly or Ad Hoc Strategic.”
494. “Help people realize that when they fail to provide peers with constructive feedback they are letting them down personally. By holding back, we are hurting not only the team, but also our teammates themselves.”
495. “moments of truth ... are best handled face-to-face”
496. “Celebrate your mistakes.”
497. “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”
498. “As difficult as it is to build a cohesive team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical”
499. “healthy organizations have a way of making themselves smarter. Even if their ideas are temporarily inferior to those of competitors, they are usually humble and efficient enough to recognize their deficiencies and make changes in their plans before it is too late.”
500. “Great leaders see themselves as Chief Reminding Officers as much as anything else.”
501. “It was astounding how much more comfortable I felt just being honest. So I kept going.”
502. “As a leader, you're probably not doing a good job unless your employees can do a good impression of you when you're not around.”
503. “It has to do with doing work that drains me of my energy, and which, in turn, prevents me from doing the work that gives me energy.”
504. “The vast majority of employees, at all levels of an organization, see financial rewards as a satisfier not a driver.”
505. “Conflict is about issues and ideas, while accountability is about performance and behavior.”
506. “Teams that are willing to commit publicly to specific results are more likely to work with a passionate, even desperate desire to achieve those results. Teams that say, “We'll do our best,” are subtly, if not purposefully, preparing themselves for failure.”
507. “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.”
508. “the fear of conflict is almost always a sign of problems.”
509. “Success comes only for those groups that overcome the all-too-human behavioral tendencies that corrupt teams and breed dysfunctional politics within them.”
510. “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.”
511. “Good leaders drive commitment among the team by first extracting every possible idea, opinion, and perspective from the team. Then, comfortable that nothing has been left off the table, they must have the courage and wisdom to step up and make a decision, one that is sure to run counter to at least one of the team members, and usually more.”
512. “An organizations core purpose – why it exists – has to be completely idealistic.”
513. “few groups of leaders actually work like a team, at least not the kind that is required to lead a healthy organization.”
514. “Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time”
515. “An organization’s strategy is simply its plan for success . . . Every single decision, if it is made intentionally and consistently will be part of the overall strategy.”
516. “See, management is an everyday thing. Strategy and financial reporting and planning are not.”
517. “When members of a team willingly acknowledge their weaknesses to one another, they give their peers tacit permission to call them on those weaknesses.”
518. “Once organizational health is properly understood and placed into the right context, it will surpass all other disciplines in business as the greatest opportunity for improvement and competitive advantage.”
519. “Tell me about the most important accomplishments of your career.” Look for more mentions of we than I.”
520. “No one on a cohesive team can say, Well, I did my job. Our failure isn’t my fault.”
521. “I’m tired of hearing about servant leadership…because there is not any other kind.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
522. “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.”
523. “So the first thing is to question or ponder or wonder about something. The second is to create or invent a solution or a new idea. The third is to”—she paused, trying to summarize the discussion we had just had—“evaluate and assess whether it’s a good idea.”
524. “One of the biggest problems I see is a silo approach to interviewing. This happens when a handful of people conduct their own interviews and don't talk about what they've learned until after the entire round of interviews is complete. The problem is that one interview is no more specific or effective than the previous one. Instead, interviewers should debrief quickly after each interview, specifically around observations related to humility, hunger, and people smarts. For instance, if the first two interviewers agree that the candidate is hungry and smart, the third can focus on humility, taking more time and probing more directly for the unknown piece.”
525. “An unrelenting focus on specific objectives and clearly defined outcomes is a requirement for any team that judges itself on performance.”
526. “The more comfortable a leader is holding people accountable, the less likely she is to be asked to do so.”
527. “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.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
528. “I’m tired of hearing about servant leadership because I don’t think there’s any other kind of leadership.”
529. “Most organizations exploit only a fraction of the knowledge, experience, and intellectual capital that is available to them.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
530. “If everything is important, nothing is”
531. “Personal growth might not be so bad after all, I decided.”
532. “Talking about a colleague who is not present is not gossip. Gossip requires the intent to hurt someone, and it is almost always accompanied by an unwillingness to confront a person directly with the information being discussed.”
533. “I must admit that some people are better at being team players, at embracing those five behaviors, than others. They're not born that way, but either through life experiences, work history, or a real commitment to personal development, they come to possess the three underlying virtues that enable them to be ideal team players: they are humble, hungry, and smart. As simple as those words may appear, none of them is exactly what they seem. Understanding the nuances of these virtues is critical for applying them effectively.”
534. “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”
535. “humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.”
536. “the only way to do this is to overcome our need for invulnerability”
537. “When you know your reason for existence, it should effect the decisions you make.”
538. “To make our meetings more effective, we need to have multiple types of meetings, and clearly distinguish between the various purposes, formats, and timing of those meetings.”
539. “When leadership team members avoid discomfort among themselves, they only transfer it in far greater quantities to larger groups of people throughout the organization they’re supposed to be serving. In essence they leave it to others below them to resolve issues that really must be addressed at the top.”
540. “At its core, naked service boils down to the ability of a service provider to be vulnerable—to embrace uncommon levels of humility, selflessness, and transparency for the good of a client.”
541. “implementation science is more important than decision science.”
542. “so I just go into sales meetings with the idea that I’m going to find a way to help them in some meaningful way. Then,”
543. “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.”
544. “Mistakes don’t just hurt us as leaders, but they leave collateral damage for others as well.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
545. “La confianza es el fundamento del trabajo en equipo. Y por eso la primera disfunción es el fracaso de los miembros del equipo en comprenderse y abrirse unos a otros.”
546. “More than any policy or system, there is nothing like the fear of letting down respected teammates that motivates people to improve their performance.”
547. “When people don't unload their opinions and feel like they've been listened to, they won't really get on board.” - Patrick LencioniInfographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
548. “Achieving vulnerability-based trust (where team members have overcome their need for invulnerability) is difficult because in the course of career advancement and education, most successful people learn to be competitive with their peers, and protective of their reputations. It is a challenge for them to turn those instincts off for the good of the team, but that is exactly what is required.”
549. “As a leader, you’re probably not doing a good job unless your employees can do a good impression of you when you’re not around.”
550. “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. Humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.”
551. “If you are a leader, you have to be vulnerable first.”
552. “No matter how good an individual on the team might be feeling about his or her situation, if the team loses, everyone loses.”
553. “The most important challenge of building a team where people hold one another accountable is overcoming the understandable hesitance of human beings to give one another critical feedback.”
554. “The impact of organizational health goes far beyond the walls of a company, extending to customers and vendors, even to spouses and children. It sends people to work in the morning with clarity, hope, and anticipation and brings them home at night with a greater sense of accomplishment, contribution, and self-esteem. The impact of this is as important as it is impossible to measure.”
555. “It is far more natural, and common, for leaders to avoid holding people accountable.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
556. “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.”
557. “Which would seem to be a good thing—proposing a solution to a problem that people are hungry to solve—except that my view of silos might not be what some leaders expect to hear. That’s because many executives I’ve worked with who struggle with silos are inclined to look down into their organizations and wonder, “Why don’t those employees just learn to get along better with people in other departments? Don’t they know we’re all on the same team?” All too often this sets off a well-intentioned but ill-advised series of actions—training programs, memos, posters—designed to inspire people to work better together. But these initiatives only provoke cynicism among employees—who would love nothing more than to eliminate the turf wars and departmental politics that often make their work lives miserable. The problem is, they can’t do anything about it. Not without help from their leaders. And while the first step those leaders need to take is to address any behavioral problems that might be preventing executive team members from working well with one another—that was the thrust of my book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team—even behaviorally cohesive teams can struggle with silos. (Which is particularly frustrating and tragic because it leads well-intentioned and otherwise functional team members to inappropriately question one another’s trust and commitment to the team.) To tear”
558. “. . . his biggest problem was his need for a problem.”
559. “Rita laughed. “I know. Technically, you’re right. But I think a guy at this level needs a little more rope.” Rich was adamant now. “No. Less rope. Senior people should get less rope, because in the process of hanging themselves, they snag other people too.”
560. “Best leaders are one that let you see them sweat. When we fail to let people see our humanity, they won’t trust us.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
561. “Whether we like it or not, meetings are the closest thing to an operating room, a playing field, or a stage that we have.”
562. “But if you stop and think about it, that’s just eight days a year. Out of how many total work days? Two hundred and forty? That’s a whopping 3 percent.”
563. “The single biggest structural problem facing leaders of meetings is the tendency to throw every type of issue that needs to be discussed into the same meeting, like a bad stew with too many random ingredients. Desperate to minimize wasted time, leaders decide that they will have one big staff meeting, either once a week or every other week. They sit down in a room for two or three or four hours and hash everything out—sales strategies, expense policies, potential mergers, employee recognition programs, budgets, and branding—so that everyone can get back to their “real work.”
564. “What is the real problem? Actually, there are two. First, meetings are boring. They are tedious, unengaging, and dry. Even if people had nothing else to do with their time, the monotony of sitting through an uninspired staff meeting, conference call, or two-day off-site would have to rank right up there with the most painful activities of modern business culture.”
565. “I've become absolutely convinced that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre or unsuccessful ones has little, if anything, to do with what they know or how smart they are; it has everything to do with how healthy they are.”
566. “Alignment and clarity cannot be achieved in one fell swoop with a series of generic buzzwords and aspirational phrases crammed together.”
567. “people in a healthy organization, beginning with the leaders, learn from one another, identify critical issues, and recover quickly from mistakes.”
568. “Now, the wrong way to determine an organization’s values is to survey the employee population. This may seem to be a useful way to test a hypothesis, but it is not a replacement for the introspection and discussion of an executive team. More important, it can lead to the adoption of a value set that executives are not willing to support.”
569. “You have a passionate, unfiltered, messy, provocative discussion that ends when the leader of the team decides all the information has been aired. At that point, if no one has made a compelling enough argument for making a decision, the leader breaks the tie.”
570. “when we fail to get clarity and alignment during meetings, we set in motion a colossal wave of human activity as executives and their direct reports scramble to figure out what everyone else is doing and why.”
571. “Now imagine if I were to ask a room full of executives which they enjoy more: meetings or movies? They would probably think I was joking. And yet, meetings should be more interesting than movies because they have more inherent potential for passion and engagement than movies do.”
572. “No one seemed ready to offer an answer, so Kathryn quickly provided it for them. Just above absence of trust she wrote fear of conflict. “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”
573. “Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
574. “Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and
575. “Rather than coming together to make the best possible decision for the entire organization, they become lobbyers for their own constituents”
576. “The single greatest advantage any company can achieve is organizational health.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
577. “Almost no employees leave an organization where they are getting he levels of gratitude and appreciation that they deserve.”
578. “She explained. “Once we achieve clarity and buy-in, it is then that we have to hold each other accountable for what we sign up to do, for high standards of performance and behavior. And as simple as that sounds, most executives hate to do it, especially when it comes to a peer’s behavior, because they want to avoid interpersonal discomfort.”
579. “From interviews and orientation to performance reviews and compensation decisions, “the three virtues,” as they came to be known, were to be regular topics of conversation. And, of course, there was plenty of hands-on, practical training around the five behavioral manifestations of teamwork: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results. Those courses had become much more effective with participants who shared the three underlying virtues.”
580. “What’s critical is that team members know that the areas that were identified will not go away, and that they will have to answer for their progress in the not-too-distant future.”
581. “last frontier of competitive advantage will be the transformation of unhealthy organizations into healthy ones,”
582. “Nowhere does the tendency toward artificial harmony show itself more than in mission-driven non-profit organizations. People in those organizations tend to have the misguided idea that they cannot be frustrated or disagreeable with one another. What they’re doing is confusing being nice with being kind.”
583. “you have a doubt about a person's humility, hunger, or smarts, don't ignore it. Keep probing. More often than not, there is something causing that doubt. That's not to discourage keeping an open mind, but erring on the side of assuming that a person has the virtues of a team player is a bad idea. So many times hiring managers look back at the red flags they saw during interviews, the ones they chose to ignore, and regret not taking more time or energy to understand them. While it's never possible to have complete confidence in a hire, nagging doubts about a candidate's humility, hunger, or smarts need to be properly explored and discarded before an offer can be made.”
584. “Trust is just one of five behaviors that cohesive teams must establish to build a healthy organization.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
585. “most of a leadership team’s objectives should be collective ones.”
586. “The financial cost of having an unhealthy organization is undeniable: wasted resources and time, decreased productivity, increased employee turnover, and customer attrition.”
587. “teamwork ultimately comes down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time”
588. “Every endeavor of importance in life brings with it a measure of discomfort.”
589. “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”
590. “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.” - Patrick LencioniInfographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
591. “organizations learn by making decisions, even bad ones.”
592. “During the next two weeks I am going to be pretty intolerant of behavior that demonstrates an absence of trust, or a focus on individual ego. I will be encouraging conflict, driving for clear commitments, and expecting all of you to hold each other accountable. I will be calling out bad behavior when I see it, and I’d like to see you doing the same. We don’t have time to waste.”
593. “This blindness occurs because what executives believe are small disconnects between themselves and their peers actually look like major rifts to people deeper in the organization.”
594. “Every company has interesting, difficult issues to wrestle with, and a lack of interest during meetings is a pretty good indication that the team may be avoiding issues because they are uncomfortable with one another. Remember, there is no excuse for having continually boring meetings.”
595. “One of the ways we manifest humility is by being vulnerable.”
596. “Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in.”
597. “Failing to hold someone accountable is ultimately an act of selfishness.”
598. “Organizational health permeates so many aspects of a company that isolating any one variable and measuring its financial impact is almost impossible to do in a precise way.”
599. “Hungry Only: The Bulldozer”
600. “During the Weekly Tactical, there are two overriding goals: resolution of issues and reinforcement of clarity. Obstacles need to be identified and removed, and everyone needs to be on the same page.”
601. “If you’re not interested in getting better, it’s time for you to stop leading.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
602. “The most unhappy people in a company are the ones who don't fit the culture and are allowed to stay. They know they don't belong. Deep down inside they don't want to be there. They're miserable.”
603. “We are a passionate family that believes in standing up strongly for what is right, even when there is a cost. We live our lives around our Church and our faith, placing special emphasis on maximizing our involvement in our children’s lives, and nurturing family-like relationships with our friends.”
604. “You see, I don’t understand why everyone thinks sports is the only way to learn about teamwork. I never played sports much, even as a kid. But I was in a band in high school and college, and I think I figured out the team thing from that.”
605. “The Lightning Round This is a quick, around-the-table reporting session in which everyone indicates their two or three priorities for the week. It should take each team member no more than one minute (yes, sixty seconds!) to quickly describe what is on their respective plates. So even a large team should be able to accomplish this in ten minutes or so. The lightning round is critical because it sets the tone for the rest of the meeting. By giving all participants a real sense of the actual activities taking place in the organization, it makes it easy for the team to identify potential redundancies, gaps, or other issues that require immediate attention.”
606. “there is no such thing as too much communication.”
607. “Building a team is hard”
608. “The five behavioral manifestations of teamwork: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results”
609. “company needs to be able to articulate exactly what it does, whom it serves, and against whom it competes. Why? Because all employees should be made to feel like salespeople or ambassadors for the firm, and they cannot do this without a fundamental understanding of an organization’s business. More important, without this understanding, employees cannot connect their individual roles to the overall direction of the larger organization.”
610. “But perhaps most important of all, having too many people on a team makes team dynamics during meetings and other decision-making events almost impossible. That’s because a good team has to engage in two types of communication in order to optimize decision making, but only one of these is practical in a large group. According to Harvard’s Chris Argyris, those two types of communication are advocacy and inquiry. Basically, advocacy is the statement of ideas and opinions; inquiry is the asking of questions for clarity and understanding. When a group gets too large, people realize they are not going to get the floor back any time soon, so they resort almost exclusively to advocacy. It becomes like Congress (which is not designed to be a team) or the United Nations (ditto).”
611. “The most important action that a leader must take to encourage the building of trust on a team is to demonstrate vulnerability first.”
612. “The most important action that a leader must take to encourage the building of trust on a team is to demonstrate vulnerability first. This requires that a leader risk losing face in front of the team, so that subordinates will take the same risk themselves. What is more, team leaders must create an environment that does not punish vulnerability.”
613. “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. That, as much as anything else, is why they have such an advantage over their unhealthy competitors.”
614. “The antidote to pride is humility.” — @PatrickLencioni #GLS14
615. “We start the exercise by having everyone write down one thing that each of the other team members does that makes the team better. In other words, they write down, for everyone other than themselves, the single biggest area of strength as it pertains to the impact on the group. We’re interested not in their technical skills, but in the way they behave when the team is together that makes the team stronger. Then we ask them to do the same thing, except this time focusing on the one aspect of each person that sometimes hurts the team. After ten or fifteen minutes of thoughtful consideration and note taking, everyone is usually done.”
616. “A job is bound to be miserable if it doesn't involve measurement.”
617. “Why matrix organizational structures became so popular I’m not really sure. There is certainly an element of flexibility and collaboration suggested by them, but in reality they are forums for confusion and conflict. They have certainly not contributed to the breakdown of silos; they’ve merely added an element of schizophrenia and cognitive dissonance for employees who are unlucky enough to report into two different silos.”
618. “Executives must put the needs of the higher team ahead of the needs of their departments.” - Patrick Lencioni Infographic published by Neil Beyersdorf neil-beyersdorf.branded.me/
619. “KEY POINTS—EMBRACING ACCOUNTABILITY • Accountability on a strong team occurs directly among peers. • For a culture of accountability to thrive, a leader must demonstrate a willingness to confront difficult issues. • The best opportunity for holding one another accountable occurs during meetings, and the regular review of a team scoreboard provides a clear context for doing so.”
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