Patrick Lencioni Quotes

It is no great surprise, then, that humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ADMIT YOUR WEAKNESSES AND LIMITATIONS

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

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

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

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

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

The fact remains that teams, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfunctional.

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.

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.

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