Patrick Lencioni Quotes

Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.

last frontier of competitive advantage will be the transformation of unhealthy organizations into healthy ones,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

No quality or characteristic is more important than trust

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.