2
Abstract
The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni is a book that focuses on individual members
of a team. Lencioni explains how there are three virtues that are essential to becoming an
influential team player. This book is written into two parts. The first part is a story about Jeff
Shanley, the CEO of his own company, and the second part is a detailed breakdown of all three
virtues and how they apply to a team players life. Lencioni uses the story of Jeff Shanley to help
us to better understand the views within his book.
In the story part of the book, Jeff Shanley had a successful career for many years. “After
twenty years, Jeff Shanley had experienced more than his fair share of the Silicon Valley. The
hours. The traffic. The pretentiousness. It was time to make a change.”1 Jeff leaves the company
after being hired by a new consulting firm. There he almost became a partner. Lencioni helps us
understand through Jeff's story all the challenges one might go through while trying to make a
business work and how team members can play a significant role in the business's success.
The second half of the book starts with an analysis of hunger, humility, and intelligence.
In this section, Lencioni defines the three attributes, provides some historical
background, and points out some crucial tips to guide the reader when applying the three virtues.
According to Lencioni, it is imperious to understand the ideal team player model, what it means,
where it comes from, and how to put it to real-world use.
1 Patrick Lencioni, Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues: A
Leadership Fable (Jossey-Bass, 2016), 5.
3
Like many aspects of leadership, Lencioni finds a close connection between his definition
of an ideal team player and the five dysfunctions of teams. The five dysfunctions of a team's
main goal are to help form cohesive groups based on interactions. “When team members are
adequately strong in each of these areas—when they possess significant humility, hunger, and
people smarts—they enable teamwork by making it relatively easy for members to overcome the
five dysfunctions of a team.” 2
Concrete Response
Lencioni states, “The most reliable way to ensure that teamwork takes hold in an
organization would be to hire only ideal team players.”3 This is not possible or practical.
However, I can clearly remember working with people with whom I knew they were not the
most outstanding candidate but somehow got the job anyway. Before receiving a promotion at
my current job, I was a medical claims adjuster. At times I could have 150 claim files I would be
working on throughout any given week. My job entailed interviewing people who were disabled,
reviewing their medical records, and either approving or denying a claim for payment.
There was a young woman by the name of Tamika Smith. She had been at the company
for five years before getting hired. Tamika would walk around the office boasting that she didn’t
have to do any work and that when she went on vacation, she knew all her work would be
divided amongst her team and that her work would get done. I find it notable that Lencioni
states, “By doing thorough interviewing and selective reference checking, a manager can hire
2 Ibid., 165.
3 Ibid., 174.
4
people with a high degree of confidence that they’ll be ideal team players.”4 This was not the
case for Tamika.
One day when Tamika went on vacation, her work was assigned to me personally. I
specifically remember asking my supervisor why I had to do her work since she boldly
proclaimed to the office that she didn’t have to work. I considered her the worse team playing.
She gossiped about everyone, didn’t care if she ever got fired, and boasted that her salary range
was at the top tier of the position. With humility, I ended up doing her backlog of work. Because
it was the Christian thing to do, some people needed decisions on their claims and the money due
to their sickness. When Tamika returned, she thanked me for helping her out, and when I
completed my one year in my position, I received a promotion to an entirely new department.
Reflection
What bothered me the most about The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni is the
applications that he listed explicitly on developing employees lacking in one or more of the
virtues. I don’t think in 2023, employers will care enough to implement process improvements in
the life of their employees. In my view, Corporate America seems only to want to penalize
employees who have weaknesses and don’t care to develop employees who lack the virtues
written in this book. Perhaps I would have preferred to read about the awful way employers treat
employees, which is why people quietly quit. By that, I mean they stay employed but do the bare
minimum just to keep getting the money, hoping to one day walk out on the job and get
something better. I hate to be a pessimist, but no one cares about someone lacking virtues that
would make them a better employee. That’s just my opinion.
Action
4 Ibid., 174.
5
In conclusion, Id likes to provide two actions that describe what changes I plan to make
in my life after reading this book. The first is to develop more humility. “Humility is the most
sensitive of the three virtues, which is why improving in this area is often the most
psychologically nuanced.”5 By the end of this course, I would have accomplished this task. The
first thing I plan on doing is praying to God and asking Him to reveal all the hidden areas of my
life that lack humility. Next, I plan on asking my wife to partner with me to help me expose areas
of my life that she knows I need to be more humble in. I will write some of my wife's
suggestions and immediately implement them. Afterward, I will have weekly check-ins until the
end of this class with my wife so that she can tell me how I'm doing in humility.
Finally, I plan on working on being hungry more. “Hungry people are always looking for
more. More things to do. More to learn. More responsibility to take on."6 I need to be hungry for
God more. I will pray that God gives me the passion and desire to do His will and to please Him.
I want to go to new levels with God and search for Him more. This hunger for God will spill
over into my workplace, where by the end of this semester, I plan on asking my supervisor for
more assignments to help the team. It's my goal to take on more responsibilities at work. My bi-
weekly coaching phone calls with my supervisor will measure this.
5 Ibid., 198.
6 Ibid., 159.
