Let’s unpack the three qualities that when combined make for the ideal employee.
I was grateful to recently attend an online webinar hosted by Patrick Lencioni, best-selling author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage, which are some of our favourite books on teamwork and leadership here at Luminate Leadership. During this webinar, Patrick spoke at length about how he came to write his book The Ideal Team Player which focuses on the three qualities that when combined make for the perfect employee. I loved the simplicity of his concept as well as its universality. Ready to know what these three magic qualities are?
The first (and Patrick says the most important) trait of a team player is humility. A humble person focuses on the success of the team rather than their personal interests and is quick to point out the contributions of others. They neither overrate nor underrate themselves and they think with a group mentality when it comes to success.
is the second virtue. Specifically a hunger to learn, to succeed, to try new things and to go above and beyond. This is demonstrated in a diligent and conscientious approach to their work and results. Their personal drive and dedication is visible to others and can be quite infectious.
is the last of the three qualities. Importantly, Lencioni stresses that the smarts he is talking about is focusing on Emotional intelligence and not intellectual ability. A smart team player is an invaluable contributor to the team as they have excellent self awareness, great people skills and positively interact with their teammates.
Ideally, you want people on your team to possess all three qualities. They don’t have to be in perfectly equal measure but you do want to see all three. The more ‘ideal team players’ you have in your organisation the better your collective results will be. Plus you’ll eliminate internal politics, high staff turnover and team morale issues. All good things, right?
So, what can you do to help develop these three attributes in your team? Lencioni suggests that the best place to start is to ask everyone in the team to rank themselves on these three qualities first. Call a team meeting, explain the intention of the exercise and ask each person to rank themselves on those three qualities. Which would they say is their strongest and which is their weakest? Make sure you go first so that you lead with the vulnerability based trust required for this exercise. This will help team members to follow your lead and identify and acknowledge their own area for improvement.
Once everyone has shared, with a growth mindset focus, give people permission to call you out when they see evidence of your lacking skill and ask if they are willing to do the same. This is not so that everyone becomes an informant on one another but instead it continues the trust and turns everyone into coaches to help develop one another.
When you know which trait each person needs to work on, here are some tips on how you can develop each:
It would be extremely unlikely that you would find yourself in a workplace where everyone had all of the same preferences as yourself and honestly we are much better for it. It’s when we have a thorough understanding of all preference types and cater to these in the workplace to ensure everyone can contribute in the way that captures their best, natural strengths as well as balancing out blindspots that we can collaborate better together and have a more harmonious and successful working environment.
If you’d like to find out more about your MBTI preferences and how you can use them either personally or to work more effectively with your team then please get in touch on hello@luminateleadership.com.au
