Quotes from Patrick Lencioni

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.

Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time

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.

As difficult as it is to build a cohesive team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical

Truth lies at the heart of a functioning, cohesive team. Without it, teamwork is all but impossible

we have to ideate, activate, and implement.

Another way to understand this model is to take the opposite approach—a positive one—and imagine how members of truly cohesive teams behave: They trust one another. They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas. They commit to decisions and plans of action. They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans. They focus on the achievement of collective results.

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.

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.

Ken always says that his job is to create the best team possible, not to shepherd the careers of individual athletes.

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

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.

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.

Personal growth might not be so bad after all, I decided.

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.

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.

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.

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.

la primera disfunción: la ausencia de confianza. Se

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.

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.

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.

It was astounding how much more comfortable I felt just being honest. So I kept going.

Humble Only: The Pawn