Quotes from Patrick Lencioni

we like to believe that we do bad things because of the situations we are in, but somehow we easily come to the conclusion that others do bad things because they are predisposed to being bad. (Similarly

I often like to talk with candidates in a room with multiple team members. This allows us to debrief more effectively (e.g., "What did you think he meant when he said . . . ?"). This also gives you a sense of how the candidate deals with multiple people at once, which is a critical skill on a team. Some people are much different one-on-one than they are in a group, and you need to know that.

cohesive teams fight. But they fight about issues, not personalities. Most important, when they are done fighting, they have an amazing capacity to move on to the next issue, with no residual feelings.

Someone once told me that the best way to know if you should hire a person is to go on a cross-country business trip with him. See how he handles himself in stressful, interactive situations and over long periods of time. While that isn't necessarily practical, I do believe that interviews should incorporate interaction with diverse groups of people in everyday situations and that they should be longer than forty-five minutes.

What is most important is that team members get comfortable letting their colleagues see them for who they are. No pretension. No positioning.

Once a leadership team has become cohesive and worked to establish clarity and alignment around the answers to the six critical questions, then, and only then, can they effectively move on to the next step: communicating those answers. Or better yet, overcommunicating those answers—over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Most organizations exploit only a fraction of the knowledge, experience, and intellectual capital that is available to them. But the healthy ones tap into almost all of it. That, as much as anything else, is why they have such an advantage over their unhealthy competitors.

I have found that it is remarkably helpful for members of a leadership team to spend time talking about their backgrounds. People who understand one another's personal philosophies, family histories, educational experiences, hobbies, and interests are far more likely to work well together than those who do not.

the only thing that really matters is this: are they holding back their opinions? Members of great teams do not.

Every company has interesting, difficult issues to wrestle with, and a lack of interest during meetings is a pretty good indication that the team may be avoiding issues because they are uncomfortable with one another. Remember, there is no excuse for having continually boring meetings.

When people self-identify and publicly declare their outlook on conflict, they become much more open to adjusting it to whatever team norms need to be established.

Members of cohesive teams know one another's strengths and weaknesses and don't hesitate to point them out. They also know something about one another's backgrounds, which helps them to understand why members think and act the way they do.

Talking about a colleague who is not present is not gossip. Gossip requires the intent to hurt someone, and it is almost always accompanied by an unwillingness to confront a person directly with the information being discussed.

These are the six questions: 1. Why do we exist? 2. How do we behave? 3. What do we do? 4. How will we succeed? 5. What is most important, right now? 6. Who must do what?

For cohesive teams, meetings are compelling and vital. They are forums for asking difficult questions, challenging one another's ideas, and ultimately arriving at decisions that everyone agrees to support and adhere to, in the best interests of the company.

ALWAYS CONSULT INSTEAD OF SELL

Great team players lack excessive ego or concerns about status. They are quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek attention for their own. They share credit, emphasize team over self, and define success collectively rather than individually. It is no great surprise, then, that humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player. Humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.

No quality or characteristic is more important than trust.

Help people realize that when they fail to provide peers with constructive feedback they are letting them down personally. By holding back, we are hurting not only the team, but also our teammates themselves.

What's critical is that team members know that the areas that were identified will not go away, and that they will have to answer for their progress in the not-too-distant future.

And they don't worry about whether the potential client will take advantage of their generosity; they know that for every client that does, nine others will appreciate their generosity and start to see themselves as a client even before they formally decide to become one.

and experienced executives than our competitors

KEY POINTS—EMBRACING ACCOUNTABILITY • Accountability on a strong team occurs directly among peers. • For a culture of accountability to thrive, a leader must demonstrate a willingness to confront difficult issues. • The best opportunity for holding one another accountable occurs during meetings, and the regular review of a team scoreboard provides a clear context for doing so.

When it comes to teams, trust is all about vulnerability. Team members who trust one another learn to be comfortable being open, even exposed, to one another around their failures, weaknesses, even fears.