Quotes from Patrick Lencioni

Great teams make clear and timely decisions and move forward with complete buy-in from every member of the team, even those who voted against the decision. They leave meetings confident that no one on the team is quietly harboring doubts about whether to support the actions agreed on.

organizations learn by making decisions, even bad ones.

When a group of intelligent people come together to talk about issues that matter, it is both natural and productive for disagreement to occur. Resolving those issues is what makes a meeting productive, engaging, even fun.

Healthy organizations believe that performance management is almost exclusively about eliminating confusion. They realize that most of their employees want to succeed, and that the best way to allow them to do that is to give them clear direction, regular information about how they're doing, and access to the coaching they need.

most of a leadership team's objectives should be collective ones.

Every endeavor of importance in life, whether it is creative, athletic, interpersonal, or academic, brings with it a measure of discomfort

there cannot be alignment deeper in the organization, even when employees want to cooperate, if the leaders at the top aren't in lockstep with one another

If you ask me, the best thing that's happened in the last year is that we've almost become a jackass-free zone. No matter what happens, and what challenge we might face, give me a roomful of people who aren't jackasses, and I'll be happy to take it on.

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.

If we don't trust one another, then we aren't going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict. And we'll just continue to preserve a sense of artificial harmony.

At the heart of vulnerability lies the willingness of people to abandon their pride and their fear, to sacrifice their egos for the collective good of the team. While this can be a little threatening and uncomfortable at first, ultimately it becomes liberating for people who are tired of spending time and energy overthinking their actions and managing interpersonal politics at work.

A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings.

How many of you would rather go to a meeting than a movie?" No hands went up. "Why not?" After a pause, Jeff realized that her question was not a rhetorical one. "Because movies are more interesting. Even the bad ones." His peers chuckled. Kathryn smiled. "Right. But if you really think about it, meetings should be at least as interesting as movies.

Most people are generally reasonable and can rally around an idea that wasn't their own as long as they know they've had a chance to weigh in.

every organization must contribute in some way to a better world for some group of people, because if it doesn't, it will, and should, go out of business.

Hiring without clear and strict criteria for cultural fit greatly hampers the potential for success of any organization.

No action, activity, or process is more central to a healthy organization than the meeting.

An organization has to institutionalize its culture without bureaucratizing it.

Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in

Nowhere does this tendency toward artificial harmony show itself more than in mission-driven nonprofit organizations, most notably churches. People who work in those organizations tend to have a misguided idea that they cannot be frustrated or disagreeable with one another. What they're doing is confusing being nice with being kind.

Trust is the foundation of real teamwork.

I honestly believe that in this day and age of informational ubiquity and nanosecond change, teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped.

Leaders who can identify, hire, and cultivate employees who are humble, hungry, and smart will have a serious advantage over those who cannot.

The only way for people to embrace a message is to hear it over a period of time, in a variety of different situations, and preferably from different people. That's why great leaders see themselves as Chief Reminding Officers as much as anything else. Their top two priorities are to set the direction of the organization and then to ensure that people are reminded of it on a regular basis.