Are you an ideal team player? | Patrick Lencioni | TEDxUniversityofNevada

Well, I'm very excited to be here. I'm also a little nervous now. I talk for a living, so I shouldn't be nervous, but this is probably one of the talks there's a good chance my kids will watch. In fact, my 8th grader said you're giving a TEDx talk. I said, Michael. I do a lot of ELC talks, yes, but this is my big dad. I'm excited to be here because I think it's time for us to change the way we think about success. an even better de facto society. I think it's time for us to change the way we prepare people for success at all levels of life, so I'm going to present to you three very simple but I think powerful virtues that I'm convinced can change dramatically. the level of success in the life of any person, whether it is a CEO or a middle manager, a high school student, a high school student or a recent college graduate, now I am confident in this because I believe and all of this is based on the premise that life more than ever is a

team

sport, my name is Pat Lynch onei and I have worked with

team

s for the last 25 years in the corporate world in other environments.

I've also written two books on teamwork, the first one I wrote years ago is called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and then I recently wrote a sequel called The Ideal Team Player which is the basis of today's talk and where I explore those three. Virtues Now when I say life as a team sport I realize it might sound like It's a corny cliché: you know life is a team sport, but I really believe it's true. I mean, we take for granted the fact that in today's workforce people can be on the same team as someone who lives on the other side of the world across continents and oceans and cultures and languages, and that's largely due to to technology, but when I started my career about thirty years ago, which is not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, we couldn't even imagine doing this, but today, thanks to technology, people can work. together in so many different ways and as a result of that technology, people are developing solutions in organizations that are amazing and complex that solve problems in business medicine and communication in all kinds of fields and those complex solutions require people to collaborate and work as a team. .

To implement them, even within a company, you have to work across divisional or departmental lines or with people from other companies, even today's competitors have to work together to implement these important solutions. This is truly the era of teamwork and business, but even in our personal lives. Teamwork has permeated everything. My wife and I have four children at home and we like to say that by the time each of them was in high school, they had played on more teams, with more coaches, in more sports, and attended more tournaments than we had. we did in our entire lives combined and that's not even mentioning all the other extracurricular activities that happen in teams, even in the classroom, teamwork is everywhere, I mean, my kids come home, I don't know how many times they've come back to home with a task. and I said those four dreaded words it's a group project and I ask them that dreaded direct question who is on your team.

I'm not ashamed to say that more than once I've told my son that if you want to get a good grade, you can do it. you have to be prepared to do most of the work yourself, teamwork is everywhere and yet we continue to train people in education and in the workforce primarily for individual and technical skills and I think that must change and that is why I will present to you these three simple virtues, okay, that is the end of the memorized part of my speech, which scared me because I don't memorize anything now, let's talk well, so let's go to the first slide of my book, the

ideal

team.

Player, I explore these three simple virtues, but the power of those virtues is in the common or all, we have to have all three if you play baseball and you are a four three hitter, that's pretty good, it's terrible at teamwork if you are two four three is a passing quarterback that's pretty good you have to be three four three when it comes to teamwork so let's talk about these three virtues let me introduce them to you and then we'll talk about how we can identify and improve ourselves if we are missing a knee , so the first virtue of the

ideal

team

player

is by far the most important and that is humility, if you want to be an ideal team

player

and if you want to be successful in life, you really need to be humble more than ever now. is the most important because, as a follower of Jesus, the Bible says that the root of all sin is pride and I think that if you look at all the problems that we have not normally rooted in pride, the antidote to pride is humility, for what is important. reason why this would be the most important and most of us know what humility is, it is not being self-centered, arrogant or self-centered, but having others put others before ourselves, it is something so attractive and powerful , but there is another side to humility.

We also have to understand that it is a minority, but it is still important to understand that some people look at another person and say that they never talk about themselves, they never demand that we listen to them, they never believe they have the right answer, they are very humble. and When someone lacks confidence, it is not really humility. When we have an idea or a talent, denying the talent God has given us is actually a violation of humility, as is exaggerating them. CS Lewis said it best, he said humility is not thinking. less of ourselves is to think less of ourselves, but the most prominent type of lack of humility that we see in teams in the workplace and in life is arrogance and self-centeredness, so this is the first and most important attribute, the second is equally simple and Do you have to be hungry?

You have to be hungry. People who have an innate hunger to get the job done are much more successful on teams and in life and this is simply having a strong work ethic and this is probably the easiest to understand, but I will say this to the young people: this is the one they will probably have to develop earlier in life. When I work with people later in life who never developed an innate sense of hunger, it's more difficult, which is why I talked to middle-aged children. school and I say: do it now, work hard at everything you do, this is not about work addiction, although workaholics are people who get their entire identity from their work and that is not what I am saying here, the people who are hungry simply want to go further and further they have a high standard for what they do and never the minimum, they never do just the minimum now the third attribute of an ideal team player is what I call being smart, but not It's about intellectual intelligence, it's about emotional intelligence, common sense about how we behave. understanding people and how we use our words and actions to have the best possible impact on others.

This is very important in the world and it is how you can develop this in life. Being smart is one of those things that people can work on and get. better in so humble, hungry, intelligent, these are the three simple virtues, but the key is that we have to have all three to be an ideal team player, so it is very important that we learn to identify in ourselves and in the others when something is missing, so what I'm going to do now is come up with some labels that I want you to use carefully for people who lack one of these in a very serious and egregious way, so let's take a look at those people who are now humble, the most important thing they consider. about others they have had of themselves and they are hungry they work very hard but they lack intelligence they are not emotionally intelligent we call this the accidental disorder creator now I have a lot of time for the accidental disorder creators are good people they have very good intentions but they create problems that they don't realize if they are like that dog that puppy I have a puppy at home and they throw things a lot but they have good intentions and they poop on the carpet you have clean up after them, but since they have good intentions you can give them a hit them in the nose with the newspaper and they come back for more.

They have a great attitude. The problem with accidental messers is that you have to clean up after them, they create a bit of extra work and overtime, you get tired of having to say he's a really good guy, he didn't say it like that, anyway, of the three types who lack one of these virtues, I will choose the one who accidentally makes a mess, the second is He is also a very good type of customer, he is someone who is humble, the most important, and he is intelligent, he is good at dealing with people, but lacks hunger.

We call this guy the lovable slacker, now the lovable slackers, the problem is their level, so they are. They are a lot of fun to be with and they are good people, they are good people, but they only do the minimum, they don't go further and you have to constantly remind them to do more and you have to get back to it. your slack in an organization now. I once worked with a lovable slacker, a good friend of mine still is, and every time I reminded him that he needed to do more, he would say you're right and that he was passionate about everything in life besides work. true, but because he was adorable, he was a lot of fun to be with and one day I told him: you know you're going to have to leave this company when you're good and ready and five years later he walked out that door.

The truth is that it is very easy to tolerate adorable slackers, but they have a problem. They cause problems on a team. Now the third type is the most difficult. This is the person who is hungry. They really want to work hard. They are ambitious. They are intelligent, so they are very good at dealing with people, but they are not humble and we call this the skillful politician. I'm sure your mayor here is not the slick pug in this regard, no, she's probably a slick leader, but not the slick one. political in this sense, skilled politicians are so intelligent that they know how to present themselves as humble, which is something very dangerous because what they do is interview well, they go to medium-sized parties and say the right things, they know how to kiss.

It depends on the boss, the coach or the teacher, the problem is deep within them, it is about them, not others, and when we discover it, there is usually a trail of dead bodies hidden in closets around the organization with the one I once worked with the team. this guy on the team who was a skilled politician and was so smart to hide it, he was so smart he was even Canadian. You see, you would never suspect a Canadian. They are always so friendly you would never think they would be like this. and we would go to meetings and this guy was very good with people and we thought he was the best team player, he's wonderful and then after a while we realized that his salary has tripled, half of his colleagues are leaving.

They've gone, they've been playing with this, really. The problem is when a person lacks a human being but is good at presenting themselves, that can be a very dangerous thing on a team. Well, then what do you do with this? First of all, I don't want you to misuse these labels. Don't go back to work and tell your boss, hey, I think you're an accidental messer, or tell your mom she's a lovable slacker, you know that's going to get you in trouble and you should apply this to yourself first, but then I want to To do this, here is a very simple activity: sit down with your team at work or with your family or with the littleit team that you train and get everyone to understand humble, smart and intelligent, and then ask them let them rank themselves in these three areas, which one are better in second place and third place, even if they are good in all of them, they will have a third, even if they are not so good in all, one of them will be third and ask them to identify which one. one is the third and then they go around the table and ask people to explain their third and why it is theirs and then talk as a team about how people can brainstorm how they can get through this, give each other advice at that humble person you could say you know.

Maybe you shouldn't talk so much about yourself, but you should ask questions about theirs and take an interest in the lives of others. A hungry person, like that, maybe when you're about to leave work at 450 you should check in and see if there's more work. What to do or that smart person at the end of meetings maybe you should ask people if you've upset anyone and learn how you can avoid it, whatever the case, what I want you to do is turn your colleagues into members of your team. Your family members become your coaches, they are the best source of training and advice.

You have to become a better team player and more successful in life because the day you know that the people around you love you enough to tell you when you are doing something. that you need to improve everything changes so I want you to go home and I want you to do this and in a very short time you will see a difference now let me leave you with this in my company at the table group, we don't care whenwe hire people, where they went to college, we don't really care and we don't care about their GPA or their CT or their SAT, the only three letter acronym we really care about is H a and Y I think it's something we need to do more of in our society, whether it is professional development in our organizations or in our schools.

I think as a father of four children, I think it's time we took a little of the Don't pressure kids to just memorize the periodic table of elements or Amba pollution. I mean, we have to learn those things. I understand this and kids should work hard, but I think we should actually give them things they can control in their lives. It's really going to pay off in their future and we should teach them how to focus on others not themselves, we should teach them how to work hard at everything they do in school and everything else just because it's the right thing to do and thirdly First, we must teach them how to be more interpersonally and emotionally skilled with the people around them.

I think that could make a big difference in our corporations and in our schools and our families and I really believe that the world would be a better place and that our companies would be better places and our families would be better and individuals in society would be better if more of us were humble, hungry and intelligent, thank you and God bless you