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Shuvo Raj Bhatta

Pre-class assignment

1. What do you think are the skills/behaviours of a good team member?

The book: Ideal Team Player, written by Patrick Lencioni mentions three merits that are
vital for being a good team member. I also agree with the virtues pointed in the book,
and below I will outline them, with some brief explanations:

 Being humble: This tells that a good team player must be humble. Let me explain
how the “humble” is narrated in the book very effectively, and I think this is a
great learning for me in the Team Management course. First, it means that one
should not be arrogant about showing off his/her own capabilities; and should
appraise the talent of others in the team. Also, after a group project is done, they
should share the credit collectively, not individually.
Secondly, it means that one should not deny their own “self-worth”, that is they
should not discount their own talents to appear humble. If they do so, they may
fail to promote their own ideas or fail to call attention for the problems they see.
 Being hungry: This are real motivated people, who thrives to learn and act to
complete a project for the team. “Being hungry” is an essential behaviour for a
team member to possess.
 Being smart: Here, it means that an ideal team member should have general
ideas about people’s behaviour and psychology. The ideal team member has
good judgement and intuition around the sensitivities of group dynamics, such as
they know how their words and actions could affect the group. As a result, they
don’t say or do things that’s going to negatively effect the performance of the
team.

An ideal team member should have the required combinations of pf all three
attributes mentioned above for the success of him/her, and the overall success of
the team.
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2. What do you think are the skills /behaviors of a good team leader / manager?

There are several qualities a good team leader should possess, but here I have briefly
narrated the most important of them, according to my personal experience & also from a
Harvard business review article, they are :

 The ability to create a safe and trusting environment: According to the Harvard
business review article, a leader must set “high ethical and moral standards” ,
together with : “clearly communicating expectations”. By combining these two
attributes, a leader will create a safe and trusting environment which will
increase the brain capacity of the team members, resulting in overall success of
the team project. One thing to point here is that leaders should neutralize feared
results or consequences from the outset.
 Show openness to new ideas and foster organizational learning: This point tells
that leader should encourage new ideas from employees. I think this is partially
true. A good team leader should encourage new ideas only where the job
requires innovative inputs. If the task requires routine actions, then allowing
extra evidence may make the decision-making ability of the team members
inflexible.
However, a good team leader should always encourage learning & training.
 Empowering others to self-organize: This is an attribute, which I also personally
find useful in my job. As a marketing manger for a reputed organization, I see
that as I delegate tasks to the required person , the project get solves quickly ,
correctly and the whole team as well as me is satisfied after the task is
completed. So, a leader should empower other members in a team.

However, we all know that a good leader must me a mentor, effective organizer,
motivator, but those are general skills they must possess preliminarily. The skills
mentioned above in the bullet points are the traits that make the ideal team leader, and
thus a successful team.
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3. Do you think team leaders need to be able to be a good team member? Why or
why not?

Team leaders must possess some quality of a good team member, but not necessarily
all. For example, as a marketing manager, I am leading a big team consisting of sales
representatives, customers service agents, marketing co-ordinators, budget officers. In
every project, I have to delegate many tasks to the required group or professional, and
eventually make some decisions based on the performance and calculations of the
teams. Here, I being a marketing manager is leading several teams and professionals,
but I am not performing all the tasks by my-self. I have empowered others according to
their skills. Hence, I am implying many essential skills of being a team member, such as
hunger and people smart, but I am not working in-depth with any team. In conclusion, I
must know how to delegate and make the best decisions – which are more of qualities
of a leader.

4. What do you think are the major lessons about leading teams in this book?

In the first question of this report, I discussed about the qualities necessary for an
effective team player, according to this book : Ideal Team player. Also, according to the
book leading teams requires a leader to hire or develop those qualities in building or
sustaining a team. Meaning, a leader should always seek out personals who possess
the right amount of humility, hunger and smartness and then hire them into their
company. The leader should also train employees to develop those traits if those are
missing in them.

The Ideal Team

humility
Player

hunger

People smart
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The illustration above shows the three virtues emphasize by Patrick Lencioni in the
book Ideal Team player. All three attributes in the required amount must be present in
an ideal team member.

(Continuation of question 4)

In the end of the book, the writer connects the ideal team player model with the
concepts: “Five Dysfunctions of a team “, which is also from a book he had written. The
five dysfunctions of a teams are: Absence of trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of
Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, and Inattention to results. Patrick writes in
the book that if members have the required three merits of humility, hungry and smart;
then the five dysfunctions of the team will be minimized significantly.

5. From the organizational perspective (senior executive), what do you think are
the major lessons about organization around teams in this book?

Overall, to build a successful organization the performance of teams is very crucial.

From the book we see that the three virtues humility, hungry and smart should be
present in right proportion in all team members to contribute to the team as well to the
company. From the perspective of senior executive, the three attributes mentioned on
the book are indeed vital. The senior executives should retain, hire and train employees
is support of those virtues – which are clearly mentioned in the book.

From the story mentioned in book, we see the executives employing those three traits in
the employees. We see that they are good at identifying members/managers whose
actions or behaviors are delaying the completion of projects in timely manner. After
identifying the managers are not shying away to remove those members from the
organization. They also scale the organizations by hiring employees who follow the
virtues of being a good team player.

References:

Lencioni, P. (2018). The ideal team player: How to recognize and cultivate the three
essential virtues: A leadership fable. Wiley India.
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The most important leadership competencies, according to leaders around the world.
Harvard Business Review. (2017, October 25). Retrieved February 16, 2023, from
https://hbr.org/2016/03/the-most-important-leadership-competencies-according-to-
leaders-around-the-world.