The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk 246: Patrick Lencioni - The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team
Feb 26, 2018
Patrick Lencioni, founder of The Table Group and bestselling author famed for leadership fables. He discusses advising pro sports teams, why teams often fail, and what to watch for when evaluating players. He explains his storytelling approach to leadership, the importance of hard conversations, and how leaders shape culture through behavior and small stories.
01:02:22
Behavior Predicts Draft Success
- Prioritize humility, hunger, and emotional intelligence when evaluating candidates, not just physical metrics.
- Team-first behaviors predict long-term fit and championship-level contribution.
Founding The Table Group Was About Teammates
- Patrick left a stable executive role to start The Table Group because he wanted to work with specific teammates.
- His wife's financial support and choosing people over prestigious job offers made the leap possible.
Give Talks Like Conversations
- Treat large talks as conversations: invite the audience in and be candid about your thinking.
- Use organic interaction and questions to reduce pressure and deliver authenticity.
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Intro
00:00 • 3min
How Pat Began Working with Pro Sports
03:09 • 2min
Why Pro Teams Are Often Dysfunctional
05:20 • 6min
Evaluating Draft Picks Beyond Physical Metrics
10:55 • 3min
Quarterbacks as Team-Player Examples
13:26 • 5min
Pat's Origin: Leaving Corporate Work
18:31 • 5min
Breakthrough Moment: Willow Creek Speech
23:27 • 2min
How Pat Prepares and Delivers Talks
25:11 • 5min
Why Pat Writes Leadership Fables
30:28 • 3min
New Book: Leaders as Responsibility Bearers
33:06 • 1min
Leaders Must Embrace Discomfort
34:24 • 4min
Great Leaders Push for Growth
38:12 • 2min
Balancing Toughness with Care
39:55 • 5min
Culture Built by Leaders' Behaviors
44:57 • 3min
Stories Over Programs in Culture
47:38 • 3min
Hiring Consultants and Growing The Table Group
50:34 • 6min
Upcoming Organizational Health Events
56:57 • 4min
Outro
01:01:15 • 1min
#
The Soft Edge: Where Great Companies Find Lasting Success
where great companies find lasting success
Rich Karlgaard
Rich Karlgaard argues that enduring companies succeed not just through strategy and execution (the 'hard edge'), but by cultivating the 'soft edge' composed of five pillars: trust, teams, smarts, taste, and story.
Drawing on real-world examples from companies like Apple, FedEx, and Northwestern Mutual, the book shows how these human factors drive innovation, boost profits, enhance loyalty, and provide a competitive advantage that rivals cannot easily copy.
It offers practical insights for managers and leaders to build high-performance organizations.
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The Advantage
Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business
Patrick Lencioni
In 'The Advantage', Patrick Lencioni makes a compelling case that the key to a company's success lies in its organizational health rather than its intelligence or technological prowess.
He argues that healthy organizations, characterized by a cohesive leadership team, clear strategy, effective communication, and a unified culture, outperform their counterparts.
Lencioni identifies three biases (the Sophistication Bias, the Adrenaline Bias, and the Quantification Bias) that prevent leaders from focusing on organizational health.
The book provides a practical model for achieving organizational health, including four disciplines: building a cohesive leadership team, creating clarity, overcommunicating clarity, and reinforcing clarity through systems and practices.
Lencioni draws on his extensive experience consulting with leading organizations to offer stories, tips, and anecdotes that illustrate the importance of organizational health in today's fast-changing business environment.
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Radical Candor
Be a Kick-ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
Kim Scott
Radical Candor by Kim Scott offers a practical approach to management by emphasizing the importance of caring personally and challenging directly.
The book argues that effective managers must find a balance between being empathetic and providing clear, honest feedback.
Scott draws from her experiences at Google and Apple to provide actionable lessons on building strong relationships, giving feedback, and creating a collaborative work environment.
The book introduces the concept of 'radical candor' as the sweet spot between obnoxious aggression and ruinous empathy, and provides tools and strategies for managers to implement this approach in their daily work.
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What Color Is Your Parachute?
A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career Changers
Richard N. Bolles
What Color Is Your Parachute?
is more than a job-hunting book; it is a guide to discovering one's passions, values, and transferable skills to design a fulfilling career.
The book, updated annually, provides advice on networking, resume writing, interviewing, and salary negotiation.
It features the renowned 'Flower Exercise,' a self-assessment tool that helps readers identify their ideal career paths.
With over ten million copies sold, it has been a trusted resource for people at various stages of their careers, from those seeking their first job to those considering a career change.
#155
• Mentioned in 140 episodes
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
A Leadership Fable
Patrick Lencioni
This book explores the fundamental causes of team failure and organizational politics through a narrative about a fictional company, DecisionTech, Inc. It outlines five dysfunctions: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results.
The book provides practical advice and real-world examples to help teams overcome these dysfunctions and become high-performing teams.
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Legacy
James Kerr
In 'Legacy', James Kerr delves into the culture and ethos of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, one of the most successful sports teams in the world.
The book reveals 15 practical lessons derived from the team's unique culture, which are applicable to leadership and business.
These lessons include principles such as 'Sweep the Sheds' (promoting humility and collective responsibility), 'Whakapapa' and 'Tikanga' (underlining the importance of knowing one's roots and adhering to ethical behavior), and 'Black Box Thinking' (assuming responsibility and learning from failure).
Kerr also emphasizes the importance of camaraderie, continuous improvement, and authentic leadership.
The book provides a roadmap to potential greatness by embracing one's roots, striving for leadership, and growing within a team.
The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
Pat is the founder of The Table Group and the author of 11 books (including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team)which have sold over 5 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages. The Wall Street Journal called him "one of the most in demand speakers in America." He has addressed millions of people at conferences and events around the world over the past 15 years. Pat has written for or been featured in numerous publications including Harvard Business Review, Inc., Fortune, Fast Company, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek. This is the second time Pat has been a guest on The Learning Leader Show. To listen to the first conversation we had, CLICK HERE.
Prior to founding The Table Group, Pat worked at Bain & Company, Oracle Corporation and Sybase.
Show Notes:
- The email he received from Miami Heat coach, Erik Spolestra, after his first appearance on The Learning Leader Show
- How he helps professional sports teams
- Why NFL teams focus on the wrong things when deciding who to draft
- Teddy Bridgewater vs Johnny Manziel
- The characteristics of a great teammate:
- Humility
- Hunger
- Emotional Intelligence
- The success of Nick Foles in The Super Bowl
- The camaraderie built by coach Doug Pederson of The Philadelphia Eagles
- "I'm meant to work with people..."
- The origin story - How Pat started his own business... and why?
- Potential to work with Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt
- The biggest moment in the growth of his business? Speaking at Willowcreek Church(50,000 people watched)
- Doing a "talk" instead of thinking of it as a "keynote speech" -- "I'm just talking with the audience."
- Why turn leadership issues into fables?
- "We don't read books, but we read yours." They are so interesting. "I keep reading your books because I want to see what happens next."
- Leaders must:
- Have difficult conversations -- must do the hard things
- What are the biggest mistakes a new manager makes?
- "You cannot avoid the discomfort"
- "Being a leader is uncomfortable"
- The best leaders are "pushers"
- The Steve Jobs and Jony Ive story -- "You're so vain"
- Keys to a great culture:
- Leaders must be intentional about behaviors they want
- Must be brutally intolerant if people don't do it well
- How Pat helped Southwest Airlines
- Codify their culture -- It had never been done before
- Working with Chic-fil-a
- Their CEO wasn't too big to do dishes and clear the plates
- "They gave snacks for my trip home"
- "You don't come up with culture, you look at what's there"
- The importance of stories
- Pat's business: There are 45 consultants all over the world. They are:
- Humble
- Hungry
- Smart
"Being a leader is uncomfortable. You cannot avoid the discomfort."
Social Media:
- Follow Pat on Twitter: @patricklencioni
- Read: The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community
- To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12