You have heard it before: teamwork is essential. But just how essential?
Chances are you already know the answer. Everyone in the business world has experienced how teamwork can make or break a project. When it comes to energy-related initiatives, collaborating and communicating are essential, not only within your inner circle, but also with customers and allies. In many cases, you’ll need the best people to facilitate and maintain those relationships. This is where teamwork can make the biggest difference and put you ahead of your competition.
Patrick Lencioni is an expert on leadership and team development, with over twenty years of experience under his belt. His latest book, The Ideal Team Player, focuses on the characteristics that make the best teammates in any work situation:
- They need to be humble, meaning that they aren’t arrogant and are willing to listen to others or learn from their mistakes.
- They must be “hungry,” in that they are proactive, driven and committed to a rigorous work ethic.
- They must be people smart, with the intuitive ability to read others, collaborate with different personalities, and think before they act or speak.
Lencioni argues that it is a combination of these three qualities that ensures the best teamwork. Even a team player with two out of these three qualities will struggle or potentially hinder a project’s development. Most importantly, you must have these qualities in order to be an effective leader. The Ideal Team Player is not only a guide for what to look for in collaborators or employees, but ultimately a reminder of the example you should be setting at work, regardless of your position.
Here is a summary from Amazon:
“In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player.
In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues.
Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.”
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