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Podcast Summary: The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - Episode 665: Pat Lencioni
Episode Overview In this episode, Ryan Hawk engages with Patrick Lencioni, a prominent author and business consultant known for his insights on team dynamics and leadership. They discuss Lencioni's books, including "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" and "The 6 Types of Working Genius," and delve into personal experiences that shaped his career.
Key Themes and Concepts
- Personal Background and Motivations
- Childhood Wounds: Lencioni shares how his upbringing, characterized by a lack of affirmation, fueled his need to prove himself, leading to a fear-based approach to success.
- Empathy and Anticipation: He emphasizes the importance of anticipating others' objections in conversations, which fosters empathy and understanding in leadership.
- The Concept of "Working Genius"
- Six Types of Working Genius: Lencioni introduces this framework to help individuals identify their strengths and areas of frustration in their work. His own geniuses are Invention (coming up with ideas) and Discernment (evaluating and curating).
- Avoiding Burnout: He addresses the challenge of enabling team members with different geniuses to avoid burnout, especially those with Enablement and Tenacity.
- Team Dynamics and Building Effective Teams
- Teammate Trifecta: Lencioni discusses the importance of hiring people who are Humble, Hungry, and Smart to create a cohesive and effective team.
- Lessons from Sports: He draws parallels between team sports and business teams, emphasizing vulnerability-based trust and accountability among team members.
- Leadership Philosophy
- Motive for Leadership: Lencioni warns that aspiring leaders should assess whether their motives are self-serving or centered on serving others. He believes effective leadership involves sacrifice and the willingness to endure challenges for the team's benefit.
- Breaking the Tie: The necessity for leaders to step in and make decisions when consensus cannot be reached is highlighted. This action must be rare to maintain credibility.
Key Takeaways
- Healing from Childhood Wounds: Many high achievers may have underlying issues that drive their need for success; understanding this can lead to healthier motivations.
- The Power of Vulnerability: Acknowledging mistakes and being open with team members can significantly enhance trust and performance.
- Celebrate Differences: Lencioni advocates for recognizing and celebrating the unique strengths of individuals rather than forcing them to conform to roles they are not suited for.
- Balanced Leadership: Leaders must navigate the fine line between humility and authority, ensuring they lead effectively without undermining their own position.
Reflection Questions
- What in your past might be driving your current achievements? Are you operating from freedom and passion, or from fear and the need to prove yourself?
- Identify your lowest trait among Humble, Hungry, and Smart. Who in your life could hold you accountable?
- What is your true motive for wanting to lead? Are you motivated by sacrifice for others or by personal gain?
Conclusion This discussion with Patrick Lencioni provides valuable insights into leadership, team dynamics, and personal growth. The concepts of vulnerability, the Working Genius framework, and the importance of a selfless approach to leadership are particularly impactful for anyone looking to enhance their effectiveness as a leader.
For more information and full show notes, visit [LearningLeader.com](https://www.LearningLeader.com).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02Welcome to the Learning Leader Show.
0:29player, the six types of working genius, and many other books. He sold over 10 million copies and is the founder of the Table Group. Pat is a legend. We recorded this one. It was really cool with members of my Learning Leaders Circle on the call, and a few of them asked some really insightful questions towards the end of the conversation. Some of the topics we discussed. What coach Eric Spolstra told LeBron James about the five dysfunctions of a team when LeBron joined the Heat. Then Pat told a story about just last week when he had to pull the CEO card, dropped an F bomb and had to let everybody know this is what we're doing and why us as leaders need to do that sometimes too.
1:15Then the hardest question he asked himself as a parent, am I pushing them too hard or not enough. So good. And then why he says true greatness comes from freedom and love and not fear of failure. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Pat Lencioni. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to providing amazing people to their clients and taking great care of them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global can get you the people you need and help you develop them to reach their full potential.
2:09Developing your people can be tough, but having productive employees can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com slash learning leader. That's insightglobal.com slash learning leader to learn more.
2:28You've written many bestselling books. You've created assessment tools like The Working Genius. You've given speeches all over the world. You've advised some of the most powerful people in the world. I'm very curious to learn what you think in your life that you've mastered the most. What I've mastered? Man, that's a question. Because I'm learning more now than I ever have. And the older you get, the more you realize what you don't know. You know what I think? Somebody told me this the other day. He said he thinks he's the best in the world at it other than me. So that must mean I've mastered it.
3:03And that is, I think I'm really good at anticipating people's objections. When I talk to people, I actually think about, oh man, what might they be thinking? And what do I need to put out there to help them know that I'm thinking what they're thinking? And I've, you know, whether I'm talking to people interpersonally or when I'm giving a speech or writing a book or in a podcast, I like to think about what the other person might be object, like thinking like, I think this is stupid. This is touchy-feely or I don't know if this is real. I like to go there first and say to people, hey, I know you're probably wondering this, So I think maybe I've mastered the art of anticipating people's objections.
3:40And I learned that from a guy named Terry Pierce who wrote a book years ago called Leading Out Loud. So that's what I do. Interesting. How does that affect you as a leader, both at work and a leader in your house? I think that I lean into empathy and I try to understand where other people are coming from. And it allows me kind of get to the crux of things quicker. And by the way, I should say that I think I got really good at this naturally because in my life, there were some wounds from childhood where I had to constantly be earning people's approval and helping them listen to me. So when I was a kid, I think I learned in my family and another thing to always try to please people and try to anticipate what they were thinking to get permission to be heard.
4:23And so I think that's where this came from. I was reading about your childhood this morning. You were the valedictorian, the student body president. You played point guard on the basketball team. you had a brother, you had a sister, your dad's a sales rep for a liquor distributor. So what are the wounds that you're talking about? Like, it sounds like you absolutely destroyed it through high school. Like you were the top of everything. You were the guy. Yeah. You should all, when people tell you they got straight A's and they were the valedictorian, the student body president and got accepted to all the schools they wanted to get into, there's a wound there.
4:55And what's funny is based on my, my personality type, I shouldn't have done all those things, but it was out of the need to prove myself. and to please every coach, Sherry will know this, every teacher, my parents, every boss. I always felt like I needed to prove myself in order to be successful and to feel good, to feel safe. And that's not healthy. And so I thank God for all the things that have happened in my life, but it was not easy for me. I was way, way, way too concerned about being perfect. Why? Because to be clear, because when I was young, I loved my parents, God raised his soul, my dad, My mom's still living, but they had a real hard time being affirming.
5:36And that was because of their own life. You know, there's generational stuff. And so basically always felt like, oh, I'm only as good as what I did last. And, you know, it was just not something in their mind to say, hey, you know, we love who you are. It's not what you do. And don't worry about that. You can, you're going to be fine. Really early in life, I was like, oh, I better be perfect. And they didn't know what they were doing. And I didn't know it either. And it wasn't until I was 55 years old that a friend of mine said, you, my friend, have childhood wounds you've never dealt with. What happened there?
6:07A good friend of mine who's a psychologist, I would say, hey, why do I worry about this all the time? Why do I do this? And he said, those are childhood wound issues. I said, what? He goes, yeah. And he asked me some questions and I went and got some good, for me, Christian counseling and realized, oh, crap. So the way I grew up, I wasn't supposed to grow up that way. The perfection, the achievement, the pleasing everyone. and five decades and more into my life, I was like, oh, so this is not how you're supposed to be. And so good things came of that, but I never really got to rest, to be peaceful in what I was doing.
6:39I always felt like, oh, I'm only as good as the last thing I did. So you write another book and you write another book. And I loved it. You know, athletes, you talk to your brother about great athletes and Sherry knows some athletes are just like, oh, I'm never enough. So many CEOs I work with are like, it's never enough. and you go, what are you going to do now? And it's like, I got to do the next thing. And it's like, no, you're a noun, not a verb. You are enough, and you're not defined by what you do. Isn't it in a weird way, though, that never enough feeling, that's what produces greatness?
7:13Well, I think the answer is no. Great achievements come out of that, but true greatness is best when it's only in the things that you're meant to be great at, and that you're doing it out of freedom and passion and love of not out of fear of failure. And we know that some people, I mean, you know, you look at Tiger Woods and you think, yeah, that was not natural. That was not natural. I remember seeing him on the tonight show when he was four years old and like he was being groomed to be a golfer when he was four years old. It's best in life when we discover who God means us to be. And then we do the things that we're supposed to do.
7:49And we're okay with not being good at the things we're not supposed to. And I got really good at things I wasn't supposed to be good at. And it was against the grain. And that creates wounds that, you know, we're not all supposed to be great at everything. And people that are pretty darn good at everything, it's usually because they're doing something out of fear. So you said your parents weren't affirming enough. I feel like today. Oh, swings the other way. And I'm looking in the mirror here too, man. And the people around me that I feel like when I see them as moms and dads, have we gone too far the other way?
8:20I mean, now it's like every day you're the greatest or, or, Oh, you know, I'm so proud of you for, you know, you know what I mean? Like, are we too affirming now? Are we going to raise a bunch of soft people because of this? Yeah. And it's hard to describe it based on a whole society, but I think the answer is yes, in this sense. So when I was a kid and you know, they came from parents from world war II and the depression and all this, and they were like, Hey, you got a roof over your head and we pay in for your, your, your bills. You're good. And then there's a lot of suffering that goes on, they weren't really attuned to that.
8:49And now we are like hyper worried of our kids suffering. And it's like, no, suffering is actually good. They need to know that they're loved and they're safe, but that they're not going to be protected from what is like necessary suffering for their development. So when I was a kid, it was kind of like you're on your own and that's not healthy. I know in raising my kids, the mistake I made was like, oh no, no, I don't want them to feel like I did. And so we kind of go too far. And thankfully at my age, I'm now interacting with my mostly adult children and explaining to them what I did wrong and what my intent, and they're learning from that.
9:27And our hope is that we break that cycle that they're gonna be able to raise their kids with enough affirmation to feel safe, but not so much that they're afraid to suffer. Yeah, we could go on the parenting thing forever. I'm curious to transition a bit. I've had conversation with your team as well about the teammate trifecta. So we're looking at the ideal team player, the working genius, and the five dysfunctions. How do you use this teammate trifecta to help us all collectively be better leaders? So when I wrote the five dysfunctions of a team, which was, oh, that would have been 24 or five years ago.
10:03I remember finishing writing it right after 9-11. So that's kind of how I can remember it. Otherwise, I don't remember very well. And I thought well, that's the book on teamwork and we wrote it for small startup companies But we found out that soldiers in afghanistan were using it athletic teams were using it professional college Startups churches lots of churches were using it. So it applied generally to teams and I thought well, that's my book on teams Well, then we realized a few years later. Oh There was this other idea that if you want to hire people that fit on teams You really need the ideal team player which is to be humble hungry and smart So I wrote that book and we said, that's actually a precursor, hire those people.
10:41So if you wanna get the right people on the bus to be a team, make sure that they're humble, hungry and smart. But then we realized, wait, but before you have a team, you wanna make sure they're sitting in the right seat. Jim Collins talks about getting people in the right seat on the bus. And years later, by accident, we came up with the six types of working genius, which is really about, are they in the right seat? They belong on the team, but are we using them the right way? And so we realized there's three steps to building a team. Don't let people on the team bus, if they're not humble, hungry, and smart, that's a problem.
11:13Make sure that you have them in the right chair and in the right role based on the gifts God gave them. And then go to the five dysfunctions of a team and teach them how to trust, engage in conflict, commit to decisions, hold each other accountable, and focus on results. So it's actually a three-step process that we peeled that onion kind of backward. How did you come up with these things, man? From like a business perspective, is that just how your brain is wired? Five dysfunctions is now like a universal thing that everybody in leadership talks about. Working genius has pretty much become that as well.
11:48Hiring or drafting, I remember you talking about the NFL draft, humble, hungry, and smart. Like it's wild how this stuff has become so commercialized and they're just random ideas from your mind. You know, I'm so glad you asked me that because it gets back to the last thing we've done, which is growing like crazy, is the working genius. As it turns out, there's six types of working genius. And the two that God gave me were what's called invention, which means I love to come up with ideas out of nothing. When people come to me and say, Pat, we have five minutes, we need a new idea. I just take a deep breath and smile and go, oh, I love this, I love this.
12:24And one man's trash is another man's treasure. Some people are like, oh, that's my least favorite thing in the world. And yet it's my favorite. My other one is called discernment, which is I love evaluating things, curating things. I love when people show me things and I get to go, ooh, will that work? Is this a good one or not a good one? And so I naturally wake up every morning doing invention and discernment, which means that I come up with ideas all the time, which is pretty annoying when it's not time to come up with a new idea. My wife will say, hey, I need your help on something. I'm like, ooh, do I get to come up with a new idea or evaluate something?
12:58She goes, no, you need to do what I ask you to do. And I'm not great at that. And so I just happen to love doing those things. And I asked Jim Collins years ago when I first met him, I said, Jim, you do all this research. You go in there and you have data and you go and you have these research analysts and you sit in a room for six months analyzing data. I go into a room with a bunch of leaders and I just sit there and I think, what's going on here? Oh, wait a second. Wait a second. What about that? And he said, Pat, that's just as valid as what I do. That's called field research and face validity.
13:33And Ryan, every new idea I've come up with has been in the field, working with people and thinking, I think that might work. And then people say, oh my gosh, this changes everything. And that's how I came up with the five dysfunctions of a team. That's how we came up with the working genius. So God just made me, he wired me to do that kind of thing. Now, let me tell you something though. There are so many things in business and in life that I'm really terrible at. And I realize now that I'm just not wired to do that well. What are you terrible at? Finishing things. And people will go, so why did you finish 14 books?
14:05And it's like, well, because other people around me made me finish them. And getting back to our other conversation, I was afraid of not succeeding. I got a 4.0 in high school when that's the best you could do. You know, that means you got A's and everything. That wasn't my personality. And I went to college and I went to every class. I never blew off classes. My personality is the kind that should blow off classes that don't matter. But I was so afraid of failing and disappointing my parents and disappointing my teachers, that I did anything they asked me to do. That was not natural. That was fear-based.
14:40Can't we use fear as useful fuel, though? You know, I would say you can use it in the short term. Yeah. But if you're doing it in your life, no. we should not be afraid that our value goes to zero if we can't do and if we look around and compare ourselves to everyone around us and say i need to be as good as that person and their strength and that person and their strength and that no we should celebrate when other people are better than we are at things and we should literally celebrate what we suck at which doesn't mean we don't have to do some of it and we don't have to do our best you know it's michael jordan when he, after his first year in the league, they said, hey, he's great at going to the basket and dunking the ball.
15:23And he's great at defense and moving without the ball. He's not a great shooter. And they said, should we then force him to be a good shooter? And they said, no. In an act of wisdom, they said, no, he'll be better if we don't put pressure on him. But so many people, we go and say, here's the thing you're not good at. So I want you to work on that the most. If we have two kids and one's creative and the other's disciplined, we go to the creative one and we say, you need to be more disciplined like your brother or sister. We go to the disciplined one and we say, you need to be more creative. And it's like, no, no, no.
15:52We have to say, hey, understanding that you're not creative is good for you. And there's times in life when you're going to have to work on that a little bit, but that's not who you're meant to be. And I don't want you to denigrate yourself because you're not the same as your brother or your friends. Yeah. I think that's, that's fantastic questions. Thank you. All of the questions are a projection. Uh, like almost everybody who asks questions, they are chasing our own curiosity with great rigor. And part of mine is I remember vividly as a freshman and having sophomores, juniors, and seniors that I just didn't want to let down.
16:25Like I, I just was, I was scared to death. And I remember specific names like Adam Taylor, the middle linebacker, who I was like physically and psychologically scared of, like not because anything he did, it just, I just didn't want to let him down. He was a leader. He wanted to win. Right. And so in a way it helped me, man, like it might not be fuel that can burn for a long time. But I do think like in the short term, that can be helpful. At least it was for me. I think that's very healthy because the idea there is your hunger for doing well. You didn't want to let down your, you know, people in the military are like this too.
17:00It's like, if I let him down, bad things happen and we're in this together. But now if you try your best and fail and let him down that way, I mean, you watch every football game at a field goal kicker misses a kick and you just go like, oh, thank God my son is not a field goal kicker. Because did they try not to do that? No, things happen. And if your self-esteem and your self-worth disappears because you let them down, that's circumstantial rather than I didn't care. So if fear drives you to care and to prepare and to try your best, that's great. But then if things don't turn out, the fear of you're going to reduce to not being a worthwhile person is very dangerous.
17:41So it seems like a fine line, but it's pretty different. Yeah. I think preparation can be good medicine for fear. If you're going to run a marathon, I got to go train, right? I got to get ready for that because I'm scared. I want to be able to finish the marathon in whatever time I set. So that can, it can be a tool, right? To counteract that fear. You know, Ryan, you mentioned in my background that I was at the point guard of my basketball team. I loved basketball, wanted to be a NBA point guard. I was five foot three, my sophomore year in high school still. And I grew to the massive height and my senior year of five foot seven.
18:15I'm not grown. I grew in college too. So I wasn't going to be a pro basketball player, but I loved it. But you know what sport I did from the time I was in second grade till college and I didn't enjoy it. I was a distance runner. And that was fear-based. Literally every race I ran for my life. And it was because I knew that if I worked really hard, I could be good at it because nobody really loves that. I mean, very few people really love running long distances and pushing yourself to the verge of death, where it feels like death. And so that was not something I liked. It's not something that I wanted to do, but something that I felt like I could be good at it.
18:54And that's not a healthy thing. And I remember I was talking to my son, Matt, who's the producer of our podcasts. And he was just saying the other day, when he was in fifth grade, he was pretty good in the 800 meters. And I asked him, do you like this? And he goes, no, no, it's scary. And I said, okay, wait a second. That's not a motive. And he told me just the other day, oh, I hated it. I hated it. He goes, I was good, but I hated it. And that was not something where I should have. I'm glad I didn't encourage him. Well, you're good at it. You should do it even though you're terrified. What is though that difference between, oh, like I love pushing my edges.
19:27I want my kids to push their edges. I want them to be right on that boundary of like, ah, I'm scared. I don't know about this. Because the more they do that, the more they grow, right? So like there is like a fine line of pushing your edges, like the Navy SEALs really train their people to do. And like, I think great teams do, but not go over that edge. Yeah. Oh, I do. Do I being a parent? The hardest thing about being a parent, I think, well, the hardest thing is watching your kids suffer and we have to be okay with that. The other thing is constantly throughout life going, am I pushing him too hard or not enough in yourself too though?
20:03Right. Oh yeah. And here's the thing. And that's why you have to be emotionally healthy because there's the difference between pushing yourself in a healthy way, and I would say like the Navy SEALs, and I've talked to enough of these people, and man, that's the coolest thing ever, and I know people who are in Marines basic training right now, a guy who's kids, it's not healthy. They do it because to be a great soldier and to protect this country, they have to get to the point where they're unnaturally willing to do things, and almost every one of them comes out of that with severe, severe emotional and psychological damage.
20:37And I've met Sean Ryan who lives near me here now. And you see all these people, what they're doing is insane. We need some soldiers who are so unhealthy that they will do things. They're going to be in constantly vigilant alert, but then when they try to reorient into society, it's almost impossible. And so that is not healthy. And God bless those people who do that. And I'm not a general in the army. Maybe a country needs people like that. It's just beyond me to think about pushing people that hard. So we have to ask ourselves, I think for me, it goes like this. Does God love me no matter what?
21:11Do I think I have to earn his love or does he love me for who I am? And if I know he loves me for who I am, then I can push myself and push myself. But if I think the love I receive in life is only predicated on me doing unnatural things over and over, that's not. So for me, it comes down to knowing the love of God. I got you. When you think about the working genius, and let's say you're learning it for the first time, what have you found when you follow up with people has been tougher, either to lean into your strengths or to let go of those tasks that drain them? I think it's harder for people to let go of the things that drain them because they've been told so often in life to focus on those things.
21:54And one of the biggest things people say is, should I work on my working frustrations? The two of the six that drain me of my energy, because working genius is all about what gives you joy and energy. Okay. And people say, should I try to get better at my working frustrations? The answer is no. Now, should you learn to tolerate the times when you have to do it well? Yeah. My working frustrations are enablement and tenacity. The most implementation oriented geniuses. Do you know how much parenting is involved in that? I have to change diapers. I have to clean the playroom. I have to drive my kids to their things.
22:29I have to get, we have to get the laundry done. We have to pay the bills. All of those things fall in my area of working frustration. My wife, my poor wife, because she's similar to me, for 20 years, she lived in her area of working frustration. And I would always say, hey, Laura, let's outsource as much of that as we can. We have to do enough, but she was doing so much of that. And I said, let's outsource it. And out of guilt and fear, she said, no, I should be able to do this because I have friends who are great at this. And that would mean I'm a failure as a mother if I didn't lean into this.
23:03And when The Working Genius came out five years ago, she read it and she had tears in her eyes. And she said, it's wonderful and I'm so pissed off. I said, why? And she goes, because I've been living in my working frustrations for a long time and I always thought I had to. So you know what you should do if you're working frustrations or I'm not good at laundry and paying the bills and all that? thing. Do as much as you can to outsource or to let other people help you. And then when you have to do things you're not great at, offer it up, try your best, and do not feel guilty that you're not awesome at it.
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23:34So when people come over our house and it's messier than other people's house, my wife and I need to go, hey, our house is a little bit of a mess. We don't love cleaning up, but we're going to have a great time tonight because we love entertaining, but we're not great at maintenance and just accept that and accept it in one another. My wife and I, so I tell a story. She used to hate me telling this story, but she's okay with it now because my wife is not a maintenance person. Neither am I. That's not why I married her. That's not why I fell in love with her. We had our power turned off once at our house and I came home from work and I'm like, Hey, the lights aren't on.
24:10I think the power got turned out in the neighborhood. And she goes, no, the powers. And I looked outside. Oh yeah. Everybody else has lights. I said, well, maybe the breaker switches needs to be flipped. She goes, nope, breakers are fine. I'm like, well, the lights aren't working. She goes, yeah, they turned off our power. And I was like, what do you mean they turned off our power? She goes, yeah, we didn't pay the bill. She was in charge of paying the bills. And I was like, but don't they send you a notice before they turn off the power? And she goes, oh yeah, they send you three notices. And they're around here someplace.
24:37I misplaced them. We laugh about it now because so many people listening to this who don't have our weaknesses are going to say that would never happen in my life. I would be mortified. I always pay the bills on time. We've never had. And my wife and I now go, yeah, God didn't make us great at that. We didn't do it on purpose. We can laugh about it. Other people are not good at things we're naturally good at, and they're going to have issues in their family and they're going to have to laugh about that. And we would go, oh yeah, that would never happen to us. We need to accept our deficiencies.
25:10And when we make a mistake, even when we're trying our best, we need to be okay with that. And that's hugely important. I want to talk about a team map, specifically our learning leader team of coaches team map, Pat. So, I mean, I might as well use this to get some free consulting, okay? Yeah. Here it is. The great Sherry Kimball did this for us. She's on this call as well. We went down the Bahamas and hung out and learned that we are all tenacious. Every single one of us on our team. Pat, when you have a team full of people who have tenacity as their number one thing, are we going to kill each other?
25:49What's going to happen? What do you think? Well, okay. So first of all, I should let people who are listening to this know when a team takes working genius, which takes all of 12 minutes to fill out the assessment, you can hit a button and it'll print out your team map. So it'll show you based on each of the six types of working genius, which ones your team has or lacks. And it's so amazing. So your team has everyone with the genius. God gave them the joy and the energy around getting things done, finishing things, right? So neither my wife nor I have it. It's a working frustration in my family.
26:27So your team loves finishing things. Congratulations. That's awesome. Now tell me though, are there any areas on your team where you don't have any genius? Yeah. Wonder, invention. Okay. I love this. That's good. Wonder and invention is ideation. And I worked with a tech firm where the executive team had no one with those things. They hadn't had a new product, like a brand. They hadn't invented a new product in years. Now they were awesome at using the stuff they had. and they made money and they did this, but they were always worried because they didn't have any future new products because they were so good at finishing things and organizing things and getting things done that they didn't like to step back and brainstorm and imagine and ask open-ended questions without answers.
27:15And in fact, those kinds of meetings were anathema to them. They're like, oh, we hate those meetings. They're such a waste of time. Let's go figure out our plan. man, they realized if we're ever going to come up with a new idea, we need to. And they actually moved somebody from their legal department into technology because he had invention. He was a lawyer. And they said, we want you to take over the technology stuff. And he goes, but I'm a lawyer. And they go, it doesn't matter. You have a genius in that area. So in your case, what you guys need to do, you will never be flaky. Your team will never be flaky.
27:50You will never worry about somebody just like forgetting to do something or not following through. And when you go to a meeting and somebody says, I will do this, they are going to do it. Love it. Love it. However, what they might do though, is stick to something that needs to be changed a little longer than it should be. And they might not notice like, Ooh, maybe we shouldn't keep on doing this plan because the landscape has changed. Now, in my case, in my organization, organization, we are always open to a change of plan, but sometimes following through and taking things to the end is not what we do.
28:25So we're just going to have a different set of challenges. Okay. Now, how many people on your team? It's a team of four, right? We have between Eli, Brooke, Garen, and Sherry. I'm looking at our team app right now. We have discernment, galvanizing, enablement, and tenacity. There are working geniuses of that. Yes, Yes, we do have that. That's great. And so the thing you need to do is force yourself either by borrowing from others outside the organization. This is where when people say, should we have a consultant? Well, it's like, well, are they going to bring a skillset into a meeting that we don't have?
28:57If so, you might do that. You might borrow somebody. One of your spouses might be really good at wonder and invention. And you might go - Our spouses are on here too. Yeah, my wife - Oh, that's so great. My wife has invention and Eli's wife has wonder and Sherry's husband has wonder. See, so what you need to do is say, hey, and this is one of those weird things. They say, well, why would you have them come in? It's like, because they have God-given gifts that we don't have. And create a space for them to ask questions and say, have you guys ever thought about this? Is this really the best way to do it?
29:29And you guys have to sit on your hands because you like to get things done and just go, we are going to allow them. That's not happening. Yeah. I'm kidding. Go ahead, sorry. my wife has wonder and invention and she is constantly saying, what about this? What about this? And it really helps me. I love it. But I'd like to do that too. So anyway. I love it. I want to open it up to the group for questions. I actually want to start with Brooke because I know five dysfunctions has been a big part of Brooke as a basketball coach as well. In addition to doing this stuff he does with us. And I know he's used five dysfunctions for many years in the sporting world.
30:08Brooke, do you want to talk to Pat about how to implement it even more with your guys? Pat, long-time listener, first-time caller, man. Big fan. Big fan. I'll be gentle, Brooke. I'll be gentle. Yeah, thanks. We've been using the five dysfunctions for about, I don't know, probably 15 years with my high school basketball teams. I love it. With high school kids, it's hard to get them to understand the business aspect of things. Oh, yeah. Like all the different roles. So I actually started trying to rewrite it in a sports as a team model. But is there anything specific you would either alter or really try to emphasize in applying it to sports teams?
30:46Yeah, you know, I love that you asked this question. I couldn't believe it. Eric Spolstra uses this all the time. And he said he first purchased the book when they acquired LeBron at the Heat. And he said, oh, this is going to change things. I need to figure out how to manage a team and stuff. And they use it within the organization. And I've had some of my consultants work with him. And he said every year in the summer, they get together. And he says, I don't know what offense we're going to run this year, but I know we're going to use the five dysfunctions of a team, which I love. And so many coaches have used it over time.
31:17And I've worked with a lot of teams. So it's great that you're doing this. First of all, you should adapt it for what works on your team, but there's Something about that trust, when you get players on a team and remember it's vulnerability based trust. And you know what I love? And I love it in basketball, especially because you see them on the court. When a player is willing to go, my bad, I didn't switch and my guy scored or I wasn't in the right position. You know what I mean? When people can be so vulnerable that they can say it was my fault or I need help, or I don't know how to do this, or can you help me do this?
31:51or I'm sorry, I was kind of a jerk yesterday at practice. When people on a team can be that vulnerable with each other, it changes everything. But when you have a player on your team who doesn't admit when they made a mistake or who blames everybody else and doesn't take on responsibility, the ceiling of that team being great is so low. So I think vulnerability is a great thing. But you know what's interesting is humble, hungry, smart is one of the things that I've done with teams with athletes in college, in middle school, in high school, and all my kids who were, I have one left who plays college lacrosse, and his coach is going to have me come talk to them in the winter.
32:29What I like to do with these kids is I like to say humble, hungry, and smart. And I define it, you know, it's like no ego. It's about the team. It's not about me. That's humble. Hungry means I go above and beyond. If the coach tells me to do something, I don't just do the minimum. I go beyond. And smart means I have emotional intelligence. I'm not a jerk to the people on my team. I know how to deal with them. I have the team members say, which of those three is your lowest? It doesn't mean you're terrible at that. Just give me your lowest of the three. And it is crazy how people will call out.
33:01Like, I remember working with these kids on a lacrosse team. They were young. The goalie said, I'm not smart. I yell at guys on the field and I demean them. And when they make a mistake, I'll be like, you know, and they'll just scream at, he goes, it's not smart. It doesn't help the team. I got to get better. Another kid, my son on the team at that time said, I need to be hungrier. I don't do the workouts at home. The coach says, I need to do this. I need to go home and throw more. And another kid said, I'm not humble. I really want to score. And when I do score, I like the attention. I'm going to admit it.
33:33And I need to be more into the kid who threw the assist or the guys on defense. It's amazing what people will say. and then what I do is I say, okay, everybody, look around at your teammates and think about the thing they wanna get better at. Every one of you, if you wanna be a good teammate, when you see your teammate doing the thing he just admitted he wants to get better at, you need to call him out on it. You need to go to them and say, hey, you know how you said you're tough on people? I think you did it again. Hey, you know how you said you don't do your workouts? I saw you mail it in at the end of the practice.
34:04Hey, you know that humility thing? I don't think you're appreciating the guys getting the rebounds or the guys assisting you or the defense who's stopping. Once people start to have that language, it's amazing how they're coaching each other in being a better team. And everybody is much more vulnerable. And as a coach yourself, I think you should tell people when I was a player, this was mine. I needed to be better. They're going to go, Hey, if coach admitted that I'll do it too. So anyway, that's a long answer to a short question. And that builds trust because now everybody on the team said, I know I'm not great at everything and I'll admit when I'm wrong.
34:43Awesome. Thank you. Oh yeah. That's so cool. Leaders going first. So Sherry Kimball, I'm going to tee you up and I want you to ask next, but I just want to tell Pat. So Sherry Kimball, working genius certified ran us through this process and it was a super enlightening. We had multiple meetings to talk through it and I think it's been very, very helpful, but Sherry, go ahead and fire away with your question to pass. Well, and I want to say something before Sherry asked two things. One, you got certified. That's fantastic. It's a two-day process online and it's really fun to go in there and work with other people and learn how to do this.
35:16Now, this is Sherry, the basketball coach. Am I right? No, there's two Sherry's. Oh, okay. Cause I wanted to say one thing about basketball. You can do that. You can go ahead. So that's Sherry Cole too. So there's three different Sherry's go ahead to spell differently, but go ahead. Yeah. Basketball is such the ultimate team sport. Cause when we talk about teamwork, we talk about the difference between a golf team and a basketball team. Cause on a golf team, everybody plays, they add up their scores at the end, but basketball, everybody has to do, whether you're a center of guard or a, or a forward, everybody has to be interchangeable.
35:46And so I think basketball, when I work with businesses, I explained that you need to be a basketball team. So I love the fact that we have two basketball coaches on here. Yeah. But Sherry, you're certified in this. So you know, this as well as I do. Hi, Pat. And I'm not near as exciting as Sherry Cole, but I do love the working team. So yes, that's me. So we do a lot of these trainings with our teams. It's been a great experience. My question for you is for leaders with enablement or tenacity as top geniuses, how do they avoid burnout? I get this question a lot, and I'm just very curious to hear what you have to say.
36:21The first thing you have to say is I am prone to burnout. If you guys aren't aware of what's going on, because the people with enablement and tenacity will say, I'll just do it. And then they do. And whenever I'm on a team, we've had a team before at the table group, we had 12 employees and only one had tenacity. And we said, we are going to kill her. Cause every time we have to get something done, we're going to say, Jackie will finish. And Jackie was the kind of person would go, yeah, I'll do it. And then you're going to, you kill her. And so when people have enablement and tenacity, they and everybody else need to say, let's not abuse them.
36:56Let's not abuse them. And then there's others like this whole tool came about because I was the only person on my team for 20 years that had galvanizing. And I don't really like galvanizing. I don't mind doing it once or twice, but every day having to remind people. And I was getting burned out in a company where I loved what I did and I love the people with me, but I was getting dragged into something that wasn't a genius of mine. So that's how we actually discovered this whole thing. So we need to make sure people aren't burned out either by doing what they don't like to do or getting abused and doing what they do like to do and overusing that.
37:33Thanks, Pat. Yeah. Sure. Good stuff. Liam Murray had, I thought, a really insightful question. Go ahead, Liam. Yeah. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Pat. So part of my job is to go into one of our operational sites. We have 30 or so around the country. And when we do the assessments of how that operation is performing, we always start with the financials. I've learned the hard way over the last decade and a half or so that financials can look any way the manager wants them to look. So - Wow. Isn't that true? It is. Yeah. So my question is, when I'm going into an operation, maybe only at 48 hours or so to spend with a team, are there any non-financial KPIs that you would look at to know is this organization?
38:14Is this team performing well? The first thing I like to do, I'm a qualitative guy. I believe in quantitative stuff, but quantitative is to inform qualitative decisions. And like Sherry, the basketball coach and Brooke, the basketball coach knows that you can go look at the stats of a game. You don't know like the intangibles and the hustle and what's going on and the attitude and how people are acting. So the first thing I like to do is when I go into a company is find out what their meetings are like. And if people are going to meetings and they're not disagreeing with one another and they're not going to that next level and they're not pushing and they're not exhausted at the end of a meeting, that's to me a problem.
38:50It's kind of like a basketball coach going, I go to practice and nobody seems to be going that hard. Are you really going to look at the stats? You know what's going to happen in the game. So you said KPI. I would probably, if I had to, and this is longer term, I think if good people are leaving an organization, that's a massive red flag. If any good people are leaving an organization, that's like something that needs to be addressed. Most of the other pre-revenue, pre-data KPIs are probably behavioral. I like walking around in an organization and just seeing how people are interacting in the hallways.
39:27Are they talking a lot? Are they working on stuff together? Is there an intensity? Or are they sitting alone in their cubes and not interacting with one another? So most of mine are actually qualitative and observable, not quantitative. Thank you. Maybe customer feedback though. I would probably look at that. Frustrated customers are a pretty good leading indicator. All right. I got an ideal team player question from Garen Stokes. This is around humility, something that we've had conversations with when studying excellent performers, whether it's in business, sports, life in general. Garen, go ahead.
40:03yeah we talk about it the definition like not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less the high level achievers performers are super like self-improvement driven and it almost leads them down like a they're super humble because they want to get better but they're also like super focused on themselves yeah you know humility it's so important to understand the humility thing because on the one hand we think of humility as just outright arrogance, hockey players. And now granted, and we've seen these in sports and it's fun to talk about them, but it's easy. But the other end is the ones that don't actually lean into the confidence they have.
40:43They doubt themselves and they're, they're overly deferential or unhealthily modest because a great player wants the ball in their hands. They don't demand it because of their ego, but they know that like, if I'm good at this and I can help the team, I will step up and do that. Not like, oh, you do that. And I've, in my career, I violated humility by not shooting enough in basketball because the idea that people would think I was hogging the ball made me want to pass all the time. And it was like, hey, you could help the team by shooting more. And it was hard for me to do it. That was a violation of humility because I was a good shooter, you see.
41:19But the real thing here is that focus on the team versus on me individually. Because some players who seem really confident, I don't think Michael Jordan cared about whether he was the hero. He just wanted to win. Now he had some other issues, I think. So he just wanted the team to win. And if somebody else helped the team win, he would let them. There's other players that will say, you know, as long as I look good and I make the Pro Bowl or I make the all-star team And I see this in high school, college, and the pros. There are people whose results are less important than their own personal reflection.
42:00And you see it in business all the time. I first identified humility as a problem when I saw a CEO before I started my own company, this was 30 years ago, who actually didn't care about the results of his company. It was a public company. But if he went on television and they asked him questions about why they didn't make their numbers, and he was funny, and people thought he did a good job, he was actually in a good mood. So it wasn't actually results he cared about. It was about his own ego. And I thought, oh my gosh, if the leader of a public company getting called on not making his numbers is happy as long as people think he was funny and cool, then lots of people will choose themselves.
42:40I played basketball. There were kids that would go over and if we lost, they just checked their stats and they were happy if they got their numbers. And that's bad. I hope that answers the question. When you're looking at hiring, Pat, whether it's at your company or maybe you're helping other senior leaders or super powerful people I know that ask for your help. Humble, hungry, and smart, I realize those are the ideal team player attributes. But talking specifically for leadership roles, what are additional specific attributes that are must-haves in those people to get hired? You know what's interesting?
43:14I think that the single most important thing for... Are you saying for leaders? Yes. So this was long before that book came out. Years ago, I wrote something. I still believe this to be true. And it really falls under a little bit of Humble, Hungry, Smart, but it came 15 years before that book. And it was a leader has to simultaneously believe that they are no more important than the people they lead. In other words, they have to say, that person that I manage, whether it's one of my vice presidents or whether it's the person who cleans the offices at night or anywhere in between, I am not more important.
43:44They are a child of God and I am a human being just like them. So I am not more important than them. On the other hand, though, they have to accept the fact that their behaviors are actually more important. In other words, the things they do have an outsized impact on the rest of the organization and the people in it. And that's a really hard thing to balance. I worked with a CEO once who didn't think he was more important than the people in the organization. I love that kind of deep humility. So he would be shy to stand up and motivate people and to take a stand. And he would say to me, what does it matter what I think?
44:19I'm just another person here. And I'm like, no, you're the leader. But he was like, if I'm not more important than them, then why do people care what I think? Which was crazy. It's a big company. Then there's other leaders who go, wow, look at when I get up and give a talk, people really listen to me and it really makes a difference. I must be pretty important. So this idea of knowing that I'm not inherently more important, but my words and actions are is a really hard thing. I wrote an article 27 years ago called The Trouble with Humility. And it gets at, if you can't balance those two things, it's hard to be a great leader.
44:53Yeah. Actually, Garen and I were just talking about this recently. If you're the CEO and you stand up in front of your group and it feels like it's kind of a group project, at some point, you got to be the CEO. No doubt. You got to make the call. You got to, okay, Like I'm not no important than anybody else, but my words carry weight and they're looking for somebody, me as the CEO, they're looking for me to be the CEO and you got to be the CEO. So I think all of us as leaders have to realize, even if this is a group of very humble people, that it's not necessarily a group project. Go do what you're supposed to do.
45:32And one of the biggest things a leader has to do is break the tie. Yes. There's so many times when there's no right answer and you sit in the meeting and go, okay, you guys, what do you think? And it's like, I want A, I want B, I want C, I want A, I want A, I want B. And you're sitting there going, there's no obvious answer. You have to go, I think it's B. We're going with B. I listened to what you had to say, but as the leader, I'm making the call. And I'm going to require everyone in this room to get behind this. That is not a violation of humility. And if a leader can't do that, that's a problem.
46:06How does that work at the table group? It's so interesting. I was in a meeting on Friday. I can't believe that you're asking me this right now. And I was in a meeting and I was trying to deal with a strategic and personnel issue between two great people. And I said, I dropped the curse word in the middle of it. I said, listen, I'm pulling the CEO card right now. I don't do it all that often, but since I am the CEO, I'm going to say this, what you guys are talking about, this is the thing we have to work on. And I know that you're not quite in agreement, but I'm sitting here listening. You've got to have to trust me.
46:35This is where we're going with this and you have to own this and you have to own this. And because I don't pull it every time, I will defer sometimes and go, Hey, if you guys all think that I can understand that I'll go with that. But sometimes I have to pull that out and go, I need this. And people are glad to have a CEO that will do that. Now, if they're, if you're doing it every time, it's like, you all disagree with me, but you're going to do it my way. Then you lose credibility, but they know that I don't use it that often, but they want me to be able to whenever it's necessary. What was the curse word?
47:05Yeah, it was the bad one. Oh, I don't know what that is. Effing. Sometimes you got to do it though, right? Like sometimes, it's just like parenting. If you're nagging every single day, day after day, they don't hear you anymore, right? It just, ah. But if you every once in a while pull the effing CEO card, then they'll listen, right? You know, it's interesting because I have, I would like to never swear because I believe that's good. but one of my favorite evangelists, this guy who I, I, he's a friend of mine. And I listened to him. He told me one day I dropped the F bomb in front of my kids in the minivan.
47:42They were making me mad. And I was like, Oh, thank God. I'm not, I'm not, you're human. And I don't do it on purpose. Like, you know, these politicians now go on the radio and like, I'm going to drop the F bomb. But every once in a while you slip and you can go, Hey, I'm sorry. I got so mad, but people know, No, I could see that you were... So I'm not promoting this, but sometimes we have to... We're human and it's our emotions that come out. And so, yeah, I've done it. I'm trying to do it less. I appreciate it. One more before we run, man. I like to think about the future and specifically people who are going to be our leaders of the future.
48:19And let's say you're meeting with one of those people. So maybe they just graduated college or they're in their mid-20s or something, maybe like your kids, and they want to leave a positive dent in the world. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them? So I wrote a book called The Motive, which came out the day before COVID happened. So it didn't get the best advertising, but leaders are coming to me and saying, many of them really love that book. Because what I say to leaders, when they're young, especially, because when I go to graduation, people go, go be a leader, go out there and change the world.
48:52I want to say, no, don't do that. Because if you don't know why you want to be a leader, you shouldn't be a leader. So what I want to say to people is make sure that your motive for being a leader is about sacrificing and suffering for others. Like I want to help this organization or I want to be the kind of person that takes on more than others for their good. Leadership is a lonely and selfless thing. It's wonderful, but the personal economics of leadership are not good. And if you don't sign up for that, don't be a leader. because too many people say, I want to be a leader. And if you really scratch below the surface, they'll say, well, I think that it would make me, I'd feel important.
49:32I would get a lot of attention. Maybe I'd make money, I'd have power, I'd be wealthy and all those things. But more often than not, it's like, I get to be important and control what I work on. I get to go to the office and do whatever I feel like. And when that's your motive to being a leader, which is called your personal economics, you're not going to be a great leader. And you know something, Ryan, so many people have read that book and said, oh no, I lost my way. Because I lost my way. I got to a point at one time where I'd come to the office and go, I want to avoid the things that I don't feel like doing and work on the things that I think are interesting to me.
50:04And it's like, no, no, no. I'm the leader. I have to make sure that everything gets done. Doesn't mean it's my genius, but I have to take responsibility for that. And I lost my way. So the thing I want to say about the future is we need less leaders who are personally motivated and more leaders who are other motivated. And that means they're willing to suffer. So good, man. Matt had let me know that if you go to workinggenius.com and you put in the code learning. So workinggenius.com, put in the code learning to get your working genius, you get 20 % off. You want to make sure that I said that for you guys.
50:40Yeah, we've personally gone through this. I've taken this assessment multiple times. You and I have talked about it multiple times. I'm a big believer in it. and I'm super appreciative of you, man. Thanks. For being there many times off air just as much, which you certainly don't have to do, and I'm super grateful for your mentorship and friendship and guidance and doing it, whether it's public or not, and I think that shows just true character, so I appreciate you, man. I love you, and I'm grateful that you got a chance to hang out with us today. This was a lot of fun, man. Thanks. I'm proud of what you've done.
51:07You and your team are wonderful, so it's been a pleasure.
51:14it is the end of the podcast club thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club if you are send me a note ryan at learning leader.com let me know where you learned this great conversation with pat linchoni also you heard members of my learning leader team of coaches both Garen Stokes and Brooke Cupps ask questions. Brooke, Sherry, Garen, and Eli and I are helping leaders become more effective for their teams. And if you'd like to talk more about working with us, you can send me a note, ryan at learningleader.com. Would love to talk to you more about that. Now, on to tonight's featured leader, Pat Lencioni, and a few takeaways from my notes.
52:01motive for leading. Before you pursue a leadership role, ask yourself one question. Am I signing up to sacrifice and suffer for the good of others or am I signing up because all feel important and get to choose what I work on? If it's the second one, don't become a leader. The role demands that you believe you are no more important than anyone on your team while simultaneously accepting that your words and actions carry more weight than anyone else's. it is a very hard tension to hold, and it only works if your motive is right. Then how about Eric Spolstra, head coach of the Heat? He uses the five dysfunctions of a team.
52:40And when he got LeBron James, he said he didn't know what the offense they'd run, but he knew they would use the model. Here is why it works. When a player says, ah, my bad, to his teammates, everything changes. But when one player will not take responsibility, the ceiling of that team lowers. Vulnerability, it's not soft. It actually is the foundation. And then be the leader. Pat rarely overrides his team. But last week, just last week, he said, I'm pulling the CEO card. This is what we're going to do. This is how we're moving forward. Because he doesn't do it, often people respected it. They listened.
53:20But if you pull that card constantly, you lose credibility. If you never pull it, though, you're not leading. So the leader's job is to break the tie when it matters and step up and lead. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Pat Lencioni. I think it'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, rate it hopefully five stars, and keep telling your friends because you do that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.
53:55And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.
From the publisher
Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes
The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver.
My Guest: Patrick Lencioni is the founder of The Table Group and a bestselling author of 14 books, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The 6 Types of Working Genius. Behind his achievements (valedictorian, straight A's, business success) were childhood wounds that drove him to prove himself.
Key Learnings
"I think I'm really good at anticipating people's objections." I think about what they might be thinking and what I need to put out there. Whether talking interpersonally, giving a speech, writing a book, or on a podcast, I like to think about what the other person might be objecting to.
Lean into empathy. I always felt like I needed to prove myself in order to be successful and to feel safe. That's not healthy.
"When people tell you they got straight A's and were the valedictorian, the student body president, and got accepted to all the schools they wanted to get into, there's a wound there." Based on my personality type, I shouldn't have done all those things, but it was out of the need to prove myself. Which wasn't healthy for me. My parents had a hard time being affirming because of their own lives.
It wasn't until I was 55 years old that a friend who's a psychologist said, "You, my friend, have childhood wounds you've never dealt with." I got good Christian counseling and realized that the way I grew up, I wasn't supposed to grow up that way.
It's common in athletes & CEOs to feel like they haven't done enough. They need to do more. "You're a noun, not a verb. You are enough, and you're not defined by what you do."
Great achievements come out of fear, but "true greatness is best when it's only in the things that you're meant to be great at, and that you're doing it out of freedom and passion and love, not out of fear of failure." I remember seeing Tiger Woods on the Tonight Show when he was four years old. He was being groomed to be a golfer when he was four. It's best in life when we discover who God means us to be, then we do the things we're supposed to do and we're okay with not being good at the things we're not supposed to.
Are we too affirming now as parents? People who are pretty darn good at everything it's usually because they're doing something out of fear. When I was a kid, my parents came from World War II and the Depression. It was like, hey, you got a roof over your head. There was a lot of suffering, and they weren't really attuned to that. Now we are hyper worried of our own kids suffering. No, suffering is actually good. They need to know they're loved and safe, but they're not gonna be protected from what is necessary for their development. The mistake I made was, oh no, I don't want them to feel like I did. Thankfully at my age, I'm now interacting with my mostly adult children and explaining to them what I did wrong.
The Teammate Trifecta - How should we use it?: When I wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team right after 9/11, I thought, "That's the book on teamwork." Then we realized you need The Ideal Team Player (humble, hungry, and smart) to hire people that fit on teams. Years later, we came up with Working Genius: Are they in the right seat?
3 steps to building a team: Don't let people on the bus if they're not humble, hungry, and smart. Make sure you have them in the right chair based on their gifts. Then teach them the Five Dysfunctions.
Pat's Two Working Geniuses: Invention and Discernment
"Invention means I love to come up with ideas out of nothing. Discernment means I love evaluating things, curating things. God wired me to do that kind of thing."
When people say, "Pat, we have five minutes, and we need a new idea," I just take a deep breath and smile. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
Every new idea I've come up with has been in the field, working with people. I asked Jim Collins, "Jim, you do all this research with data. I go into a room with leaders and just think, What's going on here?" He said, "Pat, that's just as valid as what I do. That's called field research and face validity."
What is Pat terrible at? Finishing things. People say, "Well you finished 14 books." And that's because I had the help of others to make me finish those.
I got a 4.0 in high school. That wasn't my personality. I went to every class in college, never blew off classes. My personality is the kind that should blow off classes that don't matter. But I was so afraid of failing and disappointing my parents and teachers that I did anything they asked. That was not natural; that was fear-based.
Can we use fear as useful fuel? "You can use it in the short term, but if you're doing it in your life, no."
"We should celebrate what other people are better than we are at things. We should literally celebrate what we suck at." If we have two kids and one's creative and the other's disciplined, we tell the creative one to be more disciplined and the disciplined one to be more creative. No. We have to say, understanding that you're not creative is good for you. That's not who you're meant to be. The hardest thing about being a parent is constantly asking yourself, "Am I pushing them too hard or not enough?"
The hardest question you ask yourself as a parent is, "Am I pushing my kids too hard or not hard enough?" This question also applies to yourself.
In Working Genius, should I work on my working frustrations? The short answer is no.
Working Genius is all about knowing what you love to do. Enablement and Tenacity are my working frustrations, and so many of those things fall into parenting. I'd say to my wife, "Hey, Laura, let's outsource some of these things." Out of fear and guilt, she said no because she felt like she'd be a bad mother. Outsource the work you don't enjoy, and when you have to do it, try your best and don't feel guilty with the result.
The electrical company turned off our power for not paying the bill. We need to accept our deficiencies and need to be able to laugh at the things we're not good at.
Ryan's Learning Leader Team: When your whole team has Tenacity as their working genius, your team loves to finish things. You will never be flaky. You might stick to something that needs to be changed way before it needs to be. In my company, we're always up for a change in plans, but not great at following through. If your team doesn't have Wonder and Invention, force yourself to borrow from others outside the organization to get new ideas.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Vulnerability-based trust changes everything in teams. Eric Spoelstra uses Five Dysfunctions with the Miami Heat. He started when they acquired LeBron James. He said, "I don't know what offense we're gonna run this year, but I know we're gonna use the Five Dysfunctions."
I love it in basketball, especially because you see them on the court. When people can be so vulnerable that they can say it was my fault, or I need help, or I'm sorry I was kind of a jerk yesterday at practice, it changes everything. But when you have a player who doesn't admit when they made a mistake or who blames everybody else, the ceiling of that team being great is so low.
Humble, Hungry, Smart has been a great tool for athletic teams. I define it: no ego, it's about the team (humble). Hungry means I go above and beyond. Smart means I have emotional intelligence. I have the team members say, "Which of those three is your lowest?" It is crazy how people will call out. The goalie said, "I'm not smart. I yell at guys on the field, and I demean them. I gotta get better." Another kid said, "I need to be hungrier. I don't do the workouts at home."
Pat phrases it this way when meeting with athletic teams. "Okay, everybody, look around at your teammates and think about the thing they want to get better at. If you want to be a good teammate, when you see your teammate doing the thing he just admitted he wants to get better at, you need to call him out on it."
Once people start to have that language, it's amazing how they're coaching each other. And if as a coach yourself, I think you should tell people, "When I was a player, this was mine." They're gonna go, hey, if the coach admits that, I'll do it too.
For leaders with Enablement & Tenacity as top geniuses, how do they avoid burnout?
You have to be willing to start with "I am prone to burnout if you guys aren't aware of what's going on." The people with enablement and tenacity will say, "I'll just do it," and then they do. We had 12 employees and only one had Tenacity. We said we are going to kill her because every time we have to get something done, we're gonna say, "Jackie will finish." When people have enablement and tenacity, they and everybody else need to say, let's not abuse them.
How do we assess a company in a short amount of time without focusing on their financials?
When I go into a company, I find out what their meetings are like. If there's no disagreement and they're not exhausted at the end of a meeting, that's a red flag. If good people are leaving an organization, that's a massive red flag. I like going around and checking interactions. Is there an intensity with people together? Or are they alone and quiet? Also, keep an eye on customer reviews. What are the customers saying?
There are two extremes of humility problems: arrogance on one end, and lack of confidence on the other. I first identified humility as a problem when I saw a CEO who didn't care about his company's results, but if he went on TV and answered questions about why they didn't meet their numbers, he would make jokes and make others laugh. If he was happy from that versus getting the results they needed, that's an issue.
What specific traits do leaders need to have to get hired? A leader has to simultaneously believe they are no more important than the people they lead. They also have to accept the fact that their behaviors and words ARE more important than others in the company.
"The one thing the leader has to do is break the tie."
This past Friday, I was in a meeting trying to deal with a strategic issue between two great people. I dropped a curse word and said, "Listen, I'm pulling the CEO card right now. I don't do it all that often, but since I am the CEO, this is where we're going." Because I don't pull it every time, people are glad to have a CEO that will do that. If you're doing it every time, you lose credibility.
Advice for young professionals: I wrote a book called The Motive, and what I say to leaders when they're young is: make sure your motive for being a leader is about sacrificing and suffering for others.
"I want to help this organization, or I want to be the kind of person that takes on more than others for their good." Leadership is a lonely and selfless thing. It's wonderful, but the personal economics of leadership are not good. If you don't sign up for that, don't be a leader. Too many people say, I want to be a leader. And if you really scratch below the surface, they'll say, I think it would make me feel important, I'd get attention, maybe I'd make money, I'd have power. When that's your motive for being a leader, you're not gonna be a great leader.
Reflection Questions- Pat says people who were perfect students (straight A's, valedictorian, student body president) often have childhood wounds driving them. What in your past might be driving your current achievements? Are you operating from freedom and passion, or from fear and the need to prove yourself?
- He teaches his kids' sports teams to identify which of Humble, Hungry, or Smart is their lowest, then hold each other accountable when they see teammates struggling with that area. What would you identify as your lowest, and who in your life could you invite to call you out when you're not living up to it?
- Pat says the motive for leadership should be "sacrificing and suffering for others," not feeling important or controlling what you work on. If you're honest about why you want to lead (or why you currently lead), what's really driving you? Would people who report to you say you're other-motivated or personally motivated?