Book Short – Another Must-Read by Lencioni The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues (hardcover,kindle is Patrick Lencioni’s latest and greatest. It’s not my favorite of his, which is still The Advantage (post,buy ), but it’s pretty good and well worth a read. It builds on his model for accountability in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (post,buy)and brings it back to “how can you spot or develop and a good team player?” The central thesis of the book is that great team players have three attributes – hungry, humble, and people-smart. While I can’t disagree with those three things, as with all consultants’ frameworks, I sound two cautionary notes: (1) they aren’t the absolute truth,…
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Patrick Lencioni
Book Short: Like Reading a Good Speech
Book Short: Like Reading a Good Speech Leaders Eat Last, by Simon Sinek, is a self-described “polemic” that reads like some of the author’s famous TED talks and other speeches in that it’s punchy, full of interesting stories, has some attempted basis in scientific fact like Gladwell, and wanders around a bit. That said, I enjoyed the book, and it hit on a number of themes in which I am a big believer – and it extended and shaped my view on a couple of them. Sinek’s central concept in the book is the Circle of Safety, which is his way of saying that when people feel safe, they are at their best and healthiest. Applied to workplaces, this isn’t…
Book Short: Alignment Well Defined
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business is Patrick Lencioni’s newest book. Unlike most or all of his other books (see the end of this post for the listing), this one is not a fable, although his writing style remains very quick and accessible. I liked this book a lot. First, the beginning section is a bit of a recap of his Five Dysfunctions of a Team which I think was his best book. And the ending section is a recap of his Death by Meeting, another really good one. The middle sections of the book are just a great reminder of the basic building blocks of creating and communicating strategy and values – about driving alignment….
Book Short: Bringing it on Home
Book Short: Bringing it on Home Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors wasn’t Patrick Lencion’s best book, but it wasn’t bad, either. I think all six of his books are well worth a read (list at the bottom of the post). And in fact, they really belong in two categories. The Three Signs of a Miserable Job (post, link), The Five Temptations of a CEO (post, link), and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (post, link) are all related around the topic of management. Death by Meeting (post, link), The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (post, link), and Silos, Politics and Turf Wars, on the other hand, are…
Book Short: Wither the Team
Book Short: Wither the Team I keep expecting one of his books to be repetitive or boring, but Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team held my interest all the way through, as did his others. It builds nicely on the last one I read, Death by Meeting (post, link). I’d say that over the 9 1/2 years we’ve been in business at Return Path, we’ve systematically improved the quality of our management team. Sometimes that’s because we’ve added or changed people, but mostly it’s because we’ve been deliberate about improving the way in which we work together. This particular book has a nice framework for spotting troubles on a team, and it both reassured me that we have done…
Book Short: The Joys of Slinging Hash
Book Short: The Joys of Slinging Hash Patrick Lencioni’s The Three Signs of a Miserable Job is a good read, as were his last two books, The Five Temptations of a CEO (post, link), and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (post, link). They’re all super short, easy reads (four express train rides on Metro North got the job done), with a single simple message and great examples. This one is probably my second favorite so far. This book, which has a downright dreary title, is great. It points to and proposes a solution to a problem I’ve thought about for a long time, which is how do you create meaning for people in their day to day work…
Book Short: The Anti-Level-5 Leader
Book Short: The Anti-Level-5 Leader The Five Temptations of a CEO, another short leadership fable in a series by Patrick Lencioni, wasn’t as meaningful to me as the last one I read, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (post, link), but it wasn’t bad and was also a quick read. The book to me was the 30 minute version of all the Level-5 Leadership stuff that Collins wrote about in Good to Great and Built to Last. All that said, it was a good quick read and a reminder of what not to do. The temptations are things that most CEOs I’ve ever known (present company very much included) have at least succumbed to at one point or another…