Ever wonder why some teams flourish while others flounder? It all comes down to three virtues: Humility, Hunger, and Smart. Today we're digging into what makes an ideal team player, and trust us, it’s more than just having these attributes. It’s about striking the right balance. We share insights on how to distinguish between the right kind of hunger and smarts and the pitfalls companies encounter when they pay mere lip service to these team virtues.
Our discussion doesn't stop there. We emphasize the role accountability plays in fostering a culture that encourages growth and development. We divulge how a lack of accountability can lead to a culture of inaction and excuses. Finally, we delve into applying these virtues in personal and professional development, creating an environment conducive to success. So tune in, take notes, and let's transform the way you view team dynamics.
Ever wonder why some teams flourish while others flounder? It all comes down to three virtues: Humility, Hunger, and Smart. Today we're digging into what makes an ideal team player, and trust us, it’s more than just having these attributes. It’s about striking the right balance. We share insights on how to distinguish between the right kind of hunger and smarts and the pitfalls companies encounter when they pay mere lip service to these team virtues.
Our discussion doesn't stop there. We emphasize the role accountability plays in fostering a culture that encourages growth and development. We divulge how a lack of accountability can lead to a culture of inaction and excuses. Finally, we delve into applying these virtues in personal and professional development, creating an environment conducive to success. So tune in, take notes, and let's transform the way you view team dynamics.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, and you are listening to our special 8 episode mini series on our team interview for the ideal team player. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2:
I agree. I also really appreciated the fact that in each one of those virtues there's an offset. So it's with humble. It's humility is essentially the underlying piece of it, but it can go too far. So if you don't have confidence, if you don't have some of those things, that's also problematic because then it's just going the opposite way In every single virtue. It talked to what the opposite? And that it can go to a bad degree, and I really liked how they went through that.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I think I love your point, jess, about the alternative, or what to watch for, is the way I looked at it. You can't take it to the extreme and just say I want the hungriest, humblest, smartest person, without watching for, like we mentioned, the politician right, the two smart or smart in the wrong way, not even too smart, right, just smart in the wrong way, like manipulative. Okay, I'm going to say everything everyone wants me to say, just to push my narrative or push my advancement. And hunger, right. Hunger is a big one, because if the hunger is self-interest and that's all you care about is I'm going to push, I'm going to do everything, I'm going to be the first one raising my hand.
Speaker 3:
But if it's not for the betterment of the company or the team or the initiative, if it's just for yourself to then raise your hand and this one rings very true to me, because I did come from the consulting world and that's what you saw 90% of the time, if not more, is everyone super hungry. You have to be hungry to be a consultant, because that's just the arena you're in. You will be gone very quickly if you're not hungry. But it was a lot of the wrong hunger, because everyone would raise their hand and say I did this, this was me, this was my idea, this was my deck, my presentation, everything. And there was never any credit to the team that did nothing for the clients that we'd work on. So that one I'm very in tune with, because you have to have the right hunger. That's huge, or you're not going to do anything productive for the company overall in the long run.
Speaker 1:
Dave, you have the background as a consultant too, and one of the one of the opposites I talked about would be really interesting. Get your perspective on this. But I think I think the main character's name was Jeffrey, right, jeff? So Jeff, jeff, it comes in as a consultant originally to do like leadership or team building stuff, and then he exits and then eventually Bob comes to him and is like hey, I'm going to recruit you to essentially run the company for me.
Speaker 1:
And he comes in and he sees the posters on the walls and everything from everything he's talking about, but none of the employees are actually like embodying any of the training. It's like we do this training and we learn all about what it means to be humble, hungry and smart and that kind of stuff or whatever training they did, but then, like, the action doesn't carry through, and so I thought it was very interesting. All right, I thought you'd probably have an interesting perspective on the fact that I think companies want to do this stuff, they try hard to do this stuff, but, yeah, it seems to be a lot of lip service and I didn't know if you had any perspective on that whole kind of paradigm.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that was something I always thought about when I was a consultant. I think you have to kind of bring it back to why they're hiring the consultants first. One of my favorite you have all the lingo and jargon in the consultant world. One of my favorites that I heard was we need a throat to choke was my favorite.
Speaker 1:
Another t-shirt, another t-shirt. I need a throat to choke. Oh my, who's the throat to choke? Basically. Put that on the back of the t-shirt, not the front.
Speaker 3:
That's right. What it meant was what I found is, in leadership and management and a lot of companies, especially some of these bigger companies, and I'll give an example there's not a lot of willingness to take the bold stop or bold action. They hired the consultants because now they're not responsible in their eyes. Okay, we're going to do this, or we're going to try to implement this or we're not. But we got an opinion, but it wasn't mine. We're off the hook.
Speaker 2:
Consultants, for them is on the hook Deflecting ownership.
Speaker 3:
Exactly. They didn't want the accountability. They don't want their job at risk or whatever they're doing in the top of their company, kind of just letting things happen as it does. They don't want the bold action, so they hire the consultant to do that. One of the examples I have to more pinpoint your question Travis of why things are implemented this one really opened my eyes. It brings it back into financial services industry. When I first joined the firm, the DOL rule was a huge thing.
Speaker 3:
We're working on several of the broker dealers, millions of dollars of work being done. A lot of. You could change this compensation structure. You can change these procedures, whatever, A whole strategic plan of how you can change your business to basically be bulletproof. From this, you can operate and not have a worry about any rule that goes into effect.
Speaker 3:
They never had any intention of doing that. I remember sitting at the table when it was the final readout and they basically said great work, we love this. Now we have this documented that we considered this option. We can't do this in our business because we'll lose all of our advisors. They'll go somewhere else and we just can't do it. We're too big, we're not agile enough. Thank you, because now we can document that we looked at this and it does not work for our business model. Again, we would be the throat to choke if they came back and said why didn't you implement any of this? Well, we couldn't. They didn't do a good job of presenting an option that was actually feasible for us to do. That was an example that always stuck out to me.
Speaker 1:
There's an ownership issue. I think, with everything like this, there's a lot of excuses. We make excuses for people, we make excuses for ourselves, we make excuses for situations. A lot of times, the solutions are there, but it takes a lot of work. That's one of the things I appreciate about Jess. Jess has a certain tenacity about her when she says, hey, this is important, it's important. Not only did Jess say it was important, but she said I'm going to be an example for everybody. I'm going to do this book report anyway, because I think it's that important.
Speaker 1:
You're obviously a huge advocate for it and you've been around the block a little bit and you've seen some things and stuff like that. What does it really mean to you if you think about this framework and to surround yourself with people who are humble, hungry and smart, because that's what you're fighting for? You're fighting for not just to bring up the idea. They're saying the consultants come in and they tell you this is what you can do to solve your problem, and then the business turns around and has 101 excuses why they can't do it. How important, and what does it mean to you, as somebody who's a part of the wheel that's spinning, to say we need to get this right, right, we need to put our actions where our mouth is and actually implement this Big question. I know, I know I'm like there's a lot of spy right there.
Speaker 1:
That's kind of a lot of a question right there, but we'll give you the next hour and a half of recording time, just for you, so I think out loud.
Speaker 2:
So this is going to be lengthy, but for me, so much of this kind of it's kind of a piggyback off of what Dave said too is that accountability is the word I'm going to choose to use on this and how everything ties into each other for accountability purposes, and why this is so important is if you can hold a colleague accountable and they can hold you accountable, you're going to grow out of that accountability.
Speaker 2:
That's where you start to level up, like that's where you get bigger, you get better and that's where I see so much of this tying together and why this creates this culture of accountability. It creates this culture of the ownership, it creates this culture where you are. I mean, you've said that, like ever since I came to seed. There's the level up like just getting bigger and better and there's just so many ways to make that happen through these virtues. But for me, so much of it boils down to accountability and being able to hold each other accountable to each one of those standards and to those virtues to be able to accomplish that. I'm not sure if that I was trying to not go on for an hour on that, but hopefully that answers the question to what you were.
Speaker 1:
That was pretty incredible and I think one of the things that we've bought into and I know Dave and I worked very, very hard in our both our recruiting and our messaging internally is and I think it was always there but I think this has given us some of the vocabulary needed to emphasize it and maybe a little bit of a roadmap is personal and professional development and what you said with accountability and responsibility if we can help people be more accountable, they can level up, and that's personal and professional development. And so what you're saying is is in this framework, we can help people become better.
Speaker 1:
You know, better people, better professionals, and my take on that is that's a leading indicator. That is it. Better people equal better results. I mean just hands down if there are better people in every position, you're going to have better results.
Speaker 1:
Because when people are feeling, or when they're empowered, or when they're and we did a whole episode of empowerment but when, when people are holding themselves accountable and holding each other accountable in a non-threatening way, we fix a lot of the problems. We can address the problems. We can't. We can't have a conversation if one party is crossing their hands and not willing to look at themselves and how they're participating right. So we've got to have the guard down to be able to have these discussions so that we can make improvements. And by being more accountable, we let people or we emphasize to people it's your job to help make things better for yourself, for your colleagues, for your clients, for your community, for your family, whatever it is. It's your job to not complain and be a victim, right To actually be out there and say hey, I want this to be great, I'm going to be a part of making it great, no matter how scary that scene.