“Humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.”
“Hunger is about always striving for more — more to learn, more to accomplish, more ways to contribute to the team’s success.”
“Being smart is not about intellectual capacity. It’s about being interpersonally appropriate and aware.”
These three virtues are the cornerstone of the core values that well-known author, speaker and consultant on leadership and organizational health, Patrick Lencioni, believes are critical for each individual to bring to any team, group or organization.
The word humble comes from the Latin ‘humus’ for earth, soil, or ground. Which is the word that is used in Genesis, “God formed the human out of dust from the ground.” Humility is not about weakness or self-deprecation. Rather it is being grounded in self-awareness of our gifts and strengths. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
Strong desire, feeling or drive is the normative understanding of hunger. It’s that passion within us that is self-motivated, diligently striving to level up our capacity to learn, grow, assist, accomplish greater possibilities. “It’s the really hungry who can smell fresh bread a mile away,” offered Archbishop Rowan Williams. It is this hunger that not only creates our awareness but fuels us into action.
How many times has someone told you that their child or even themselves were smart. It’s hard not to wonder what criteria they are using for that determination. The capacity to bring comprehensive critical thinking grounded in data, paired with acute empathetic awareness to a given situation, often reveals not just intelligence, but true wisdom . I particularly appreciate theologian Karl Barth’s words in this regard, “Wisdom is the capacity for sound judgment in the face of the contingencies of real life.”
I really resonate with Patrick Lencioni’s virtues of humble, hungry, and smart. They reflect my own experience of the best team members—grounded in their identity as God’s beloved, attentive to and using the gifts of the Spirit, and living out their call to serve with wisdom and love.”
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with affection, and affection with love” 2Peter 1:5-7