How to hire and develop ideal team players using three core virtues

Executive overview

Most hiring focuses on technical skills while ignoring the deeper virtues that determine whether someone will thrive on a team. Patrick Lencioni's model — built from his own company's core values — identifies three essential virtues: humble, hungry, and smart. All three must be present; a deficit in any one creates a predictable failure mode.

The framework is diagnostic and developmental: use it to screen candidates more rigorously, surface self-awareness in existing teams, and give people a concrete target for improvement.

The single greatest hiring mistake is promoting someone who gets results but violates team values.

The three virtues defined

• Humble: not self-deprecation, but thinking about yourself less — sharing credit, admitting mistakes quickly, doing lower-level work without resentment
• Hungry: intrinsic drive to go above and beyond — caring about the team's success, taking on tedious tasks, contributing outside formal responsibilities
• Smart: common sense around people — empathy, active listening, adjusting behavior to the situation; closest to emotional intelligence but simpler

Why humility is the foundation

• Pride is the root of all dysfunction on a team; humility is the antidote
• C.S. Lewis: humility is not thinking less of yourself — it's thinking about yourself less
• Lack of self-confidence is not humility; knowing your strengths and using them for others is
• Without humility, the best a person can do is fake teamwork

Behavioural signals of humility

• Praises teammates without hesitation
• Admits mistakes quickly and willingly
• Willing to do work that's "below" their level when the team needs it
• Shares credit after team successes; rarely talks about themselves
• Offers and accepts apologies graciously

What hunger looks like — and doesn't

• Hunger is intrinsic motivation, not fear of being fired
• Hungry people feel personally responsible when the team fails
• They volunteer to help outside their own area of responsibility
• Hunger is not workaholism — it coexists with faith, family, and limits
• The hardest of the three virtues to teach later in life

Developing the "smart" virtue

• Smart is the least critical of the three — humble and hungry people can be coached on people skills
• Primary mechanism: real-time coaching from teammates, not programs or books
• Teams agree on each person's weakest virtue, then commit to calling it out in the moment
• Leaders must be willing to name the behaviour every time they see it
• Two outcomes: the person improves, or they self-select out — both are better than silent tolerance

Scare people with sincerity in interviews

• At the end of the process, explicitly tell the candidate what living these values looks like day-to-day
• Frame it as a warning: "If you don't have X, you'll be uncomfortable here"
• Gives candidates the chance to opt out before joining — saving both parties
• Most organisations over-court candidates; treat the interview as mutual truth-telling instead

The structured interview process

• Go in with humble, hungry, and smart as explicit criteria — not generic "culture fit"
• Run interviews in sequential pairs: first two debrief before the next two go in, narrowing focus each round
• Group interviews allow richer debriefs — disagreements about behaviour surface different interpretations
• Ask the same question three different ways if unsure — persistent probing reveals the truth
• Ask candidates what a former boss or colleague would say about them; people come clean

Get out of the formal interview setting

• Take candidates on an errand, to a soccer practice, anywhere with real human situations
• Watch how they interact with strangers, clerks, parents — reveals emotional intelligence without rehearsal
• The cost of a wrong hire vastly outweighs the cost of an extra afternoon with a candidate
• A bad hire who gets results can still tank team performance and drive out good people

Running the self-assessment exercise with existing teams

• Ask every team member to rank themselves: which of the three virtues is their strongest, second, third?
• Frame it as non-threatening: even if you're great at all three, one is still third
• Group people by their weakest virtue; have them brainstorm specific behaviours to improve
• The act of naming it publicly creates accountability and permission for teammates to coach

The cost of misalignment

• Promoting someone who violates values — even a high performer — signals that values don't matter
• Lencioni's own mistake: promoted a productive but non-collaborative employee, demoralising the team
• When she was moved out, department performance "went through the roof"
• Opportunity cost of a misaligned hire is invisible until they leave — then suddenly visible