Top 100 Patrick Lencioni Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”

— Patrick Lencioni

Featured in: Powerful Motivational Quotes, Inspirational Quotes for Work, Motivational Work Quotes, Positive Work Quotes, Collaboration Quotes

2. “If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”

— Patrick Lencioni

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes for Work, Strategy Quotes, Inspirational Business Quotes, Friday Quotes for Work, Performance Quotes

3. “If everything is important, then nothing is.”

— Patrick Lencioni

4. “Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”

— Patrick Lencioni

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes for Work, Collaboration Quotes, Teamwork Quotes, Quotes About Trust

5. “Building a cohesive leadership team is the first critical step that an organization must take if it is to have the best chance at success.”

— Patrick Lencioni

6. “Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team.”

— Patrick Lencioni

Featured in: Friday Quotes for Work, Culture Quotes, Teamwork Quotes

7. “When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer.”

— Patrick Lencioni

Featured in: Trust The Process Quotes

8. “Organizational health is the single greatest competitive advantage in any business.”

— Patrick Lencioni

9. “On a team, trust is all about vulnerability, which is difficult for most people.”

— Patrick Lencioni

10. “Members of trusting teams admit weaknesses and mistakes, take risks in offering feedback and assistance, and focus time and energy on important issues, not politics.”

— Patrick Lencioni

Featured in: Teamwork Quotes

11. “Failing to hold someone accountable is ultimately an act of selfishness.”

— Patrick Lencioni

12. “The key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage.”

— Patrick Lencioni

13. “Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”

— Patrick Lencioni

14. “Team members have to be focused on the collective good of the team. Too often, they focus their attention on their department, their budget, their career aspirations, their egos.”

— Patrick Lencioni

15. “Building a strong team is both possible and remarkably simple. But is painfully difficult.”

— Patrick Lencioni

16. “People will walk through fire for a leader that’s true and human.”

— Patrick Lencioni

17. “Members of trusting teams accept questions and input about their areas or responsibility, appreciate and tap into one another’s skills and experiences, and look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group.”

— Patrick Lencioni

18. “Choose your companions before you choose your road.”

— Patrick Lencioni

19. “The five behavioral manifestations of teamwork: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results.”

— Patrick Lencioni

20. “The enemy of accountability is ambiguity.”

— Patrick Lencioni

21. “The vast majority of organizations today have more than enough intelligence, experience and knowledge to be successful. What they lack is organizational health.”

— Patrick Lencioni

22. “If people don’t weigh in, they can’t buy in.”

— Patrick Lencioni

23. “Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in.”

— Patrick Lencioni

24. “When you know your reason for existence, it should effect the decisions you make.”

— Patrick Lencioni

25. “Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust.”

— Patrick Lencioni

26. “It’s as simple as this. When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board.”

— Patrick Lencioni

27. “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”

— Patrick Lencioni

28. “Open, frank communication is the lynchpin to teamwork. A fractured team is like a fractured bone; fixing it is always painful and sometimes you have to re-break it to heal it fully – and the re-break always hurts more because it is intentional.”

— Patrick Lencioni

29. “A core value is something you’re willing to get punished for.”

— Patrick Lencioni

30. “At the heart of vulnerability lies the willingness of people to abandon their pride and their fear, to sacrifice their egos for the collective good of the team. While this can be a little threatening and uncomfortable at first, ultimately it becomes liberating for people who are tired of spending time and energy overthinking their actions and managing interpersonal politics at work.”

— Patrick Lencioni

31. “If you’re not interested in getting better, it’s time for you to stop leading.”

— Patrick Lencioni

32. “As difficult as it is to build a team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical, whether you run the executive staff at a multi-national company, a small department within a larger organization, or even if you are merely a member of a team that needs improvement.”

— Patrick Lencioni

33. “An organization has integrity – is healthy – when it is whole, consistent, and complete, that is, when its management, operations, strategy, and culture fit together and make sense.”

— Patrick Lencioni

34. “A rigid, one-size-fits-all approach usually ends up fitting no one.”

— Patrick Lencioni

35. “No action, activity, or process is more central to a healthy organization than the meeting.”

— Patrick Lencioni

36. “There is just no escaping the fact that the single biggest factor determining whether an organization is going to get healthier – or not – is the genuine commitment and active involvement of the person in charge.”

— Patrick Lencioni

37. “When a group of intelligent people come together to talk about issues that matter, it is both natural and productive for disagreement to occur. Resolving those issues is what makes a meeting productive, engaging, even fun.”

— Patrick Lencioni

38. “The hard truth is, bad meetings almost always lead to bad decisions, which is the best recipe for mediocrity.”

— Patrick Lencioni

39. “Success comes only for those groups that overcome the all-too-human behavioral tendencies that corrupt teams and breed dysfunctional politics within them.”

— Patrick Lencioni

40. “A fractured team is just like a broken arm or leg; fixing it is always painful, and sometimes you have to rebreak it to make it heal correctly. And the rebreak hurts a lot more than the initial break, because you have to do it on purpose P.37.”

— Patrick Lencioni

41. “Ego is the ultimate killer on a team.”

— Patrick Lencioni

42. “Really great people rarely leave a healthy organization.”

— Patrick Lencioni

43. “The most well-intentioned, well-designed departmental communication program will not tear down silos unless the people who created those silos want them torn down.”

— Patrick Lencioni

44. “All things to all people is nothing to everyone.”

— Patrick Lencioni

45. “Great teams make clear and timely decisions and move forward with complete buy-in from every member of the team, even those who voted against the decision. They leave meetings confident that no one on the team is quietly harboring doubts about whether to support the actions agreed on.”

— Patrick Lencioni

46. “Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time.”

— Patrick Lencioni

47. “As a leader, you’re probably not doing a good job unless your employees can do a good impression of you when you’re not around.”

— Patrick Lencioni

48. “Keep in mind that a real team should be spending considerable time together in meetings and working sessions. In fact, it is not uncommon that as much as 20 percent of each team member’s time is spent working through issues and solving problems with the team as a whole. p. 105.”

— Patrick Lencioni

49. “I’ve become absolutely convinced that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre or unsuccessful ones has little, if anything, to do with what they know or how smart they are; it has everything to do with how healthy they are.”

— Patrick Lencioni

50. “Conflict is about issues and ideas, while accountability is about performance and behavior.”

— Patrick Lencioni