Top 100 Patrick Lencioni Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Trust is the foundation of real teamwork.”

— Patrick Lencioni

52. “No quality or characteristic is more important than trust.”

— Patrick Lencioni

53. “Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.”

— Patrick Lencioni

54. “If we don’t trust one another, then we aren’t going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict. And we’ll just continue to preserve a sense of artificial harmony.”

— Patrick Lencioni

55. “Healthy organizations believe that performance management is almost exclusively about eliminating confusion. They realize that most of their employees want to succeed, and that the best way to allow them to do that is to give them clear direction, regular information about how they’re doing, and access to the coaching they need.”

— Patrick Lencioni

56. “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

57. “Once organizational health is properly understood and placed into the right context, it will surpass all other disciplines in business as the greatest opportunity for improvement and competitive advantage.”

— Patrick Lencioni

58. “The only way for people to embrace a message is to hear it over a period of time, in a variety of different situations, and preferably from different people. That’s why great leaders see themselves as Chief Reminding Officers as much as anything else. Their top two priorities are to set the direction of the organization and then to ensure that people are reminded of it on a regular basis.”

— Patrick Lencioni

59. “Hiring without clear and strict criteria for cultural fit greatly hampers the potential for success of any organization.”

— Patrick Lencioni

60. “Our ability to engage in passionate, unfiltered debate about what we need to do to succeed will determine our future as much as any products we develop or partnerships we sign.” It.”

— Patrick Lencioni

61. “A job is bound to be miserable if it doesn’t involve measurement.”

— Patrick Lencioni

62. “I honestly believe that in this day and age of informational ubiquity and nanosecond change, teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped.”

— Patrick Lencioni

63. “Because people who aren’t good at their jobs don’t want to be measured, because then they have to be accountable for something. Great employees love that kind of accountability. They crave it. Poor ones run away from it.”

— Patrick Lencioni

64. “If we don’t trust one another, then we aren’t going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict.”

— Patrick Lencioni

65. “Human beings need to be needed, and they need to be reminded of this pretty much every day. They need to know that they are helping others, not merely serving themselves.”

— Patrick Lencioni

66. “Most people are generally reasonable and can rally around an idea that wasn’t their own as long as they know they’ve had a chance to weigh in.”

— Patrick Lencioni

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

— Patrick Lencioni

68. “Leaders who can identify, hire, and cultivate employees who are humble, hungry, and smart will have a serious advantage over those who cannot.”

— Patrick Lencioni

69. “How many of you would rather go to a meeting than a movie?” No hands went up. “Why not?” After a pause, Jeff realized that her question was not a rhetorical one. “Because movies are more interesting. Even the bad ones.” His peers chuckled. Kathryn smiled. “Right. But if you really think about it, meetings should be at least as interesting as movies.”

— Patrick Lencioni

70. “An organization’s strategy is simply its plan for success. It’s nothing more than the collection of intentional decisions a company makes to give itself the best chance to thrive and differentiate from competitors.”

— Patrick Lencioni

71. “Firing someone is not necessarily a sign of accountability, but is often the last act of cowardice.”

— Patrick Lencioni

72. “Great team players lack excessive ego or concerns about status. They are quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek attention for their own. They share credit, emphasize team over self, and define success collectively rather than individually. It is no great surprise, then, that humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.”

— Patrick Lencioni

73. “Push with respect, and under the assumption that the other person is probably doing the right thing. But push anyway. And never hold back.”

— Patrick Lencioni

74. “People who don’t like conflict have an amazing ability to avoid it, even when they know it’s theoretically necessary.”

— Patrick Lencioni

75. “I don’t think anyone ever gets completely used to conflict. If it’s not a little uncomfortable, then it’s not real. The key is to keep doing it anyway.”

— Patrick Lencioni

76. “The only real payoff for leadership is eternal.”

— Patrick Lencioni

77. “Great organizations, unlike countries, are never run like a democracy.”

— Patrick Lencioni

78. “To achieve results. This is the only true measure of a team P.42.”

— Patrick Lencioni

79. “Some people are hard to hold accountable because they are so helpful. Others because they get defensive. Others because they are intimidating. I don’t think it’s easy to hold anyone accountable, not even your own kids.”

— Patrick Lencioni

80. “Direct, personal feedback really is the simplest and most effective form of motivation.”

— Patrick Lencioni

81. “So many people there are so concerned about being socially conscious and environmentally aware, but they don’t give a second thought to how they treat the guy washing their car or cutting their grass.”

— Patrick Lencioni

82. “When team members trust one another, when they know that everyone on the team is capable of admitting when they don’t have the right answer, and when they’re willing to acknowledge when someone else’s idea is better than theirs, the fear of conflict and the discomfort it entails is greatly diminished. When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer. It is not only okay but desirable.”

— Patrick Lencioni

83. “Most of the CEO’s who fail think they will find the solution to their problems in Finance, Marketing, Strategic Planning, etc., but they don’t look for the solution to their problems inside themselves.”

— Patrick Lencioni

84. “It is dangerous if our identity as a leader becomes more important than our identity as a child of God.”

— Patrick Lencioni

85. “Becoming a healthy organization takes a little time. Unfortunately, many of the leaders I’ve worked with suffer from a chronic case of adrenaline addiction, seemingly hooked on the daily rush of activity and firefighting within their organizations. It’s as though they’re afraid to slow down and deal with issues that are critical but don’t seem particularly urgent.”

— Patrick Lencioni

86. “A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization.”

— Patrick Lencioni

87. “Teams have to eliminate ambiguity and interpretation when it comes to success.”

— Patrick Lencioni

88. “Because when a team recovers from an incident of destructive conflict, it builds confidence that it can survive such an event, which in turn builds trust. This is not unlike a husband and wife recovering from a big argument and developing closer ties and greater confidence in their relationship as a result.”

— Patrick Lencioni

89. “Nowhere does this tendency toward artificial harmony show itself more than in mission-driven nonprofit organizations, most notably churches. People who work in those organizations tend to have a misguided idea that they cannot be frustrated or disagreeable with one another. What they’re doing is confusing being nice with being kind.”

— Patrick Lencioni

90. “On a cohesive team, leaders are not there simply to represent the departments that they lead and manage but rather to solve problems that stand in the way of achieving success for the whole organization. That means they’ll readily offer up their departments’ resources when it serves the greater good of the team, and they’ll take an active interest in the thematic goal regardless of how closely related it is to their functional area.”

— Patrick Lencioni

91. “Scare People with Sincerity.”

— Patrick Lencioni

92. “If you ask me, the best thing that’s happened in the last year is that we’ve almost become a jackass-free zone. No matter what happens, and what challenge we might face, give me a roomful of people who aren’t jackasses, and I’ll be happy to take it on.”

— Patrick Lencioni

93. “If the CEO’s behavior is 95 per cent healthy while the rest of the organization is only 50 per cent sound, it is more effective to focus on that crucial and leveraged 5 per cent that makes up the reminder of the CEO’s behavior.”

— Patrick Lencioni

94. “No one on a cohesive team can say, Well, I did my job. Our failure isn’t my fault.”

— Patrick Lencioni

95. “Members of teams that tend to avoid conflict must occasionally assume the role of a “miner of conflict” – someone who extracts buried disagreements within the team and sheds the light of day on them. They must have the courage and confidence to call out sensitive issues and force team members to work through them. This requires a degree of objectivity during meetings and a commitment to staying with the conflict until it is resolved. Some.”

— Patrick Lencioni

96. “An organization has to institutionalize its culture without bureaucratizing it.”

— Patrick Lencioni

97. “Ask dumb questions.”

— Patrick Lencioni

98. “No amount of intellectual prowess or personal charisma can make up for an inability to identify a few simple things and stick to them over time.”

— Patrick Lencioni

99. “Clare offered a half-hearted suggestion. “Well, there are coaches I know who do one-on-one counseling.” Bobby shook his head. “No, that doesn’t usually work. It takes months and only isolates people. It seems like most of them just use it to prepare for their next job.”

— Patrick Lencioni

100. “Putting together an agenda before a staff meeting is like a marriage counselor deciding what issues she’s going to cover with a couple prior to meeting with them.”

— Patrick Lencioni