I sat in a good discussion today on Patrick Lencioni’s The Ideal Team Player. If you haven’t read it, the model is simple: the people who make teams work are humble, hungry, and smart. Not brilliant. Not credentialed. Those three things.
What caught me wasn’t the list. It was how the three fit together — and what happens when one is missing.
The three
Humble is the one people think they understand and mostly don’t. Lencioni’s humble person isn’t self-deprecating. They just don’t need the credit. They can say “I was wrong” without it costing them anything, and they can say “that was me” without it inflating anything.
Hungry is drive. They want more responsibility, more work, more results, and nobody has to push them toward it. The hungry person is already moving.
Smart isn’t IQ. It’s people-smart — reading the room, knowing how your words land, understanding what a question really means before you answer it. Emotional intelligence in work clothes.
Why two out of three is the dangerous number
Missing all three, you’re not on the team long. Missing two, it’s obvious. It’s the people with two out of three who slip through, because they look like team players most of the time.
Humble and hungry but not smart: the accidental mess-maker. Great heart, great effort, keeps stepping on people without noticing.
Humble and smart but not hungry: the lovable slacker. Everybody likes them. Nobody can count on them.
Hungry and smart but not humble: the skillful politician. And this is the one that should scare you, because this person is genuinely good — ambitious, charming, reads people well — and uses all of it for themselves. They can fake humility for a long time. That’s what makes them dangerous.
I’ve been called a politician
At one of my data jobs, a lead data engineer called me a politician. He didn’t mean it the way Lencioni means it. He meant I worked in data governance, which is a job where you own nothing and need everything, and the only way to get anything done was to go appeal to five different parties for one common goal.
He wasn’t wrong about the method. I had a way of engaging with people that pointed them at the mission and the good we were after without offending the other side. Get the business to see what the technical team needed. Get the technical team to see why the business cared. Nobody left the room feeling like they’d lost.
I understand why that looks like politics from the outside. But here’s the distinction Lencioni’s framework makes, and it’s the reason I’m not worried about the label.
The skillful politician and the ideal team player can look identical on a Tuesday. Both are hungry. Both are people-smart. The difference is what the smart is for. The politician is reading the room to win the room. The team player is reading the room so the room can win.
I was pointing people at the mission, not at me. That was me trying to rally the team for the team’s good.
Whether that’s humility or just a good paint job — that’s the leg I actually have to check.
The leg you can’t see yourself
You can’t grade your own humility. Hunger, you can feel. Smart, you get feedback on constantly — people wince, or they don’t. But humility is the one you’re structurally bad at assessing, because the whole point is not being focused on yourself.
So the test isn’t “am I humble.” The test is: when the decision goes the other way, do I get behind it? When the credit goes somewhere else, does it bother me for an hour or a week? When I’m wrong in a meeting, how long does it take me to say so?
Those have answers. And the people around you already know them.
I’m going to ask. Not “am I a politician” — nobody answers that honestly. Something narrower. “When was the last time you saw me take a decision I didn’t agree with and actually carry it?” If they have to think hard, that’s data.
A two-legged stool with a good paint job looks fine right up until somebody sits on it.
