Ready to Lead

What does decluttering have to do with leadership? Way more than you think.

In today’s episode, host Jeff Mask sits down with Kathi Lipp, world-renowned author of over 20 books and host of the Clutter-Free Academy podcast. Kathi has dedicated her life to serving people who are overwhelmed by clutter and people with a mission who want to communicate it.

Why talk about decluttering on a leadership podcast? Because there are a lot of grounding principles here for leading ourselves and leading others. When we have cluttered minds, when we have cluttered systems and processes, when we don’t have clarity, it’s so much more anxiety-inducing to lead. 

Listen in as Jeff and Kathi talk about how decluttering leads to more peaceful, powerful, and effective leadership.

The Damaging Effects of Clutter

Years ago, Kathi was a young mom, heading into a dark place, overwhelmed by her house and life and stuff. Her dad was a hoarder. They didn’t call it that then, but that’s what he was. She tried all the programs and strategies, but nothing worked. Until she figured out that it was more than just having too much stuff. What is my relationship to stuff? she asked herself. Why do I have this need to keep bringing things into my home? 

She realized that it was more of a mental/spiritual issue than a stuff issue. “Once I dug into that and dealt with it,” she says, “I was able to find freedom. I’m not Martha Stewart, but I could invite you in for a cup of coffee at any time without having to apologize, and that’s a big leap for me.” 

Kathi says that, when you know that you’re different and you don’t understand why, it wreaks havoc with what you can potentially do. When you can’t have people over, when you can’t get out the door on time, when you only have one area of the house where you can aim your Zoom camera, it limits who you can become and who your partner/children can become.

Clutter is just a physical manifestation of what’s going on inside of us emotionally or spiritually. If you’re not coping in an area, it will seep out somewhere else. Clutter can lead to depression for many people. If you are depressed, you have clutter. If you have clutter, you’re dealing with some level of depression. 

How Clutter Affects Us As Leaders

Decluttering enables us to clear out the closets of our minds, to help us be more present as leaders. It helps us let go of the heavy, painful anchors that are holding us back from becoming the true person we could be. So we can lead our team to be their best selves too.

What is one thing leaders can do to start down this path toward peace and clarity? Kathi says she’s a big believer in picking one thing and focusing on it for 15 minutes. If you have 20 things on your to-do list, and you haven’t prioritized them, you aren’t going to be able to tackle them without feeling frozen. She uses this 15-minute principle in her work, her environment, and her creativity. It ups her creativity and productivity—everything she needs to be a good leader. 

She recommends that leaders start by clearing a space on their desk. She sits down every day and writes ten 15-minute items. Things that will push her business forward. She also chooses one thing to do an hour-long deep dive on. She asks: What is one thing I need to spend some concentrated time on? Then she puts it on her schedule.

“We overestimate what we can get done in a week, and we underestimate what we can get done in a moment,” she says. “Fifteen minutes is a moment, and we can actually get a lot accomplished.” Kathi suffers from bright shiny object syndrome. (Don’t we all?) Everything else in the world besides what she’s doing looks more fun, more awesome. But she keeps bringing her focus back to the task at hand. 

She reminds herself constantly: “I have to do the things I have to do so I can do the...

The Great Resignation has had a huge impact on teams and organizations. How do you respond as a leader when you lose a really good team member?

In this episode, co-hosts Richard Lindner and Jeff Mask talk about what happens when one of a leader’s biggest fears becomes reality: a key player on the team decides to leave. Instead of just speaking in generalities, Richard shares a very personal and recent story, and he and Jeff walk through these important questions:

1. How do we process it internally?
2. How do we communicate it?
3. How do we make sure the company is better because they were here instead of worse off because they’re gone?

Listen in for some great tips to help you think about—and become better from and through—these experiences. 

Richard’s Team Loses a Key Player

Richard says their company was blessed not to lay anyone off during Covid, but they still experienced the Great Resignation to some degree this summer. He recently had the scary realization that his team was at the definition of a skeleton crew. Everyone was perfect for their job—right person, right seat, right attitude, right cultural fit. “If anyone here leaves,” he thought to himself, “we’re going to be in a bit of a bind.”

And then it happened. Someone who had been with the company for five years (in internet years, that’s forever, Richard says) put in her resignation. In the growth they had seen over five years, this person had been critical in figuring things out and ushering in that change. She was always smiling, had the best attitude, and owned her role. When Richard got the news, his mind went to “not her, not her.” This was going to hurt. 

Richard said this is when you start to spiral mentally, no matter how long you’ve been leading. He went immediately to a bad place, because he always processes the worst case scenario first. This person embodied their core values. The company could have written its values by following her around. When she left, we asked, where did we fail in leadership and vision? Where did we fail in growth and opportunity? What are the rest of the team members going to think? Will others leave because she left?

If “bad people” (an underperformer, someone who’s not a cultural fit) leave, we get it. But when a good person leaves, the fear is that other people will think, “Wait a second, if she’s leaving, should I leave? What does she know that I don’t know?”

How Do We Process It Internally?

Important question #1: how do we internally process the impact of this person leaving? How can we work through it in a way so that it’s a growth opportunity instead of something that paralyzes us? If we don’t work through it in our own minds in a healthy way, it has a negative ripple effect on everyone around us. A negative spiral is not helpful. 

Every failure is a failure of leadership. However. Good people leaving is not always a failure. It just means that, organizationally, their growth has outpaced your need. When done correctly, sometimes we grow people too good, too much. They outgrow the company. It’s a job well done. You’re called as a leader to grow people. You’re called as a leader to align that growth with the company. When they outpace it, you fulfilled your calling. If the company can’t support their growth, you let them go with your blessing.

Jeff summarizes Richard’s process. First, he went to a dark place, thinking “where did I fail? What will people think?” That’s totally normal, human, healthy. Where the unhealthiness comes in is when we stay there. We have to reframe. “Where’s the good in this? Where do we go from here?” It comes down to selflessness as a leader. Seeing the...

How to Become a Disruptive Entrepreneur with Rob Moore

The word “disruptive” can have a negative connotation, but it’s really all about stepping in, shaking things up, and making the world better.

Rob Moore is a powerhouse, and he’s super great at what he does. He loves entrepreneurship and property investing; he runs several businesses and two podcasts; and he lives up to his brand as an entrepreneur that disrupts. In today’s episode, he sits down with host Jeff Mask to share his incredible story.

Listen in to be inspired to do some disrupting of your own.

Rob’s Rock Bottom Story

Rob’s dad owned a pub in the UK where Rob worked from age six. In 2005, when Rob was 26, his dad had a massive nervous breakdown in his pub. The police were called, beat his dad up as they tried to restrain him, and his dad was ultimately diagnosed as bipolar. Rob was humiliated, and he determined right then and there to make something of himself, to “make up for lost time after a decade of acting like an idiot.”

Fifteen years later, he has written 18 books, runs several companies, became a millionaire at 31, a decamillionaire at 35, and has raised more than a million pounds through his charities. He says he owes it all to his dad. He’s been able to help his dad retire, buy a house, travel, drive a great car, and he’s going to send him on a 55th anniversary trip overseas. “That’s what being an entrepreneur has given me,” Rob says.

Jeff says that, “when we rattle off CVs that are stale/cardboard, it doesn’t get to the essence of being a human being.” Rob’s story is so relatable to so many. And it really begs the questions: 

• Why do we do what we do? 
• How were we raised, and now how do we lead? 
• How do we take this to a higher, healthier, more productive level based on the difficulties we’ve gone through? 
• How do you disrupt yourself? 
• How do you disrupt an industry? 
• How do you become a disruptive entrepreneur? 
• And why does that even matter? 
• How does the world benefit from us thinking that way?

Rob answers these questions and more.

What Do You Do?

How often do we hear that question: “So, what do you do?” Jeff asks Rob what his answer is when people ask what he does for a living.

“I never answer what I do,” Rob says. “I don’t fricking know what I do. I spin a lot of plates. I like variety. I don’t want to be labeled or typecast. So I don’t answer what I do. I answer what my vision is, because I’m really crystal clear on that.”

Rob’s personal vision is to help as many people on this planet start and scale their business and get better financial knowledge. Full stop. He’s got billions of people he wants to help, and that is what he does. He answers that question in a vision statement.

Jeff has a vision statement as well. He helps CEOs confidently grow their business without losing their souls. 

Knowing your vision statement is an awesome leadership lesson. Why do we do what we do? Why were we put on the planet? The clearer we are with our vision, the more naturally things will flow to us that accomplish and further that vision, and the easier it is to say no to things that aren’t relevant to the vision. 

What Does It Mean to Be a Disruptive Entrepreneur?

A few years ago, Rob realized that, if he wanted to grow globally, which he did, he needed to extricate himself from his UK...

Trust among coworkers has never been more important than it is in today’s virtual environment, and leaders have to intentionally design experiences that help build that trust.

As leaders, it can be tempting to bypass team building exercises and just get down to business already. There’s work to be done, goals to be met. Who has time for “shared experiences” and “team bonding,” right? 

In today’s episode, co-hosts Richard Lindner and Jeff Mask build a solid case for why leaders can’t afford not to design trust-building experiences for their team. If you want to make an impact—and you want it to be enduring—you have to rally people to do their best work, or it won’t be sustainable. Your dreams and aspirations will crumble, and work will be a drag. 

When you align people, connect with people, build deep strong relationships with people, the output is the best work of your career. You can accomplish way more, way faster, and more profitably when you have a strong foundation of trust. 

Listen in for some great practical advice on designing organizational trust as a leader.

The 3 Levels of Trust-Building Experiences

To build trust with each other organically and consistently, you have to do it with a consistent cadence. You have to build these experiences into your company’s rhythm. But where do you start? How do you design these experiences? How do you develop the appropriate amount of intimacy based on the level of trust you have? You don’t want to do too much, too soon. 

There are three types of experiences you can create as a leader, and they need to go in this order if you want to go at a good, healthy pace. 

1. shared experiences
2. vulnerability-creating experiences
3. healthy conflict experiences

Start with Shared Experiences

Shared experiences require no real relational equity. You could do a zipline together. Ride go-carts. Play a round of putt-putt golf. Tackle an obstacle course or an escape room. No one has to get vulnerable with anyone else. You just show up and play the game. Jeff recommends not going to a movie together. It’s better than nothing, but there’s not a lot of interaction. You’re just sitting there. Personalities don’t come out. There’s no struggle, no common goal. 

A shared experience should incorporate a challenge of some kind. You’re architecting and engineering something in a non-work environment that mirrors what you’ll go through at work. You start together, struggle together, and emerge victorious at the end. You can have your trust at a level 0 out of 100 and get it up to 10 after this shared experience.

Richard’s leadership team does something called the Hot Wings challenge, which is Facebook-famous. The show interviews celebrities who have 10 hot wings in front of them, with sauces that build from “not that hot” to “oh my gosh why would anyone ever eat this?” Along the way, you’ll see the person’s mask coming off, bit by bit. 

Richard’s team members take turns in the hot seat. When you want to talk about difficulty and shared experience and pleasure and pain, he says, this one’s loaded. You ask questions along the way like, “What would your wrestler name be?” It’s one thing to answer that question when you’re sitting around a table. It’s another to answer it when your eyes are watering, your lips are burning. It adds something to it. 

He also suggests a board game like Apples to Apples. Jeff says jackbox.tv, Quiplash in particular, is great for when you can’t be together physically. These games provide time to get to know one another, share emotions, laugh, bond. It’s something you can anchor back to, reference time and...

One of our roles as leaders is to identify and unlock people’s gifts. Today’s guest tells us how.

Unlocking people’s gifts presupposes that we believe everyone has gifts to unlock. Stacey Ferguson, Digital Director at Time’s Up, believes they do, and host Jeff Mask wholeheartedly agrees. In today’s energizing episode, the two of them sit down for a fun and enlightening chat about bringing out the very best in the people you’re leading.

Know What You Want and Go After It

Stacey’s story begins with her thinking she knew what she wanted in life, getting it, then realizing it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She dreamed of being a big entertainment lawyer and landed an “amazing” job with a big firm that represented artists. Turns out, at the end of the day, it was just a lot of contracts/paperwork and long days and weekends. 

One night she was working late; she was 8 months pregnant and hungry; and she took a brief to this guy in his office. He looked up at her, like he was seeing her for the first time, even though she’d been in and out of his office all day, busting her butt for 12 hours straight. 

“Have you eaten today?” he asked, almost as an afterthought, and she thought to herself, “What am I doing here?”

She immediately started looking for another job. She says she could have been more courageous and quit on the spot, but started quietly applying at other places. She also asked the managing director of the firm if she could switch to a department with more reasonable hours. He said sure.

Then another employment opportunity came through with the Federal Trade Commission. Her director was actually happy for her, a reaction she wasn’t expecting. This experience taught her that it’s always best to go with your gut. 

Why We Suppress Our Gifts

Once Stacey had more free time, she was able to start a blog. That’s where she found her voice and developed an online community. She started creating. She started a blogging conference for women of color. Everything took off and exploded from there.

Jeff recognized in her story that she figured out what she wanted, had the courage to follow through, and going down that path herself has allowed her to authentically unlock the gifts of others. Those are the steps we need to take in order to let the gifts we have within us breathe. Fear and insecurity and self-doubt are what suppress the divine genius within us. It comes in all shapes and sizes. We all have something amazing inside, but those loud voices can suppress what we know we can create or do. 

As Stacey built this community of bloggers, she realized that being a leader was about so much more than her. It’s about other people. The greatest leaders aren’t the ones who just do great things themselves; they’re the ones who inspire others to greatness.

Identifying and Unlocking Gifts in Others

Everybody really does have a gift. But a lot of times they don’t see it. It’s buried. You have to help them comb through the junk to get to the gift. One way to figure out what your gift is: ask some of these questions. What do you enjoy doing? What do people come to you for? What feels organic and natural to you? What can you do as a no-brainer in your sleep?

Maybe you make the best cupcakes. Maybe your friends ask you to plan their trip. Maybe you don’t see the value in it; you don’t think it’s special. A thousand other people make cupcakes. Everyone has that thing, but they take it for granted. You’re unique; you’re different; you have to bring your full self to whatever it is you’re doing.

When you look into someone's soul, see the gift, highlight the gift, and speak to that person, it’s so fascinating to hear their response. “Oh, doesn’t everyone do this?” We’re wired to...

Leading people was already difficult in a pre-Covid world, but learning how to engage in healthy conflict is extra challenging in a virtual environment.

It’s a leader’s job to assess human dynamics and behavior and guide people in and through conflict in healthy, productive ways. But it’s so much harder to read people when you’re not face to face, rubbing shoulders with each other every day. Sometimes things might feel okay, but it’s often “artificial harmony” (credit to Patrick Lencioni). It’s difficult for many organizations to get people to speak their truth.

In this episode, hosts Richard Lindner and Jeff Mask speak directly to those leaders who feel like “something’s off” and want to know how to get things back on track. Not by pretending everything’s fine, but by dealing with conflict in a healthy way.

How We View Conflict

Richard prides himself on his ability to “mine for conflict” (another Lencioni term). Years ago, he correctly identified conflict avoidance as one of his weaknesses, so he leaned all the way into it to get the muscle memories, the reps, and make it a strength. Soon he could smell it everywhere. He even started off all of their team meetings with “healthy conflict is good.” But he admits that he’s having more trouble with it right now than he used to when it was one of his weaknesses. 

He finds it a lot harder when he doesn’t have that frequent/close in-person connection. He often feels like he doesn’t have enough relational equity to take people to the mat, even for the right reasons. And he knows he’s not alone. When he has this conversation with other leaders, they have so much to say. They’re all feeling it. So, how do they fix it?

Jeff says that, weirdly, one of the reasons he “loves” this pandemic is because anything that was a weakness before is exacerbated now. Why would he love something like that? Because it gives us insight into which aspects of our leadership need to be improved. When you look at it that way, it’s more of a fun quest, rather than a draining exercise. This mindset shift changes everything.

Recognize Conflict and Name It

The first thing you have to do is recognize that conflict exists and name it. Call it what it is. Think back to the 4 Zones of Leadership. The Friend Zone is one of the reasons we avoid the “danger zone” of conflict. We often avoid conflict because we want to be liked. If you continue to avoid going there, the cycle will continue, and your work environment will turn toxic.

In the book, The Three Laws of Performance, authors Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan talk about how the way people perform correlates with how situations occur to them. How we see the world is how we show up. How we see things arises in our speech/language. We need the self-awareness to recognize that other people see things differently than we do. 

So, what are some of the signs that we have conflict in our virtual workplace? It’s hard to pick up on context clues from Zoom windows. Richard says they’ve hired team members that don’t live in the area. There are people who have never had consistent shoulder to shoulder time with the rest of the team. They’re not building that sense of trust just from being together. How do we diagnose conflict? How do we know what’s off and where?

3 Common Signs of Conflict

Jeff shares three common signs that there is conflict you need to deal

As leaders, we have privilege, and it’s up to us to empower the people we’ve been charged to lead.

Today’s guest, Mike Yates, empowers people on a daily basis. Mike is an educator, the host of the Schoolish podcast, TED talker, and runs the Reinvention Lab at Teach for America. In this episode, he sits down with host Richard Lindner to talk about recognizing privilege and power structures and how leaders everywhere can leverage that knowledge to gain a better understanding of their team.

Mike’s journey is fascinating and unconventional, and he’s doing some pretty awesome things with his life.

Jack Of All Trades: An Insult or a Compliment?

Mike grew up hating school. His mom was a teacher, so that didn’t go over very well in his house. He remembers being raised to be a well-rounded person, so he had his hands in a lot of stuff. “No one ever told me to hyper-specialize,” he says, “and I developed an ability to multitask. I decided to use my varied interests as a strength.”

Ironically, he became a teacher, and not surprisingly, he hated it. So he found a side hustle which led him to build a teacherless school that utilizes technology in cool ways. He built his personal brand, started a podcast, and became a jack of all trades, a phrase he discovered is actually misquoted (or incompletely quoted) most of the time. The actual phrase is “A jack of all trades is a master of none but better than a master of one.”

Richard, who identifies as a “generalist,” was thrilled to hear him say that. It took Richard a long time to appreciate that quality in himself. It always seemed to him like the most successful people had an extremely narrow area of focus, while Richard was just generally good at a lot of different things. Now he realizes that, if you want to excel organizationally as a leader, you have to have a general understanding of how every area of the company works. 

The Culture of Power

Richard loved Mike’s TED talk on recognizing privilege and asked him to break down the culture of power for listeners. Mike says that the “culture of power” is a phrase coined by Lisa Delpit. It’s this idea that power structures exist all around us. 

Mike used the example of his mostly Black and Latino students, who would say to him from a place of major deficit, “I could never go to college. I’ll never be Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Lebron James.” Mike would try to dig deep to find something to help empower them. “No, you’re probably not going to be Lebron James, but you can be JJ Redick, if you do the right things and can see yourself differently.” He wanted them to have an alternate way of viewing what they thought were deficiencies. 

Each of us needs to understand power structures and accept where we have privilege. There’s white privilege (which people get all up in arms about), but there are other privileges too. “I speak English,” Mike says. “As long as I live in the U.S., that gives me an advantage. I have the use of all my limbs. I went to college. My mom went to college. There are things that give me privilege.”

Empowering Those You’re Charged With Leading

Mike says that, as a leader, your words carry a lot of weight. When you recognize the qualities and skills of the people you lead, you can metaphorically lift their chin when you see greatness in them. He knows a guy who’s often the most powerful person in the room. He saw something in Mike back in the day, and told him so, and it made a huge difference in Mike’s life. Good leaders help their people see themselves as powerful, give them that chin-up moment.

Richard agrees. “You don’t need to flex your power for people to know you have it,” he says. “True leadership...

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When we focus the bulk of our time on underperformers and fixing problems, we bring the rest of the team down.

Every time you fix something, does something else break? Are you constantly drained from plugging leaks and putting out fires? Does it feel like your workweek is just a giant real-life game of Whack-a-Mole?

If so, chances are, you’ve probably fallen into the trap of always focusing on the underperformer. We’re hardwired as humans—and especially as leaders—to fix what’s breaking. We bounce from one broken thing to the next. Some of us hang our identity on that. But what happens is that we unintentionally neglect and overlook what’s going well. And our reward for fixing one problem is being handed the next.

In this episode, co-hosts Richard Lindner and Jeff Mask talk about our tendency to focus on underperformers and how it’s not a sustainable way to run a business. There’s a much better way to get things done.

The Business Law of Thirds

Jeff walks us through a framework where you envision a rectangle divided into thirds. It’s The Law of Thirds, but the business one, not the photography one. In the top third are your high performers. When you’re growing something, leading through change, they’re lifting everyone around them, championing the cause, on board, a joy to lead. 

At the very opposite end of the rectangle, the bottom third, are the people who are frustrated and super cynical. They’re not just questioning the strategy (that can actually be helpful), but they’re always pessimistic, sowing seeds of doubt, a lot of toxicity. 

In the middle third are the fence-sitters, not quite sure where they stand. They could really go either way—and they do.

So, where do we as leaders focus? Our tendency is to pay attention to the bottom third and invest time there, because they need TLC. They’re loud, squeaky, and we’re concerned they’re going to affect everyone else. 

But, when we focus on the bottom third, two things happen. The fence-sitters realize where the attention is, and they start gravitating to the bottom. They do it subconsciously. We just go where the attention is, as human beings. Focusing on the bottom means you get more people doing the grumbling.

The second thing that happens is you alienate the top performers. Some of them will leave, frustrated with the situation. They get sick and tired of the hand-holding of all the mediocre people. They don’t thrive in that environment. 

Be Careful Not to Perpetuate the Cycle

When we focus on the underperformers, we’re modeling how to get attention: negativity. Negative actions get positive rewards. We’ve got to rewire that. 

When you’re so focused on trying to get an underperformer to the bare minimum, what’s happening to the ignored high performer? You might be thinking about High Performer Jane, “If everyone could just be like Jane...” Well, are you talking to Jane, investing in her, challenging her? Or are you putting her on a pedestal, comparing people to her, but then not focusing on her, giving her any attention, helping her go from good to great to greater?

Jim Collins, in his incredible book, Good to Great, says, “People are not your most important assets; the right people are.” Are you focusing on the right people, or do you need to flip the rectangle? Richard and Jeff would challenge you to focus just 25% of your time on the underperformers and 75% on the people who want to go from good to great. 

When you focus positive attention on the high performers, people who are excited, then the people in the middle will gravitate to the attention, the excitement, the energy. Some of the bottom third will jump out of the boat and leave. Fine. Leading them is one of the hardest things you have to do. We don’t want to lose

Once you know when you need to hire, the next question is who do you need to hire?

In this micro-episode, host Jeff Mask walks through a simple, but effective, model you can use to determine whether or not a person is a good fit for your company. The bottom line? You can do all the research, all the due diligence, and still mis-hire. Then you’ve got someone who doesn’t fit your team or culture, and you have to fire them.

Listen in as Jeff takes a dive deep down into some frameworks that he’s loved over the years that are super powerful and help you know exactly who to hire for the long term.

Don’t Hire Too Quickly

Once upon a time, Jeff was tasked with growing a brand new team from scratch. He had to go from zero to six people in 4-6 weeks. He let the urgency get to him. “I’ve got to hire people, get things going, meet this massive revenue target, and make sure we’re being wise stewards of resources,” he told himself. He quickly looked at resumes and skill sets and figured out job descriptions and did all the right things. Or so he thought. 

He realized later that he had let the urgency to hire by a certain time trump the necessity of hiring the right people for the long term. His short-term focus translated into a lot of turnover, wasted effort and time, and frustration for people. Ultimately, they ended up keeping only two of the six hires long term. He knew he could have done better. 

If you’ve hired too quickly or don’t have a hiring process, hopefully you can learn from his mistakes. Years later, he stumbled across an awesome book by Patrick Lencioni called The Ideal Team Player. It’s full of powerful systems and frameworks, and he wishes he’d had it sooner. 

How to Hire The Ideal Team Player

Jeff loves the simplicity of Lencioni’s models and how, when you use them and apply them, they actually work. The first one is called The Ideal Team Player (link at the end), and you ask three basic questions about a potential hire.

1. Is the person humble?
2. Is the person hungry?
3. Is the person smart?

Are they humble? To borrow a quote from C.S. Lewis, humble isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less. Is this person coachable? Can they listen? Are they looking out for others, not just for themselves?

Are they hungry? Are they driven, self-motivated? Are they self-aware? Can they take that and know when to take the initiative? Are they growing? Are they devouring books and wanting to learn more? That’s a great indicator.

Are they smart? Not intellectually smart—although that’s important—but people smart. Do they have emotional intelligence? Do they understand how to work well with others? Will they bring cohesion to your team?

You Need All Three: Humble, Hungry, Smart

Right smack dab in the center of humble, hungry, and smart is that ideal person you want to hire. This begs the question: what if someone has just one or two of the qualities and not all three? Is that good enough?

In a word, no. If someone is just humble, but not hungry or smart, they’re a doormat, a pleaser. They don’t stand up for things. If someone is just hungry, ambitious, but not humble or people smart, they’re just a bulldozer. And, if they’re people smart, but not humble or hungry, they’re just a charmer. 

Lencioni has names for people who embody two of the characteristics but are missing the third. What if you’re humble and hungry? You’re an accidental mess maker. What if you’re humble and people smart? You’re a loveable slacker. What if you’re hungry and people smart? You’re a skillful politician.

You need to be really careful of the counterfeits. You have to have all three. Two...