The Ideal Team Player

Told first as a fable and then as a practical model, this book identifies three virtues that make someone an ideal team player: humble, hungry, and smart (in the interpersonal sense). Lencioni shows how the absence of any one virtue creates a predictable type of problematic colleague. He offers tools for hiring, assessing, and developing these traits.

Early hires define a startup's culture, and one toxic but talented person can poison a small team. This book gives founders a simple, memorable framework for hiring and developing people who actually make the team better.