Humble, Hungry, and Smart

Patrick Lencioni wrote a great book called "The Ideal Team Player" and in his book he writes about a team of leaders who are deciding on what kind of people they would like to hire. They settle on people who have the three "virtues" of humble, hungry, and smart. Humble means you don't brag too much about your own accomplishments and you also don't have to be forced to accept praise. It means knowing you did a good job and sharing that win with your team. Hungry means driven to get the job done and doing what it takes to meet goals. Smart doesn't mean you know how to do calculus. It refers to emotional intelligence. Smart means knowing how to have good relationships with your team mates. Lencioni does a wonderful job at describing these three characteristics and gives great guidance at the end of book on how to establish them at your own company.

We have adopted humble, hungry, and smart at Bridgeview. When we do our initial phone interview with potential candidates we explain to them that our company is very people-centric. We SEE the people behind the company names of our customers and vendors. We're interested in them as people. All our team members need to have this same attitude. Potential candidates are told what our company mission is and how being humble, hungry, and smart will help them accomplish that mission and feel satisfaction and happiness at work. We don't want unhappy, unfulfilled people working at Bridgeview. We want people who are happy to serve, who want to give of themselves, and who are interested in other people.  We also want our leaders to be humble, hungry, and smart. Our team members should be able to see our leaders modeling this behavior. After all, if the leader is a sourpuss, what gives team members the motivation to be caring and driven?

Has your company adopted humble, hungry, and smart? What can you do as a leader to encourage your team to adopt these three virtues?
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(Below: Bennett (left) is hungry! He's driven to get his soldering done so he can move on to the next step of the process. Haley (right) is humble. She's open to learning how to solder fans and is doing to prep work while waiting for her lesson.