665: Pat Lencioni - Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Fear-Based Success, Working Genius, Anticipating Objections, and The Hidden Cost of Proving Yourself

**Ryan Hawk** (0:02)
Welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this, and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader, the great, Pat Lencioni is back, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Ideal Team Player, The 6 Types of Working Genius, and many other books. He sold over 10 million copies, and is the founder of The Table Group. Pat is a legend. We recorded this one. It was really cool with members of my Learning Leader Circle on the call, and a few of them asked some really insightful questions towards the end of the conversation. Some of the topics we discussed. What coach, Eric Spoelstra, told LeBron James about the five dysfunctions of a team when LeBron joined the Heat? Then, Pat told a story about just last week when he had to pull the CEO card, dropped an F-bomb and had to let everybody know this is what we're doing and why us as leaders need to do that sometimes too. Then, the hardest question he asked himself as a parent, am I pushing them too hard or not enough? So good. Then, why he says, true greatness comes from freedom and love and not fear of failure. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Pat Lencioni. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to providing amazing people to their clients and taking great care of them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global can get you the people you need and help you develop them to reach their full potential. Developing your people can be tough, but having productive employees can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com/learningleader.
That's insightglobal.com/learningleader to learn more.
You've written many best-selling books. You've created assessment tools like The Working Genius. You've given speeches all over the world. You've advised some of the most powerful people in the world. I'm very curious to learn what you think in your life that you've mastered the most.

**Pat Lencioni** (2:45)
Oh, what I've mastered. Man, that's a question. Because I'm learning more now than I ever have. And the older you get, the more you realize what you don't know. You know what I think? Somebody told me this the other day. He said he thinks he's the best in the world at it other than me. So that must mean I've mastered it. And that is, I think I'm really good at anticipating people's objections. When I talk to people, I actually think about, oh, man, what might they be thinking? And what do I need to put out there to help them know that I'm thinking what they're thinking? And whether I'm talking to people interpersonally or when I'm giving a speech or writing a book or in a podcast, I like to think about what the other person might be thinking like, I think this is stupid. This is touchy-feely or I don't know if this is real. I like to go there first and say to people, hey, I know you're probably wondering this. So I think maybe I've mastered the art of anticipating people's objections.
And I learned that from a guy named Terry Pearce, who wrote a book years ago called Leading Out Loud. So that's what I do.

**Ryan Hawk** (3:46)
Interesting. How does that affect you as a leader, both at work and a leader in your house?

**Pat Lencioni** (3:52)
I think that I lean into empathy and I try to understand where other people are coming from. And it allows me kind of get to the crux of things quicker. And by the way, I should say that I think I got really good at this naturally because in my life, there was some wounds from childhood where I had to constantly be earning people's approval and helping them listen to me. So when I was a kid, I think I learned in my family and in other things to always try to please people and try to anticipate what they were thinking to get permission to be heard. And so I think that's where this came from.

**Ryan Hawk** (4:25)
I was reading about your childhood this morning. You were the valedictorian, the student body president. You played point guard on the basketball team. You had a brother, you had a sister, your dad's a sales rep for a liquor distributor. So what are the wounds that you're talking about? Like it sounds like you absolutely destroyed it through high school. Like you were the top of everything. You were the guy.