Lencioni suggests that if you recruit individuals who have these three attributes, it is much easier to ensure the success of the organisation.
What Does Hungry Look Like In A Nursery Context?
Nursery staff who are hungry work hard to get the job done. They do not wait to be told what should happen next or what duties they should complete. Instead they are actively looking around for jobs to do and ways to be helpful. They get stuck in with high-quality, engaged interactions with the children without needing to be directed towards this and they are aware of the planning and routines that make the room work. They show a strong commitment to the work that they’re doing. You will see that they are passionate about working with children and families and they are hungry to learn more about the job, through professional learning and maybe even further qualifications.
What Does Humble Look Like In A Nursery Context?
Nursery staff who are humble are completely happy to be on the floor of the nursery, getting messy as part of children’s play and helping with basic routines, regardless of their official title in the organisation. This applies to leaders too! They get stuck in with everything and are capable of interacting kindly, respectfully and warmly with everyone – whether it’s the person delivering groceries for the week ahead or an Ofsted inspector.
What Does Smart Look Like In A Nursery Context?
Nursery staff who are smart show an excellent awareness of other people’s feelings. They are warm and careful with their words rather than cold or abrasive. They are never dismissive of others’ emotions. To give an example, if there is a new parent who is particularly anxious, they show excellent levels of empathy and take extra care to reassure the family. They cultivate positive relationships with other members of the team, showing warmth and understanding that helps to generate great team dynamics.
Recruiting Team Players
We all know that recruitment of staff in the nursery is difficult at the moment and it can feel impossible to show the selectiveness we would like. However, it is essential to remember that by not being selective enough about the right things, you can end up with a negative team culture that then leads to good people leaving.
Recruitment is therefore not just about getting the right numbers of people into your organisation, it is essential that you have excellent team players that will feed into a positive team culture, on which your retention is dependent. You might want to consider prioritising the team player attributes over traditional qualifications.
The thinking here is that if someone is hungry, humble and smart, you can support them to earn a qualification (e.g. through an apprenticeship) while they are working. On the other hand, someone who has the right qualifications but isn’t a good cultural fit for the organisation will end up either quickly leaving themselves or feeding into a negative culture that causes others to leave. To recruit people who are hungry, humble and smart, you need an effective selection process, including interview questions that truly probe these attributes and experiential assessments that help you to see how the individual gets on in practice.
Developing Team Players
For the staff you already have, this is an opportunity to have some honest conversations about their strengths and weaknesses. It is not uncommon for individuals to be great on two of the attributes, but lacking in one. This is an important developmental observation that starts meaningful professional growth.
Perhaps you have someone that is wonderfully people-smart and beautifully humble, but they’re not always that hungry – they wait to be told what to do and they show little interest in developing themselves professionally. You can ask them to assess this for themselves in the context of a one-to-one supervision or coaching session, and work out whether they are ready to put the work in to develop themselves on the attribute that is lacking. Don’t forget to apply this approach to yourself as well and to your leadership team. Self-assessment is a vital part of getting this right and modelling its importance across the whole organisation.
Celebrating Team Players
Recognise and reward your wonderful team players. This might mean a payrise or a promotion, but it could also be something less formal, such as a ‘shout out’ at the start of a week, or a ‘thank you for being a great teamplayer’ noticeboard in the staff room. Awards ceremonies – however little – are another great way to recognise the contribution that teamplayers make to the nursery.
