Instaread Summaries - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni | Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review

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Patrick Lencionis

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

A Leadership Fable

by

Instaread

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This is a companion to the original book.

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Table of Contents

Patrick Lencionis The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is about the reasons teams fail to work together for the collective good of an organization and ways to overcome these problems.

There are five dysfunctions that cause teams to fail. These include teams that do not trust each other, teams that do not engage in productive conflict, teams that cannot commit to collective decisions, teams that do not hold each other accountable, and teams that fail to focus on collective goals. The five dysfunctions are all interrelated. When a team falls victim to one of the five dysfunctions, they become vulnerable to the other four.

The initial step in addressing these dysfunctions is to build trust between team members. Once that is done, members will be ready to engage in productive conflict. Since the conflict means they have had a say in collective decisions, they will then be ready to commit to those decisions. Learning to commit to group decisions will make them more open to providing other team members with feedback about how the others are doing. Holding each other accountable, in turn, helps a team focus on collective goals. That is because no team member wants to let other members down, preventing them from reaching the goals.

Kathryn Petersen: The new CEO of an underachieving fictional company, DecisionTech, tries to build an executive team that works well together so the company can achieve the results it has failed to attain so far. She lays out the five dysfunctions of a team for her executives and asks them to work with her to build a cohesive team.

The DecisionTech executive team: This is the fictional team of executives that Kathryn Petersen tries to get to work together for the collective good of the company. She turns around most of them, but loses a couple along the way, one who was putting her career over the collective good.

1. The first dysfunction of a team is an inability to trust.
2. The second dysfunction of a team is fear of engaging in conflict.
3. The third dysfunction of a team is lack of commitment to team decisions.
4. The fourth dysfunction of a team is unwillingness to hold other team members accountable.
5. The fifth dysfunction of a team is the inability to focus on collective goals as opposed to individual goals.
6. A leader can use various techniques to help build trust among team members.
7. To engage in productive conflict, team members must first understand what productive conflict is.
8. The main ingredient for team member commitment is for every member of a team to have a say in the decision making process.
9. It is often necessary to hold team members accountable for their shortcomings to force them to be better team players.
10. Ways to overcome an inability to focus on collective goals include making the goals public and rewarding only those behaviors and actions that lead to achieving those goals.

The first dysfunction of a team is an inability to trust one another.

Analysis

The main obstacle to a team building trust is that many people are unwilling to be vulnerable with each other. That is, they are unwilling to show their strengths and their weaknesses. It is only natural that many people fear that any admission of weakness will be used against them some day. For example, a past mistake or vulnerability could be used to deny someone a promotion.

Some organizations deliberately foster a culture of distrust among their executive team members, believing incorrectly that it will deliver better results. A major newspaper chain used to do that by pitting key team members against each other. Typically, the CEO of one of the chains papers would hold one-on-one meetings with three members of the executive team at which he would announce that a promotion will be available soon and the three invitees are the forerunners for the job. The CEO may think that pitting these executives against each other will generate the best results for the company since each of the executives will be working hard to prove themselves. But the CEO is actually putting an emphasis on the results of the three executives individual departments, not the entire company. This kind of scenario usually sets in motion a bitter rivalry among the three executives, who will not work with each other in fear of giving their rivals the upper hand. And, although those executives departments may show great results, the companys results as a whole may be disappointing. Another downside of pitting executives against each other is that when one finally gets the promotion, those who were passed over often leave, costing the company top talent.

The second dysfunction of a team is fear of engaging in conflict.

Analysis

Productive conflict is the kind of conflict where ideas are debated openly so that all sides of an issue can be explored with the goal of making the best group decision possible when addressing the issue. Teams that are unable to trust each other will not engage in productive conflict. Instead of voicing their opinions, many people will hold back for fear of offending others or being seen as the odd person out.

One reason that many team members are reluctant to engage in conflict in a team setting that could generate the best decisions possible is that most organizations also tell their employees that conflict in the workplace is inappropriate. Not only do many organizations convey this message, but they also make the ability to get along with others one of the performance standards they use to evaluate employees for pay increases and promotions. After being told that engaging in conflict in the workplace will be counted against them, many employees find it difficult to accept the notion that they should now engage in conflict in a team setting. The leader of a team who wants productive conflict in the team setting needs to explain the difference between personality conflicts and conflict within a team setting. That may help prod reluctant team members toward engaging in the kind of productive conflict the leader wants.

The third dysfunction of a team is lack of commitment to team decisions.

Analysis

If team members hold back from offering their unfettered views on an issue during a team debate, they will usually not be committed to the final decision the team makes. Since they have not put their mind, heart, and soul into the discussion that precedes the decision or if they oppose the decision the group makes, they will likely not buy into it and try to make it work. If they have expressed their views clearly, and the team decides against them, they are more likely to buy into the team decision.