the five dysfunctions of a team with questions

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

A Leadership Fable

Patrick Lencioni San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (2002).

Teamwork ultimately comes down to practicing a small set of principles over a

long period of time. Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated

theory, but rather embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline

and persistence. [p. 220]

Quotes from The Five

Dysfunctions of a Team

In this handout 2

5 Presentation Outline

“Genuine teamwork in most organizations remains as elusive as it has ever been.”

This observation from the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team absolutely rings true. Still, near the top of every failure in an organization is the failure that comes from poor team performance. When a team functions well, it is a marvel to behold, and it lifts the entire organization. When a team fails to function well, the ripple effects hurt the entire organization. Building successful teams is an organizational survival skill. Serving on a team successfully, and helping make the entire team a success, is the job skill that may be the most important one of all.

7 Questions for Discussion

2 The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

“Genuine teamwork in most organizations

remains as elusive as it has ever been.” [p. 187]

Quotes

(Note: because the book is a “fable,” followed by a content description of the principles, this selection of quotes comes from the “content description” portion of the book).

As difficult as it is to build a cohesive team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical, whether you run the executive staff at a multi-national company, a small department within a larger organization, or even if you are merely a member of a team that needs improvement. (p. 185).

Two critical truths have become clear: First, genuine teamwork in most organizations remains as elusive as it has ever been. Second, organizations fail to achieve teamwork because they unknowingly fall prey to five natural but dangerous pitfalls, which I call the five dysfunctions of a team. They form an interrelated model, making susceptibility to even one of them potentially lethal for the success of a team. (p. 187).

In the context of building a team, trust is the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. In essence, teammates must get comfortable being vulnerable with one another. This description stands in contrast to a more standard definition of trust, one that centers around the ability to predict a person’s behavior based on past experience. (p. 195).

It is only when team members are truly comfortable being exposed to one another that they begin to act without concern for protecting themselves. (p. 196).

Most successful people learn to be competitive with their peers, and protective of their reputations. It is a challenge for them to turn those instincts off for the good of a team, but that is exactly what is required. Teams that lack trust waste inordinate amounts of time and energy managing their behaviors and interactions within the group. They tend to dread team meetings, and are reluctant to take risks in asking for or offering assistance to others. As a result, morale on distrusting teams is usually quite low, and unwanted turnover is high. (p. 196)

Building trust requires shared experiences over time, multiple instances of follow-through and credibility, and an in-depth understanding of the unique attributes of team members. (p. 197).


“All great relationships, the ones that last over time,

require productive conflict in order to grow.”

[p. 202]

Connection to dysfunction 2: by building trust, a team makes conflict possible because team members do not hesitate to engage in passionate and sometimes emotional debate, knowing that they will not be punished for saying something that might otherwise be interpreted as destructive or critical. (p. 202).

All great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow. This is true in marriage, parenthood, friendship, and certainly business. (p. 202).

It is important to distinguish productive ideological conflict from destructive fighting and interpersonal politics. Ideological conflict is limited to concepts and ideas, and avoids personality-focused, mean-spirited attacks. Teams that engage in productive conflict know that the only purpose is to produce the best possible solution in the shortest period of time. They discuss and resolve issues more quickly and completely than others, and they emerge from heated debates with no residual feelings or collateral damage, but with an eagerness and readiness to take on the next important issue. (pp. 202 & 203.).

When team members do not openly debate and disagree about important ideas, they often turn to back-channel personal attacks, which are far nastier and more harmful than any heated argument over issues.

Healthy conflict is actually a time saver. (p. 203)

Connection to dysfunction 3: by engaging in productive conflict and tapping into team members’ perspectives and opinions, a team can confidently commit and buy into a decision knowing that they have benefited from everyone’s ideas. (p. 207).

In the context of a team, commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in. Great teams make clear and timely decisions and move forward with complete buy-in from every member of the team, even those who voted against the decision. Great teams understand the danger of seeking consensus, and find ways to achieve buy-in even when complete agreement is impossible. They understand that reasonable human beings do not need to get their way in order to support a decision, but only need to know that their opinions have been heard and considered. (p. 207).

Connection to dysfunction 4: In order for teammates to call each other on their behaviors and actions, they must have a clear sense of what is expected. Even the most ardent believers in accountability usually balk at having to hold someone accountable for something that was never bought in to or made clear in the first place. (p. 212).


A functional team must make the collective results of the group more

important to each individual than individual members’ goals.

(p. 217-218).

Members of great teams improve their relationships by holding one another accountable, thus demonstrating that they respect each other and have high expectations for one another’s performance. As politically incorrect as it sounds, the most effective and efficient means of maintaining high standards of performance on a team is peer pressure… More than any policy or system, there is nothing like the fear of letting down respected teammates that motivate people to improve their performance. (p. 213).

Connection to dysfunction 5: If teammates are not being held accountable for their contributions, they will be more likely to turn their attention to their own needs, and the advancement of themselves or their departments. An absence of accountability is an invitation to team members to shift their attention to areas other than collective results. (p. 216).

The ultimate dysfunction of a team is the tendency of members to care about something other than the collective goals of the group. (Note: results are not limited to financial measures like profit, revenue, or shareholder returns). (p. 216).

Political groups, academic departments, and prestigious companies are also susceptible to this dysfunction (inattention to results), as they often see success in merely being associated with their special organizations. (p. 217).

A functional team must make the collective results of the group more important to each individual than individual members’ goals. (p. 217-218).

A team ensures that its attention is focused on results by making results clear, and rewarding only those behaviors and actions that contribute to those results. (p. 218).

Teamwork ultimately comes down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence. Ironically, teams succeed because they are exceedingly human. By acknowledging the imperfections of their humanity, members of functional teams overcome the natural tendencies that make trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and a focus on results so elusive. (p. 220).


[Street Address] [City], [State][Postal Code]

Presentation Outline 1. Dysfunction one: An absence of trust among team members.

– (resulting problem: invulnerability)

2. Dysfunction two: Fear of conflict. -- (resulting problem: artificial harmony)

3. Dysfunction three: Lack of commitment. -- (resulting problem: ambiguity)

4. Dysfunction four: An avoidance of accountability. -- (resulting problem: low standards)

5. Dysfunction five: Inattention to results. -- (resulting problem: status and ego)

• Another way to look at this model – imagine how members of truly cohesive teams behave:

1. They trust one another.

2. They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas.

3. They commit to decisions and plans of action.

4. They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans.

5. They focus on the achievement of collective results.

1. Suggestions for overcoming dysfunction 1

• Personal histories exercise

• Team effectiveness exercise -- team members identify the single most important contribution that each of their peers makes to the team, as well as one area that they must either improve upon or eliminate for the good of the team

• Personality and behavioral preference tools (e.g., MBTI)

• 360-degree feedback -- (the author recommends that this be divorced from compensation and formal performance evaluation)

• Experiential team exercises – ropes courses, and other experiential team exercises (note: the author observes that these seem to have lost some of their luster in recent years)

• The role of the leader: demonstrate vulnerability first; genuine, not staged.

To succeed as a team requires

practicing a small set of principles over a

long period of time.

Teams only work when the five

dysfunctions described in this

book are acknowledged,

identified, and overcome.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team A Leadership Fable

San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (2002). by Patrick Lencioni


Presentation Outline, continued 2. Suggestions for overcoming dysfunction 2

• Acknowledge that conflict is productive.

• Mining – extract disagreements, call out sensitive issues…

• Real-time permission – openly state, in the heat of the moment, that this conflict is productive; “it is ok, even good, for us to have this conflict…”

• The role of the leader: practice restraint; allow conflict, and resolution, to occur naturally. (Do not let the {natural} desire to protect members from harm to prematurely interrupt disagreements).


• Recognize the dangers inherent within the desire for consensus and certainty.

• Cascading messaging – leave meetings clearly aligned with one another

• Deadlines – make clear deadlines for when decisions will be made, and honor those deadlines with discipline and rigidity.

• Contingency and worst-case scenario analysis

• Low risk exposure therapy – demonstrate decisiveness in relatively low-risk situations

• The role of the leader: the leader must be comfortable with the prospect of making a decision that ultimately turns out to be wrong. And the leader must be constantly pushing the group for closure around issues, as well as adherence to schedules that the team has set. What the leader cannot do is place too high a premium on certainty or consensus.


• Accountability refers specifically to the willingness of team members to call their peers on performance or behaviors that might hurt the team.

• Publication of goals and standards – the enemy of accountability is ambiguity

• Simple and regular progress reviews

• Team rewards

• The role of the leader: to encourage and allow the team to serve as the first and primary accountability mechanism. (Sometimes strong leaders naturally create an accountability vacuum within the team, leaving themselves as the only source of discipline).


• Team status – plenty of teams fall prey to the lure of status.

• Individual status – the familiar tendency of people to focus on enhancing their own positions or career prospects at the expense of the team.

• Recognize that many teams are simply not results focused – they do not live and breathe in order to achieve meaningful objectives, but rather merely to exist or survive.

• Public declaration of results – teams that are willing to commit publicly to specific results are more likely to work with a passionate, even desperate desire to achieve those results.

• Results based rewards – letting someone take home a bonus merely for “trying hard” sends a message that achieving the outcome may not be terribly important after all.

• The role of the leader: perhaps more than any of the other dysfunctions, the leader must set the tone for a focus on results. If team members sense that the leader values anything other than results, they will take it as permission to do the same for themselves.


TRUST

HEALTHY CONFLICT ____

COMMITMENT ____

PEER ACCOUNTABILITY ____

ATTENTION TO RESULTS ____

Strategic Questions Strategic leadership focuses on transforming the organization from what it is to what it aspires to become. This fourth dimension of leadership requires a long term and change-oriented perspective for an organization to envision the future and develop a practical, achievable and yet aggressive strategy for shaping its destiny. At this level of leadership, employees follow the leader because they believe in the leader’s sense of vision for the future, even if they do not fully understand what the journey will look like. A willingness to leave the past behind and follow the leader into the future is heavily influenced by their understanding of (1) how the organization treats people (relational); (2) how competent the organization is (operational); and (3) whether the organization walks the talk of its stated values (systems).

1. The impact of trust ripples out in rings.

The stronger the trust, the stronger the ripples. On the graphic above, rate the strength of each “ripple” in your organization on a scale of 1 (weak) to 5 (strong).

2. What do your ratings tell you about the strength of trust in your organization?

3. What is your vision for the future regarding the presence of trust within the organization?

4. How would this vision affect the trust level of external customers?


Systems Questions Systems leadership designs, implements and ensures the effective functioning of healthy systems that govern how all underlying operations are managed. It relies heavily upon trust-building to institutionalize and operationalize the authentic values of the organization. In this third dimension of leadership, the leader transitions from managing daily operations to creating an operational environment that facilitates excellent performance by shaping the culture and core values of the organization. At this level of leadership, people choose to follow because they trust that the leader is developing well-run and healthy systems that rise above individually weak supervisors and managers. But building trust in the organization’s systems can happen only when building upon a foundation of widespread relational and operational leadership competency.

1. The foundation of a high-functioning team is mutual trust. On a scale of 1 (non-existent) to 5 (complete), rate the level of mutual trust within the work culture of your organization. ________________

2. How can we increase this level?

5. See question #1 under Operational Questions. How can we improve the effectiveness of these leaders in each of the roles mentioned?

Operational Questions Operational Leadership focuses on supervisory and managerial effectiveness. In this second dimension of leadership, the individual progresses from managing relationships to managing the performance of employees and operations. At this leadership level, people choose to follow primarily because of positional and intellectual authority – they assume that the supervisor or manager knows more than they do about the job at hand. However, Operational Leadership builds on Relational Leadership--if you cannot manage relationships, you can never achieve excellence in managing the performance of your employees and operations.


Operational Questions, continued 1. On a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), rate yourself as a leader in each area.

Mutual Trust __________ The role of the leader: to demonstrate vulnerability first--genuine, not staged.

Healthy Conflict __________ The role of the leader: to practice restraint; to allow conflict and resolution to occur naturally. Do not let the [natural] desire to protect members from harm to prematurely interrupt disagreements.

Commitment __________ The role of the leader: to be comfortable with the prospect of making a decision that ultimately turns out to be wrong. He/she must be constantly pushing the group for closure of issues, as well as adherence to schedules that the team has set. The leader cannot place too high a premium on certainty or consensus.

Peer Accountability __________ The role of the leader: to encourage and allow the team to serve as the first and primary accountability mechanism. Sometimes strong leaders naturally create an accountability vacuum within the team, leaving themselves as the only source of discipline.) Attention to Results __________ The role of the leader: Perhaps more than any of the other dysfunctions, the leader must set the tone for a focus on results. If team members sense that the leader values anything other than results, they will take it as permission to do the same for themselves.

2. “Teamwork ultimately comes down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time . . . embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.” What is a “principle” that you are passionate about? Into which of the above-mentioned areas does that principle fit?

3. How can you be a team leader and team member at the same time?

Relational Questions Relational Leadership is the foundational competency upon which all other leadership dimensions are constructed. At this leadership level, people choose to follow primarily because of how the leader treats them. Many otherwise qualified managers never achieve excellence as leaders because they do not manage relationships well. High-performance organizations place a priority on developing the Relational Leadership skills of all employees, from front line workers to senior executives.

1. Think of a time when you were a member of a good team. Describe the relationships on that team.


Strategic Government

Resources

P.O. Box 1642 Keller, TX 76242

817.337.8581

www.governmentresource.com

Prepared by Randy Mayeux

For more information on Executive Book Briefings, please contact Krisa Delacruz at [email protected].

Relational Questions, continued 2. On a scale of 1 (non-existent) to 5 (complete), rate each area as it pertains to your current

team.

Mutual Trust __________ “. . . the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group.”

Healthy Conflict __________ “. . . limited to concepts and ideas, and avoids personality-focused, mean-spirited attacks” “. . . the only purpose is to produce the best possible solution in the shortest period of time.”

Commitment __________ “Great teams make clear and timely decisions and move forward with complete buy-in from every member of the team, even those who voted against the decision.” “ . . . reasonable human beings do not need to get their way in order to support a decision, but only need to know that their opinions have been heard and considered.”

Peer Accountability __________ “Members of great teams improve their relationships by holding one another accountable, thus demonstrating that they respect each other and have high expectations for one another’s performance.”

Attention to Results __________ “A functional teams must make the collective results of the group more important to each individual than individual members’ goals. A team ensures that its attention is focused on results by making results clear, and rewarding only those behaviors and actions that contribute to those results.”

3. What is one thing that you could do to improve one of these areas?

the five dysfunctions of a team with questions

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