Five Dysfunctions of a Team Summarized

Summary

In “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni, a silicon-valley tech company fallen on hard times hires Kathryn, who has worked in the automotive industry and as a teacher for many years. This book explores the most common problems plaguing teams and how Kathryn deals with them.

The company’s CEO has been demoted and there are problems chiefly among its upper management team. Kathryn must solve these issues and this book is more of a how to guide done through narrative.

You can often see this even in the best of teams; in the book essentially Katy must deal with the issues present in the team, there are members that are dragging the success of the entire team down. Though some were valuable they were let go from the team. These are not easy problems to fix, nor are they things that will appear in any order while working in a team:

• Absence of Trust

• Fear of Conflict

• Lack of Commitment

• Avoidance of Accountability

• Inattention to results

Definitions

The author outlines five problems, called “Dysfunctions” that cause issues within team oriented settings. Here are the following dysfunctions and their definitions:

- LACK OF TRUST -

Trust is whether or not you can trust someone (NO Duh). But the thing is that this is a common dysfunction. Team members that lack trust won’t work well together, this is why you need team building exercises, and to get to know them in person. This is why IN PERSON meetings are so influential and beneficial to an entire team and its results. Please check my solutions page for more information.

- FEAR OF CONFLICT -

But what about the second one fear of conflict? A team in order to be successful needs to challenge one another, they should not be compliant with one another. This means you do not have to have a 100% compliance, but understanding, a team needs to understand one another and accept criticism. That does not mean being rude or hateful. That will only lead to negative conflict and resentment, which if you read later is really bad for the team…. This sprouts out of absence of trust, if you are going to express your true feelings you have to trust your team.

- LACK OF COMMITMENT -

Commitment may sound simple but this is a toughy, in most due to that people do not want to commit or do things for the group that puts them at risk. This is seen very often in tech programs or off-site campuses, especially people not willing to commit to a group they do not trust or know.

- AVOIDANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY -

Essentially Standards of Practice or no-buy-in. If a team member is not hitting a standard or a goal, or the whole team, then they shouldn’t be rewarded for this behavior. But if the whole team manages to be successful and does something good, then you should reward that behavior. People do like to be held accountable for their actions and the actions of their team. People do not like feeling responsible for things, even if they are directly responsible for it. This may sound like a repeat but hold with me here. Individual commitment is based on trust, and conflict, or resentment. If a team fights all the time and doesn’t get anywhere, resentment and distrust are far more likely to be the cause of a lack in buy in. This is where lack of committing to a plan or to a leader is troublesome for a team, we see this far more often in tech, and most in due part to the last two and later on based on someone’s ego. This is sprout out of a lack of commitment which is simply someone is committed but they don’t care about the results of the group.

- INATTENTION TO RESULTS -

Someone whose ego is well and ‘above’ those of the group. These person(s) are in it for themselves and are not driven by the results of the group. They are driven instead by their own need for satisfaction of their individual ego. This is what often leads the most trouble and is relatable to avoidance of accountability. People who have large egos also have a harder time being held accountable. If a team member does all their work and is arrogant or ego driven they will affect the team’s unity. They will also affect the atmosphere and trust between individuals, further dividing the team into individual clicks. They are blind to the group's results and are looking for their own individual results, this could be a grade or just monetary or social position. Team EGO, on the other hand, is having too much ego to believe they can tackle anything which can be burdensome to the teams scope. If a team cannot look at the product they each have a hand in creating and do not see the overarching goal, it will have negative effects on the entire project and/or product.

Identification and Solutions

For People in School

Some of these hard to do in a school environment, some of them are impossible to do in a school environment, it is key to understand that you are not alone as a team lead or as a manager. You have resources that you can access that can help both you and your team. Never be afraid to ask for advice.

Absence of Trust - How can I apply this?

Lead a team, get them to know one another, discuss and try to lead the team from the front, essentially have discussions normalize work and attitudes foster working relationships.

To get them to learn each other better, cover the Myers-Briggs Tests and have people share their personality type. This will cause good discussion.

Admit weakness and strengths, have each team member talk about their weakness and strengths. If they are too timid tell them that everyone else is doing it, and it will be better for them and the team if they share it.

Gauge empathy of each team member, if a team member does not have adequate or not empathy remove them from the team.

Fear of Conflict

• Easily just debate with one another, Debates or conflict are good in some settings as long as they are constructive.

• Mining - call out sensitive issues and force team to work through and find the problem, and identify it together.

• Real Time Permission - team members must coach one another and lead responsibly

NOTE: Your job is to be the shepherd of the team, and ensure they do not get lead astray.

Lack of Commitment - Signs

• Consensus - Do not have consensus, to achieve a complete agreement among all personnel is utmost impossible. Compliance is different you can still have teammates that disagree with the decision. But, that is good as long as it doesn’t anger them. The whole idea is to never have full consensus as it leads to teams not listening to objective criticism. This is also good for teams to know, you do not have to have a 100% consensus, you shouldn’t need too.

• Certainty - Great teams pride themselves on uniting behind decisions, and commit to clear courses

• Overcoming this dysfunction

• Cascading messaging - take a few minutes to go over everything you need to do today and what has been done.

• Deadlines - establish clear and cut goals and lines of when something must be dealt with or done by.

• Consistency and worse case scenario analysis, look at what the worst case scenario is for a project, and what you can consistently do to ensure that does not happen.

• Low-Risk exposure therapy, have a small project and see what happens, this could be a board game, or possibly a fake test.

Avoidance of Accountability - Signs

• Unwillingness to corporate or hold those for their behaviors responsible. Not taking responsibility for one’s own actions and casting it upon others.

• Resentment, mediocrity, miss of deadlines place an undue burden on the team leader is the sole source of discipline

Solutions/Tests

Publication of goals and standards with clarity and in public.

Simple and regular progress reviews, structure and review of goals actions and issues

Team Rewards for good work. (IE: reward the whole team not a single individual, doing so only further creates divides within your team, thus creating resentment and unnecessary friction between team members!)

Inattention to results

Team status (EGO) - Puts teams ego above oneself - GOOD, but not always, if it is for the sake of the company and not for the team that creates bad blood then it is not worth it

Individual Status (EGO) - placing one’s own ego above their compatriots is not only harmful to the team but also creates various issues such as elitism.

Solutions

Public Declaration of Results

Firing of ego individual

Results based reviews

Team effort building

Conclusion

This not an exhaustive lists of what to do, but merely suggestions. Sometimes the firing of an individual that causes unnecessary tension or are violating personal reputation of others is sometimes beneficial for a group of people. Even if they are highly skilled, ego is often the death of the best projects.

Works Cited

Lencioni, Patrick, and Kensuke Okabayashi. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Manga Ed.) an Illustrated Leadership Fable. Singapore: Jossey-Bass, 2008. Print.