5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencionni - Book Review

Intro

No need for too much introduction, book can be found on Audible and any other store. It’s got a fair amount of reviews but make sure you never take any book too literally, life is more complicated than that.

Review

1. Absence of Trust

What’s the definition of trust in the context of building a team?

It’s not easy to nurture trust because in the course of their lifetime, people are being pushed towards challenging one another, competing, therefore this behaviour might be hard to accept initially.

What should happen?

• - team members should have confidence that their peer’s intentions are good and there’s no reason to be protective of careful around the group
• - team members must learn to be vulnerable with one another and be confident that their vulnerability is not going to be used against them

What are some vulnerabilities?

• - professional weaknesses or skill deficiencies
• - interpersonal problems
• - mistakes and will to requests for help

If people are trustful in their team members, they can then concentrate their energy into simply doing the job at hand rather than being political with one another.

What are some tools to help us build trust?

• - Personal experiences exercise: answering questions about ourselves e.g. siblings, personal hobbies, best job, worst job - this adds personal level to our relationship (time required 1h)
• - Team effectiveness exercise: team members to identify the single most important attribute that each of the other members can bring to the team and also the single most important attribute they need to improve upon; we focus on one person at a time, starting with the team leader (time required 1h)
• - Myers Briggs type indicator (MBTI): it’s good for providing the best indicators about each one’s personalities and is not judgemental, no type is better than another; it’s based on research and members take active roles into identifying their own types (time required 4h)
• - 360 Feedback

Connection to dysfunction 2 (Fear of conflict): by building trust, team makes conflict possible; members know they are not going to be punished by participating in discussions and debates

2. Fear of conflict

It’s important that team members to believe that conflict is necessary.

Definition

• - in the context of the team this is related to ideological conflict and not mean-spirited hurtful one; it can have passion but it cannot be mistaken with discord or quarrel; members emerge from this conflict with no collateral damage and with eagerness to take on the next important issue
• - healthy conflict is a time saver because members do postpone discussions and take action faster

Tools to help us build constructive conflict:

• - miner of conflict:
  • in the meeting at least one member needs to become the miner of conflict, the person who will try to be complete the objective and stay with the conflict until it is resolved
  • the miner of conflict needs to understand when team members are becoming uncomfortable with the level of discord and remind them that this discussion is necessary
• - Thomas Kilmann conflict mode instrument (TKI): allows members to understand their natural inclination towards conflict and allows them to easily understand each other

Connection to dysfunction 3 (Lack of commitment): by engaging in productive conflict, a team can commit and buy into a decision knowing that the decision has benefited from all their ideas

3. Lack of Commitment

Definition:

• - Great teams make clear decisions and no member has doubts about the actions that have been agreed on
• - Great teams search for consensus; reasonable human beings do not need their opinions to be implemented but they need their opinions to be heard and considered
• - If consensus is not possible due to an impasse, then the leader of the team is allowed to make the call
• - Great teams unite behind decisions even if it’s little assurance that their decision is correct; they go by the military axiom that a wrong decision is better than no decision; it’s better to make a decision boldly and be wrong then change decision with equal boldness than not take any decision at all
• - In contrast, teams that have this dysfunction delay their decision until they are being sure that the decision is the correct one; as prudent as this might seem, it’s dangerous as it paralyses the team’s results

Tools to help build commitment:

• - Cascading messaging (clarity from top down regarding what needs to be done): at the end of any staff meeting, team leads need to discuss specific outcomes and what needs to be communicated to the team
• - Deadlines: ensure the existence of clear deadlines at the end of the decision; the worst enemy is ambiguity;
• - Contingency and worst case scenario analysis: make sure we have a contingency plan and communicate it

Connection to dysfunction 4 (Avoidance of accountability): In order for us to call on each other actions, we need to have a clear definition of what we need to do.

4. Avoidance of accountability

Definition:

• - Willingness of the team members to ‘enter the danger’ and keep ourselves accountable when we do not perform
• - Usually people don’t want to do this in order to not break relationship with the team member but in fact, they do just that by creating stress and frustration or resentment;
• - Great teams improve their relationships by keeping themselves accountable to one another; this means each member respects the other by having great expectations from their colleague
• - Peer pressure is one of the best tools that motivates people to improve their performance

Tools to help build accountability:

• - Publication of goals and standards: clarify publicly what team needs to achieve, who needs to deliver what and how we measure success
• - Simple and regular progress reviews: intermediary discussions about how the task is going and members should be communicating with one another in an intermediate state of the task

Connection to dysfunction 5 (Inattention to results): If team members are not being kept accountable for their actions, they’re more likely to turn their attention to their own needs; it’s an invitation to care more about their results than the actual team results

5. Inattention to results

Definition:

• - The tendency of the team members to care for something other than the team or its results
• - Results are not limited to financial ones (e.g. profit), this results is referred to outcome based performance
• - Ultimately any results that the team does, drives profit
• - A functional team must make the results of the team more important that the individual results of each member

Tools to help build attention to results:

• - Making team results clear and reward only the actions that contribute to those results
• - Works hand in hand with keeping ourselves accountable