Through a fable, Patrick Lencioni describes in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the dangerous pitfalls of team dynamics.  Decision tech, a two year old fictitious technology company, has the human and financial capital along with an innovative product to be a leader in the industry. The company was faced with low morale, silo mentality, declining productivity, and lack of accountability. Kathryn, their newly hired CEO, was faced with the monumental task of transforming the dysfunctional group and getting the team rowing in the same direction.  Lencioni uses the characters in the book to outline the five common pitfalls and provides a roadmap on how to overcome the dysfunctions in building a cohesive team.   

Absence of Trust
At the foundation of the model is absence of trust.  Without trust teamwork is impossible.  Lencioni defines trust as the “confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective of careful around the group.”  This includes showing vulnerability, opening up about successes, failures, strengths and weaknesses.  Teams who demonstrate trust ask for help, accept others input, give one another the benefit of the doubt, tap into other’s skill sets, and focus time and energy on important issues rather than politics.  A leader’s role is to demonstrate vulnerability first.

Overcoming this dysfunction requires time and an understanding of the unique attributes of team members.  Lencioni suggest the following to build trust:

• Personal Histories Exercise – team members answer a share short list of questions about themselves
• Team Effectiveness Exercise – identify the single most important contribution each of their peers, as well as one area that must either be improved or eliminated for the good of the team
• Personality and Behavioral Profiles – using practical and scientific behavioral descriptions of way team members think, speak and act
• 360 Degree Feedback – outside of performance evaluations, a tool to identify strengths and weaknesses without any repercussions
• Experiential Team Exercises – rope course and other experiential team activities

Fear of Conflict
Lencioni distinguishes between ideological conflict and interpersonal conflict.  Ideological conflict focuses on concepts but can have same external qualities as interpersonal conflict - passion, emotion and frustration.  Often teams avoid conflict to minimize hurting feelings which can lead to dangerous tension and politics.  Teams that engage in conflict have interesting meetings, solve real problems quickly, minimize politics, and identify critical topics for discussion.

The first step in overcoming this dysfunction is acknowledging that conflict is productive. Leaders should model appropriate conflict behavior and promote healthy conflict within their organizations.  Tools suggested for improving this area include:

• Mining – assign a member of team to take on the responsibility of mining conflict, calling out sensitive issues and forcing team members to work on them
• Real Time Permission – reminding people engaged in conflict that it is good for the team
• Personality and Behavioral Profiles – helps identify approaches to use in different situations

Lack of Commitment
Commitment occurs when there is clarity and buy-in.  Great teams make clear timely decisions and move forward without having consensus and certainty.   Lencioni states the lack of commitment is usually caused by the desire for consensus and the need for clarity.  A great team ensures that everyone’s ideas are genuinely considered and when there is an impasse the leader is allowed to make the decision.  The old military axiom applies, “a decision is better than no decision.” Leaders must be willing to make a decision that ultimately turns out to be wrong.

Great teams that have commitment create clarity around direction and priorities, aligns the entire team around objectives, learns from their mistakes, moves forward without hesitation and can change direction along the way.    A few ways to ensure commitment:

• Cascading Messaging – review key decisions and agree on what needs to be communicated
• Deadlines – commit to deadlines
• Contingency and Worst-Case Scenario Analysis – discuss contingency plans for decisions that struggling to make Low Risk Exposure Therapy – force team to make decisions in low risk situations without little analysis or research

Avoidance of Accountability
In this context, accountability refers to the willingness of team members to call out others behaviors and performance.  The lack of accountability encourages mediocrity, creates resentment among those who have different performance standards, and the team misses deadlines.  Great teams identify problems quickly by questioning each other and ensure high standards.  For this to occur, a leader should encourage and allow the team to serve as the primary accountability mechanism.   A few suggestions on building accountability:

• Publications of Goals and Standards- clarify what the team needs to achieve, who needs to deliver what, and how everyone must behave in order to succeed
• Simple and Regular Progress Reviews – communicated frequently on progress with stated objectives and standards
• Team Rewards – shift rewards away from individuals to the team

Inattention to Results
Teams that aren’t results focused stagnate, lose achievement-oriented employees, and encourage team members to focus on their own career and individual goals rather than the greater whole.  Lencioni stresses that every good organization specifies what it plans to achieve in a given period.  Leaders need to demonstrate their desire to be results focused, making the results clear and rewarding those behaviors/actions that contributed to the results.  Some suggestions to help teams focus on results include:

• Public Declaration of Results – committing publicly to specific results will more likely spark passion in achieving those goals
• Results-Based Rewards – tie rewards to the achievement of outcomes (don’t rely on financial incentives alone)

Use the Five Dysfunctions of a Team as an internal book club.  Check out the online resources at http://www.tablegroup.com/dysfunctions/.