Rating: Excellent
The Five Dysfunction of a Team blurb excerpt: Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail?
Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.
My opinion: Teamwork is the ultimate competitive advantage and storytelling is the ultimate vehicle for learning. Despite the simplicity of the content, the blending of the lessons within the narrative was superb. Although simple this book was a great reminder that leaders need to nurture team cohesion, align people with a NorthStar goal, and teach teams how to win. Also, that avoiding conflict is costly and that information and example cascade down from leadership. This was one of the Best Leadership Books I have read in a long time.
Lessons from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team:
Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.
If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time. The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team:
Absence of trust, unwilling to be vulnerable within the group.
Fear of conflict, seeking artificial harmony over constructive and passionate debate.
Lack of commitment, feigning buy-in for group decisions creates ambiguity throughout the organization.
Avoidance of accountability, ducking the responsibility to call peers, superiors on counterproductive behavior which sets low standards.
Inattention to results, focusing on personal success, status, and ego before team success.
Absence of Trust:
A fractured team is just like a broken arm or leg; fixing it is always painful, and sometimes you have to rebreak it to make it heal correctly. And the rebreak hurts a lot more than the initial break because you have to do it on purpose. Building trust requires shared experiences over time, multiple instances of follow-through and credibility, as well as an in-depth understanding of the unique attributes of team members. It requires vulnerability and willingness to lean in. Those who are not willing to be vulnerable and contribute may not be the right fit moving forwards.
A failure to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in an unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments.
Fear of Conflict:
A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy-in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings. Conflict Miner - assign someone the role of uncovering and extracting buried conflicts within the team. Unearthing tensions and creating a space for healthy conflict can be a very productive exercise.
"Tension is not the same as conflict"
Lack of Commitment: Disagree and Commit: You can disagree with something, argue against it, but still commit to it if it’s for the good of the team. It’s possible because people will buy in if they have first weighed in. The two greatest barriers to commitment are the desire for consensus and the need for certainty. Commitment is a function of two things:
Clarity
Buy-in.
Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team.
Avoidance of Accountability:
Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.
Inattention to Results:
Everyone should focus on results instead of individual recognition, adopting a set of common goals and measurements and then using them to make collective decisions on a daily basis.
Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.
7 Success Categories:
Revenue
Expenses
New customer acquisition
Current customer satisfaction
Employee retention
Market awareness
Product quality
Teams must have goals in each category but collectively must align all departments around one primary goal. As an example, if the goal is to increase revenue by $100,000 in the next quarter the investment required to achieve that goal should be factored into expenses, the number of new customers should be calculated based on expected churn value + revenue growth goal divided by the average deal size. *There were also some example exercises provided which I have not included in my summary.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Best Quotes:
“Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they're doing it because they care about the team.”
“Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”
“Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.”
“Some people are hard to hold accountable because they are so helpful. Others because they get defensive. Others because they are intimidating. I don’t think it’s easy to hold anyone accountable, not even your own kids”
“The ultimate test of a great team is results."
“Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.”
“A fractured team is a lot like a broken arm, fixing it is always painful and sometimes you have to re-break it to make it heal correctly”
“Everybody likes to learn about and talk about themselves until the criticism comes”
“If the company is failing then we are all failing and we can’t truly justify the performance of each department”
“If everything is important, nothing is”
“If you can’t find a way to make money, avoiding spending it is no good”
"Accountability is a shared team approach”
"It’s better to overstate a problem than understate it."
What Next:
If you are interested in this book, you may want to check out our list of other Excellent Books
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