Five Dysfunctions of a Team: Executive Summary
I will be writing a 5-part series about the five common dysfunctions of a team to create more awareness on common issues and explore potential solutions. In case you’re not familiar with the framework, this book called “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” was written by Patrick Lencioni, founder and president of The Table Group (a firm that has been helping leaders improve their organizational health since 1997). This framework has stood the test of time and highlights important learnings for leaders in the workplace now more than ever.
“The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” is written as a fictional leadership story of a new CEO and her team. The best part about the book, however, is the framework that it introduces as it concretely describes the critical ingredients of success for high-functioning and collaborative teams.
The Five Dysfunctions are as follows, and I’ve written a deep-dive blog post with practical solutions for each of them. Consider this a table of contents summary for each one.
- Absence of Trust (deep-dive here)
- Fear of Conflict (deep-dive here)
- Lack of Commitment (deep-dive here)
- Avoidance of Accountability (deep-dive here)
- Inattention to Results (deep-dive here)
Notice how each step builds towards the following step and unsurprisingly, trust is at the very bottom and is fundamental in building the other areas. I would encourage every leader of teams to reflect on these 5 areas and evaluate where there may be room for opportunity to build and how to stack-rank solutions.-
Happy reading!
Nancy
