The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

For all the attention that it has received over the years from scholars, coaches, teachers, and the media, teamwork is as elusive as it has ever been within most organizations. The fact remains that teams, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfunctional.

This was not bad, and I really thought it was going to be when I realized three quarters of the book was a fictional story about a CEO implementing the model of team dynamics the book espouses. The above quote from the introduction made me feel much better; it's rare for a management book to begin with a frank recognition of the darkness of the human heart. However, the model boils that down to only five main dysfunctions, and I question whether the show more treatments offered for them are really all that effective (although just walking the talk and becoming effective at discipline are a world of good medicine, there can be no doubt). That said, it's a quick read and the concepts (which take about twenty pages to actually lay out) may be made marginally more memorable by the 'fable,' but you could also go straight to page 187 (in the edition I read) and finish the book from there. I will say that it is refreshing to read a management book that has one simple, straightforward model, giving it a chance of actually being used. Also, it is not a baloney bunch of corporate speak; it is good sense. (If good sense were practiced by any significant population of leadership out there, we could dispense with this whole genre, but it isn't, so maybe a few folks will read this and improve.)

**Edited 6/30/15 to fix typo** show less

I thought the fictional company was a genius move, a way of incorporating business theory and applying it to a situation that we can easily understand, and be invested in. I've known nearly every type of personality that Lencioni constructs and I couldn't believe how interested in the story I was. It forced me to look back at all the successful teams I've been apart of, and all the terrible teams I've been a part of and it's remarkable how true the book's lessons are and how they apply to all types of organizations in real life. Terrific!

Published in 2002, this book is still totally relevant in 2019. Every leader in every organization I’ve ever worked for needs to read this book. Heck, every person in every organization I’ve ever worked for needs to read this book whether you are a leader or not. I promise you will see yourself in the examples represented.

What I liked most about this book was that 90% of the book was a story. You were reading what to do or what not to do in the form of a story. You were seeing in the story the model of what to do. So, it read like a fiction novel. The leader of the company in the story was a woman. For me, that made it easier to “see it in action” per se. The last 10% of the book was actually more of the typical leadership show more business book.

Some reviewers said the characters in the book were cartoonish and full of childish melodrama. But, to me, it was accurate as I work with people like this daily and always have no matter the company. An easy read as I read it in a few hours. show less

This was an excellent leadership book. Lencioni discusses the factors needed for team success. The principles seem like common sense but are easily neglected in the day to day activity of business. The principles are introduced as a fictional story of a dysfunctional team.

Often, the little anecdotes that are sprinkled into business books are annoying, so I want to look more closely at the difference here. The stories in a standard book are anecdata, hand selected scenes which illustrate a particular point. This can be done well, but often it's a shallow look at how if you apply this principle, poof! everything works as advertised. When used well, stories can illustrate a point, but they have to feel authentic. Authenticity doesn't show more necessarily mean true, but it can't be a perfectly packaged example of a miraculous change. The fable that makes up the bulk of this book is full of setbacks and there are no magical turnarounds.

The strength of this book is the memorable presentation which helps the ideas resonate. It's worth noting that the model itself seems to be based on just the author's experience. In my mental ranking of [(model data) > just model > just data >> anecdote >> opinion] that still makes it pretty good, but it's not as well founded as, for example, the model of successful Google teams. Probably, if there wasn't a fairly clear mapping of Lencioni's model onto elements of that model, I would have been somewhat more critical of the lack of foundation.

It's worth noting the model itself, although I'm sure that summaries can be found all over the internet. The model expresses what teams need for success as a series of dysfunctions and symptoms. This helps counter the tendency to see the positive and say, "We get along fine. We get things done. Nothing needs to change." Lencioni uses a pyramid model; the lower level dysfunctions make the higher more likely and need to be fixed first.

The fundamental dysfunction is an absence of trust. The main symptom of this is team members projecting attitudes of invulnerability. They aren't willing to do or say things which may let others perceive them as less talented or capable than others.

Without trust, a team will experience a fear of conflict, which often shows up as an artificial sense of harmony. It's clear this harmony is artificial when there is little disagreement in the team even though people disagree in the privacy of their thoughts or with the people they do trust. This dysfunction is a natural consequence of a lack of trust, because disagreement requires making yourself open to being wrong, a type of invulnerability.

Without active discussion of disagreement, members of a team won't commit to decisions; the decision will always be someone else's responsibility. This is signaled by a sense of ambiguity where people wonder what they've really decided on and committed to. Even though it may seem like people can commit without having first had conflict, the conflict is necessary for two reasons. First, without voicing disagreements, better ideas may not be considered and flaws in the idea under discussion not worked out. Voicing disagreement also helps people commit because it allows them to understand why their preferred outcome was not chosen. They may not agree with the reasoning, but at least they understand that there was a thoughtful process which led to the outcome. The phrase "Disagree and commit" is often used to express this concisely.

When there's a lack of commitment, then people avoid holding each other and themselves accountable for the decisions that were made, resulting in low standards when those goals are not met. It's hard to hold others or yourself accountable to decisions that they did not really commit to in the first place, especially when there was ambiguity on what the commitment was.

In a business setting, perhaps none of this would matter if the team were still getting results, but this lack of accountability and commitment feed directly into the fifth dysfunction: inattention to results. The symptoms of this one are people taking actions which advance their status or stroke their ego instead of working to achieve the group's goals. Achieving ambitious goals requires full commitment and everyone working toward the same end, but if teams aren't holding each other accountable and if the members are not committed to the goals they've set as the best way to advance the good of the organization, then people will fall back to optimizing for what they think is best, whether that is pursuing an idea that they think is better which may undermine the broader goals or explicitly focusing on their own advancement because they think that the whole effort is going to fail anyway.

Lencioni's presentation of these ideas is much more memorable than mine, so just go read the book. It's a quick read -- it probably won't take you much longer to read than my summary :-P show less

This is a "fable" in which a company gets a new top administrator who realizes that some of the failings of the business come from top brass not working together as a team. I appreciate how instead of being a book of just do this, do that, etc., the author chose to make this a story that showed how to have good leadership skills. My one complaint is that is clearly designed much more for corporations than nonprofits, although lessons for the latter could still be gleaned.

Good book for teaching concepts in an interesting manner. My only complaint is the convenient manner in which everything worked out in the end. It should have included a chapter or section on resolving conflict between team members who are at uncompromising ends of a decision besides leading to one quitting or getting fired. That aside, it is still an informative read - and quick - without making you want to take a nap in the middle. I would definitely recommend it to anyone working on a team, whether they're the leader or just a member.

In this book, Lencioni uses a story about the fictional DecisionTech Inc. to illustrate the five dysfunctions of a team and how they can be resolved. The dysfunctions boil down to a lack of trust (in the sense of not being able to feel like mistakes can be shared without reprisal), a fear of conflict that allows decision to be put off, and ultimately a lack of accountability — if people don’t feel like everyone is rowing in the same direction, then they can’t check in with the others to make sure they’re pulling their weight.

Using a story might be a slightly cheesy device for getting these concepts across, but admittedly it works better than a more abstract, academic discussion might have done. It also gives the author a chance show more to include skepticism and resistance, which the reader might have, and show ways to get around it. This is a light read—I plowed through it in an afternoon—and would certainly provide fodder for discussion at work.

This 3-star rating is an “it met my expectations” rating, so a good 3 stars. show less