overcoming the five dysfunctions of a team

How these Dysfunctions of a Team Work in Practice If your leadership team is struggling, it can often be traced back to these behaviours. When individuals aren’t held accountable, team members naturally tend to look out for their own interests, rather than the interests of the team. When teams don’t commit, you can’t have accountability: “people aren’t going to hold each other accountable if they haven’t clearly bought into the plan”.Ī team can only become results-oriented when all team members place the team’s results first. Without conflict, it is not easy for team members to commit and buy-in to decisions, resulting in an environment where ambiguity prevails. Teams that are lacking trust are incapable of having an unfiltered, passionate debate about things that matter, causing team members to avoid conflict, replacing it with an artificial harmony.

This is a huge waste of time and energy, as team members invest in defensive behaviour instead, and are reluctant to ask for help from – or assist – each other. The root cause of lack of trust lies with team members being unable to be vulnerable and open with one another. These cause confusion, misunderstanding, negative morale and can impact entire organisations. It’s a model we refer to a lot.Īccording to Lencioni, there are five basic dysfunctions that teams commonly struggle with. Why Teams Struggleīusiness writer, Patrick Lencioni has a model that explains why relationship dynamics in leadership teams are so important, and the dysfunctional behaviours that cause teams to have problems. But all too often we’re called in to help because they’re not.Īnd the reason they’re not high performing can usually be traced back to the relationships between team members. If the leadership team is high performing, all well and good. It’s isomorphic: what happens in one place happens in another place. Because these patterns cascade down the organisation, causing all sorts of effects. One of the key things we look at when we go into any organisation is team dynamics.Įspecially the dynamics and patterns in the leadership team.

Overcoming the five dysfunctions of a team