The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and what is needed to create a Functional Team

Won't it be great to be part of a team where there is great teamwork and the individual team members don't have any personal agenda?  According to Patrick Lencioni in the book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team", because teams are made up of imperfect human beings, teams are inherently dysfunctional.  But the good news is, it's possible to make a team functional - though it's painfully difficult and requires a lot of effort.

Below are The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and what needs to happen to make a team functional where all team members are purposely rowing
in the same direction:

1. Absence of trust. Trust, not in the context that you'll trust someone would do his work, but rather confidence among your peers that their intentions are good so there is no reason to be careful on what you say or do around them.  In simpler terms, team members should be able to openly share their weaknesses, skill deficiencies, interpersonal shortcomings, mistakes and requests for help without worrying that these would be used against them. But this isn’t easy to achieve because in the course of career advancement, most successful people learn to be competitive with their peers and protective of their reputations, shared Lencioni.

2. Fear of conflict.  This is the tendency of people to hold back their honest opinions because they don’t want to hurt other’s feelings. When team members do not openly debate and disagree about important ideas, they often turn to backbiting or end up revisiting unresolved issues again and again. What needs to be done?  Team members should discuss and resolve issues quickly and completely. And even if discussions become heated debates, there should not be any residual feeling or collateral damage.

3. Lack of commitment.   According to Lencioni, commitment is a function of 2 things - clarity and buy in. When a great team makes a decision, team members should move forward with complete buy in from every member of the team - even those who voted against the decision.  How do you get buy in?  Most reasonable people don't have to get their way on a discussion, they just need to be heard and that their inputs were genuinely considered. When people speak up and are listened to, they would be more willing to support whatever decision is made.

4. Avoidance of accountability.   Each team member should hold each other accountable for what they signed up to do for high standards of performance and behavior. If they see someone not holding up to it, they should call each other's attention. Unfortunately, most people are afraid to call someone's attention to avoid interpersonal discomfort.

5. Inattention to results.  Most individuals have the tendency to enhance their positions or career prospects at the expense of their team and they do not set meaningful objectives but rather just work to exist or survive.  A great team must put the collective goal of the group more important than each individual members’ goals and the collective goal should be outcome-based performance. 

What happens when you have a Top Performer with Toxic Behavior in a Team?

Photo by Canva Studio from Pexels

There are bosses who care about their managers' personalities and management styles if it fits the company culture and there are also bosses who don't really care about personalities and management styles as long as their managers get things done - no matter what.  I think each one has its own merits depending on one's objectives.  For me, the former's impact is more long-term while the latter may be ideal to achieve immediate results. Then I read the leadership fable "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni where the protagonist shared an insightful anecdote.

The protagonist, Kathryn, is the new CEO of a Silicon Valley company and she shared a story with her management team.  In her younger years as a manager, she had an analyst who produced more reports than anyone else. She shared - 

This guy took any assignment I gave him and he became my most reliable employee. But no else from the department could stand him and to be honest, he annoyed the heck out of me too. He didn’t help anyone with their work and he made sure everyone knew how much better he was in his job which was undeniable even to the people who hated the guy.  Anyway, my other staff came to me a number of times complaining about him and I spoke to him about adjusting his behavior.  But he mostly ignored them... I was also not about to come down on my top performer. 

Eventually, the output of the department began to slide and so I came to him who complained a little but managed to get it all done. In my mind, he was carrying the department. 

Pretty soon, morale in the department began to deteriorate more rapidly more than ever and our performance slid further. Again, a number of analysts came to me to complain about him and it was becoming clear that he was indeed contributing to the problems of the group more than I thought. After a tough mind of thinking and losing sleep, I made my first big decision. 

At that point, one of Kathryn's mancom members interrupted her and made a guess - You fired him?

She replied - No, I promoted him.

Everyone in the room was shocked.

Then Kathryn continued - Two weeks later, 3 of my 7 analysts quit and the department fell into chaos. We dropped way behind in our work and my manager called me to talk about what was going on.  I explained the situation and why I had lost the other analysts.  The next day my boss made a big decision.

One of Kathryn's mancom members interrupted her again and guessed - Your boss fired the guy?

Kathryn replied - No, my boss fired me.

The mancom members were shocked.  Then one of them asked - What happened to the guy?

Kathryn replied - He resigned a few weeks later and they hired someone to run the department. Performance improved dramatically within a month a after his departure even if the department had 3 fewer analyts than before.

One of Kathryn's mancom members asked - Are you saying that his behavior alone hurt the production of the group by 50%? 

Kathryn replied - No, it wasn't his behavior.  It was my tolerance of his behavior. They fired the right person.

Very insightful, right?  And packed with a lot of lessons ranging from accountability, prudence, objectivity, among many others. 

The author shares that it's not finance, not strategy, not technology but it’s teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage both because it is so powerful and so rare. He said that a founder of a startup that grew to a USD1B annual revenue best expressed the power of teamwork this way:

If you can get all the people in the organization rowing in the same direction, you can dominate any industry in any market against any competition at any time.

So the next time you have a performer who is rowing alright but rows alone and demoralizes other good performers, it's time to re-read Kathryn's story and practice good judgment no matter how tempting it is to just ignore what everyone else is saying.  But of course, you have to exercise due diligence and validate if everything is true and make sure the others who are giving feedback are really good performers and are not just ganging up on the top performer. 😉