Introduction: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
When working with a team, how do you know if your team is functioning to best achieve your company’s mission and goals? In this episode, Traci and Rob will do an overview of Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Learn how trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, and team results work together to build a healthy and productive team.
Check out the other episodes in this series:
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Overly Human podcast where we discuss all things human in the workplace. Because it's not just business—it's personal too.
Rob:
We've had a leadership team for a couple of years now. And one of the things that we've been looking for is a way to talk more and more about what it means to be a team together and what it means to actually come around and have this idea of team purpose, team goals, and really work well together. And one of the things we're getting ready to go through is some of the exercises that come out of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team book. And I know that Navigate does quite a bit with this and actually does lead teams through this exercise and whatnot. And I think it'd be a lot of fun to talk about the things that we've learned from reading the book and what those levels are, and actually kind of break this down for our audience, Traci.
Traci:
Yeah, I think, when it comes to The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which is by Patrick Lencioni, it is one of those books that I tell people they have to read. And there's a lot of team leadership books out there, a lot of business books out there that are great. And a lot that I recommend is kind of nice to read, but this book is a must read. If you have not read this book, then you are not doing yourself any favors as a leader. If you've got a team that you're leading, it is so filled with valuable information, but it's also a structure that makes it easy for any team to follow and understand.
And that's what I really like about it. There's a framework to it that makes complete sense. And if you understand each of the five dysfunctions—and then what you really actually should be aiming for out of that, turning the dysfunction into a proper healthy team, then it is easy to implement and go through with the team. And the results that you get on the backend are really, like I said before, just invaluable. It really solidifies team health.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think it's…the other thing that I appreciated about the book, having recently read it for the first time is how easy of a read it was. The book is based around a fable, a business fable that where the fictional story about a team and highlights these dysfunctions and what it means for this fictional business and how they come around it. And I think they do a really good job of illustrating those points with examples we've all been through and felt if you've been in the business game long enough.
Traci:
Right. And it's really something every team, because we're filled with humans and we're humans working together, every company is going to go through a need for this type of book. So most, we work with a lot of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs will start a company and things will be going great. They've got their team going. They're all aligned on this mission.
But then as time goes on, as the team grows a little bit, and as everybody sort of falls into their roles, sometimes you can hit a ceiling as a team. Sometimes your culture can take a little bit of a downward turn. Sometimes you've added different team members that have kind of shaken the trust a little bit. Sometimes often people fall into silos and all of a sudden, our own personal goals might start to trump our team goals. You know, so we were not as aligned as we used to be. We're not as completely on the same page as we used to be. We're not communicating the way we used to be.
And so there's this all of a sudden, there's a rival between ego and team and leaders sometimes will wake up in the middle of this and scratch their head and be like, what happened? Why aren't we the way we were when we first started the company? Why aren't we the same team we were six months ago? What's going on? And it's hard for them to put their finger on exactly what it is. You know, they can give examples and they sound very much like the stories in this book, the fable in this book. And that's why it can start to sound familiar to people. They're like, "Oh, okay, now I can see this in my own team to a certain extent, or to a lot of an extent I can relate to this book."
But we usually come to a turning point in our team after a certain amount of time that we've been working together. And this book basically centers us back and says, "Okay, we can look at this pyramid. We can look at the structure and identify what it is that we're strong in and what it is that maybe we're weak in."
And one of the cool things, I don't know if your team is doing this, but is to take the health assessment that comes with the book. So you can take a short little survey and everybody on the team basically ranks how you're doing against each of the five dysfunctions. And then it generates basically this really cool report that shows you where your strengths are. Because sometimes we're a little bit better with accountability than we are with conflict, or maybe it's trust that's an issue right now for whatever the reasons are. And then we can as a team start to pull that apart.
So as you're learning what the structure is and what the five dysfunctions are, you also have identified going into it where your weak spots might be. And so you can spend a little more time kind of diving into those weak spots.
Rob:
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And the prompt for me was just to try to think about like, how do we measure how healthy our team is? Like is there a way that we can actually have some external force, measure how healthy our team is, how good of communication.
And this book really stood out to me. It was recommended actually by Zach from your team to look at, and I'm pretty glad both myself and our director of humans have gone through it together. And we're getting ready to roll this out to our director team so that they understand that whole concept of this is the first team, right? That was one of the things that I really liked about this book was helping the people that are at the top understand that their first responsibility is to the other people in the leadership team and the director team. That we have to be accountable to each other and everything flows out of that.
Traci:
Right. And I think that's where it actually starts with the recognition, because every team can get better. Just like every leader is always growing. It's a skill, leadership is a skill. We have to hone it. We have to educate ourselves. We have to try harder every day to get better at that skill. And it's the same with teams, right? We're never at a perfect state. We always have to be working to know each other better and to be more committed to the mission and to be holding each other more accountable.
And what I often find with the teams that I've worked with as one of the first indicators that maybe we need to strengthen or hone that muscle or that skill is that we have lost that ability for peer-to-peer accountability. Like, are we really, really holding each other accountable? Are we just going to work, worrying about our to-do list, getting our projects done and then going home, and maybe harboring a little frustration because Billy or Johnny isn't doing what they should be doing. Or maybe nobody's holding us accountable, so we're like, "Well, if they don't care, why do we care?"
And so that peer-to-peer accountability is typically where we see the breakdown. And then as we start to dig further, we see, well, we're not holding each other accountable because we're not really all on the same page and committed to the same plan and committed to the same direction. And why aren't we committed? Well, it's usually because we didn't have good, healthy conflict when we were making the decision to go in this direction. Maybe there were some people who didn't feel good about the plan, but they didn't have a voice, or they didn't feel like the environment was safe enough to voice their opinion.
And so they kind of like shrugged it off and didn't really buy into it and didn't really agree to it. And why would that happen? Well, it's probably because we don't have the trust we need on our team currently. There's some sort of breakdown. Maybe we really don't feel like everybody has our best interest at heart or the team's best interest at heart. And so that's sort of the breakdown of how it works, how these five dysfunctions, build upon each other. And then we can ultimately see at the top of the pyramid, "Oh, okay, well maybe there's a problem, because I don't feel comfortable going to Rob and saying, ‘Hey, Rob, what's going on? Why aren't you following through with this? Or what's the breakdown? Or I don't get it, what's happening here?’"
Rob:
Yeah, and a huge part of that feels to me like it has to do with not having a clear set of measurable goals that the team is marching together towards. And you know, we'll talk about those. We'll break these down a little bit here in a minute, but so much of being that clear statement of what we're trying to achieve and having it be something that the team is committed to, because we recognize that it is something that has to be done to achieve what we're after.
And it feels like this almost piece that fits under the overall company mission that is like the company mission is this high thing and vision and mission go together that these things we're trying to achieve and how we're trying to achieve it. But for most of the teams that I've worked on, there’s these goals that have some tactical piece of it inside that allow us to achieve that mission and vision. It could be that we need to increase revenue or increase opportunities or market share or other things like that.
And it seems like that it really gets down to this idea of being able to clearly articulate what those tactical things are that achieve, that help deliver results for the overall mission and vision that we can congregate around and agree to and commit to and work on together.
Traci:
Right. And I'd say that's the how. So I always say to leaders, "You've got to be able to answer these questions very clearly. And so should your team."
Rob:
What we're going to do, let's briefly talk about these five dysfunctions in whole, and we'll record an episode on each one. Because there's a lot to get into here, and a lot of details I think we want to get into, but this is a nice overview. So let's just kind of go through them. So what is that foundational piece?
Traci:
The foundational piece is trust. You have to establish trust. And we've talked about this so many times in our podcast. It's just something we constantly come back to, because if you don't have trust, the team is just not going to function the way that you want it to function.
So trust in this format, or in what Patrick Lencioni is talking about, is a bit of a vulnerability based trust. It's can anyone give an opinion without fear of judgment or punishment? Can you honestly say that about your team? That yes, I feel like everybody on this team feels safe and secure enough and knows that we can all hear any opinion they might have. We're not going to judge them or punish them. We're going to hear them. And that's a big question, right? It sounds simple on its surface. But when I say that to a group sitting around a table, when I say that, sometimes people's faces are like, "Not really quite sure I actually feel that way."
And sometimes that can be a huge surprise to a leader. They'll be like, "Well, what do you mean? Yeah, of course you can say whatever you want to say." And you see the look of fear on people's faces and you know, it could be one or two people on the team that shut people down. It could be a feeling the whole team has, it could be the leader themselves. It could just be, but you know, you have to do that, take that pulse and say, "Can we honestly say that we have that trust level with each other? That we have that safety level with each other?"
Rob:
And it's not something that comes easy, right? It's something that is earned. And I feel like that's a huge piece of all of this is, it's really, it can be a cheap to say, "What we want is this kind of trust." But it's never built overnight. It's built through the battles, it's built through experience, it's built for that.
One of the things that I've said recently is, I own a business. I deal with a lot of different currency, but the currency I deal with the most is trust. That is the most valuable currency that I deal with, both with our clients and internally. And it's something that we have to be really careful with in a lot of cases, because of how much effort it takes to build trust brick by brick by brick and how easy it is to make that trust fall away.
Traci:
Right, definitely. And I think one of the things we'll talk about when we do our first episode on trust coming out of this is that vulnerability-based trust can take a time, can take a lot of time. But we will talk about some quick and easy ways to really get there, to really build that trust. Because I think it can be a little disheartening sometimes for leaders to think like, "Oh gosh, it's just this long slog to get to this place where we have vulnerability-based trust." Yes, we do need to build it over time, but we will talk about some ways that you can quickly establish some trust and really start solidifying that for your team.
Rob:
Okay. So what's the next one?
Traci:
The next level on the pyramid is healthy conflict. And this is one where I usually spend the most time with teams. Because what I tend to find more often than not is that there's this artificial harmony going on with teams. I mean, ultimately, we all want to get along. You know, we don't want conflict in the office. We want to everybody to be happy. I mean, there's enough going on in the world where there's just craziness. And so sometimes we can just be like, "Oh, whatever, I'll just swallow it. Or I'll just fake it till I make it and just make sure everybody's happy. I don't even want to go there. I don't want to bother."
But unfortunately if we just reside in artificial harmony or the other end, the pendulum swings all the way to the other end, where we have like a lot of aggression and a lot of some people in the team might be super aggressive and super opinionated. And then the other half of the team just sort of retreats. What we find is, either end of the spectrum is not great because in order to make the best decisions for our company, we need to have healthy conflict. We need to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones. And that is key to really getting where we need to go.
Rob:
Yeah. I mean, it's the whole point of having diverse teams is because you get lots of perspectives. And you get lots of perspectives because you have that rubbing, that natural rubbing, that natural conflict between ideas and let ideas fight for their lives a little bit, so the best one wins and all of that. And I think, like it's so easy to mistake that artificial harmony for good collaboration. To have that good collaboration and to have ideas can compete in some ways for their place.
Traci:
And you can see how it's hard to have healthy conflict if you don't have trust. Because if you feel like there's some fear, you might be judged for what you have to say, then you're not going to push yourself outside the comfort zone. You're going to hold your tongue. And then the whole team misses out on what could be a piece of really valuable information because you're just avoiding conflict and you want to stay friends with everybody and you don't want to rock the boat. But it's not helping the team in the end.
Rob:
Good, healthy conflict with somebody on your team actually helps develop trust.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
So, okay. What's next?
Traci:
Commitment.
Rob:
Commitment.
Traci:
Need to have commitment. And this is commitment—and I know you and I've touched on this in the past and I think it's a really good thing to highlight—that we're not talking about unanimous consensus here. We're talking about buy-in, that everybody in the room, because we've had, we trust each other because we've had healthy conflict and we pushed ourselves outside of our comfort zone and we really, really discussed this thing.
We feel, each one of us around the table feels like we've been heard, feel like we've been valued, feels like we have come at this problem at every different angle. And the leader will say it's time to decide. And if there's a lot of dissension, which there's typically not if you've really had healthy conflict and you've really kind of hashed out the decision-making process here and you've identified and discussed and you're actually ready to move to the solving. You might have a few people that want to go a different way, but the leader is going to ultimately decide what's the best decision for the team. And then the team needs to commit.
Even if their idea didn't win, even if they're not in a 100% agreement, that this is the route we should go, everybody around the table needs to commit. And typically that's not that hard if everybody feels like they've been valued and heard, you can typically get that buy-in, and that's what we're looking for. A true commitment, not a fake commitment, not a, "Oh this side of the table agrees, but this side doesn't." And then we all leave, but a true commitment where we all have bought in and we're going to really see this thing through to the end.
Rob:
Yeah. And there's a point here about making sure that what we're committing to isn't ambiguous either. Like we have to know and be crystal clear about what we're committing to and what those things are. I think that's, we can't let people walk away from that table having different interpretations of what we've actually committed to, because that will obviously break down trust as well. So there's a communication piece of this that we've put it in a way that everyone understands it that's really important.
Traci:
Right. And you brought that up before when you were talking about making sure we have these clear goals, and that is deciding kind of the how of what we're doing, right? So if we understand the why, which is our mission, we understand the where we're going, which is our vision. And we have decided the how, which is the steps, the action steps, and there's clarity around all of that. We've answered those questions. Then what you are describing is done.
Like there's clarity around why we're doing this, where we're going, what's the end game, what's the goal line, and how are we going to get there. Everybody agree, everybody understand, everybody know what their marching orders are? Are we all bought in? Everybody's bought in, are we committed? And I always say to teams, "Please don't leave your meeting without literally asking each person around the table if they're committed."
Rob:
So, okay. Absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment. The fourth level is.
Traci:
Accountability-
Rob:
Ooh, we've talked a lot about this.
Traci:
... and we're talking peer-to-peer accountability. And that'll be a fun one for us to really go into deep. But again, this is peer-to-peer, right? This is that every person around the table, regardless of their role and responsibility and title, feel like they have the authority and the permission to hold each other accountable. That's the key, right.
And we'll talk about tricks and tips to that too. Because it's a little tricky, especially when we're talking about people who have different roles and different responsibilities, how do we each still feel like it's okay to kind of walk up to each other and say, Hey, how's this going? What's happening here? Why isn't this working? You know, where the needs, what does that accountability look like when we live it out?
Rob:
One of the things that I think is really important here is making sure that those people who have different roles understand how their role and their area of responsibility affects the whole of the goal that we're after, right? The thing we're after. How does their part contribute? And it's accountability to having their contribution be the thing that adds up to the whole.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
Okay. So we have one more. What's the last one, Traci?
Traci:
It ties right into what you were just saying, which is focus on team results. Team results, not individual results but really caring about those team results. And, to your point, if we all feel like we're tied into this together, that we all equally and wholeheartedly really honestly care about where this team's going to end up, then we're focused on the same thing.
And that's what keeps our eye on the prize, right? Is that team results, as opposed to falling into our natural state of ego and our natural state of individual success or individual recognition. I mean, those things are important. But what we're talking about here is what makes a team successful, not an individual successful a team, a company, a mission. What makes that successful? And ultimately the top of the pyramid is we're all focused on the same goal, the same result.
Rob:
It’s the old sports cliche is, "We win as a team. We lose as a team."
Traci:
Exactly. There's one scoreboard.
Rob:
One scoreboard, that's right.
Traci:
One scoreboard.
Rob:
We've defined what that is, down a couple of levels. And we're either going to get there together, or we're not. And I think that's when we talk about business, that's really important to have everybody and where those ownership of things are. Because it's completely possible that somebody has a great idea from an area that's not their responsibility or perspective that they can add to help achieve those goals.
Traci:
Yeah, and you know what else? It makes it so much more fun. How much more fun is it to watch a team where they're all in it together, right? Where they all care about each other and they all are helping each other and passing the ball. And you know, if somebody's open instead of taking the shot yourself, you pass it over to the...those are some of the most exciting games you can watch, right? And it should feel that way for our team where we are having fun. And we are so excited to see each other succeed and to collectively desire to win.
And I think that's the goal, right? We don't want to just do this to do this, the toil of work. We want to have fun. And we want to be excited when we achieve what we set out to achieve. And that's the end game. That's the goal. And that's why it's the top of the pyramid.
Rob:
This is going to be a lot of fun breaking all these down. So real quick, let's just run through them one more time. And then the next episode we'll get into details on these. So the base of the pyramid is trust.
Traci:
Yep.
Rob:
And then healthy conflict.
Traci:
Yep.
Rob:
And then, commitment.
Traci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob:
Accountability.
Traci:
Yep.
Rob:
And a focus on team results rather than individual results.
Traci:
Yep.
And we will break down each one and we'll have some really good nuggets and tips of how to build this with your team. So we should encourage everybody who's listening to this, if you don't have the book, go out and get the book. Go order it right now, highly recommend. But it also will really help you as we go through each level on the pyramid. We'll help you kind of dig in and we'll point out what are the best ways to go about building this on your team?
Rob:
This is going to be fun. All right, thanks, Traci.
Traci:
Excited. Thank you.
Announcer:
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The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. Thanks so much for listening.
