No-one works alone, this will be the fact to everyone who tries to work alone will conclude. There
are many studies and theories talking about team work and how a leader can get his or her team to work effectively and efficiently. Well, I would say the book of Patrick Lencioni; “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” brings several practical methods and techniques in a very simple language and a model.
The book is structured into two main parts. The first is the story of a technology company which had all success factors that might anyone imagine, however the company was behind its targets in term of revenue and customer growth, and how the new lady CEO managed to bring the company back on track and exceed expectation. The second part elaborates on the model that the writer recommends to overcome issues related to team work and the practical steps and methods that any leader may require to fix these issues.
The story in summary
The story is about a technology company called “DecisionTech” which had the most experienced and expensive executive company, top-tier investors and a solid business case. After two years, the company started experiencing series of disappointments. The board of directors decided to remove the former CEO and ask him to step down to another position within the company where he agreed on that. The board of directors hired the new CEO; Kathryn; an old lady with almost no real high-tech experience. The new CEO accepted the role with the condition of having the full authority of Hire and Fire. After few weeks of observation, Kathryn invited her team to off-site meetings in regular basis where she tried to inlight her team about their problems and how they should fix them. She always starts her meeting with the following statement; “We have a more experienced and talented executive team than any of our competitors. We have more cash that they do. We have better core technology. Any we have a more powerful board of directors. Yet in spite of all that, we are behind two of our competitors in term of both revenues and customer growth!”
Kathryn continued her off-site meetings as she believe it is a process of change and it is not easy for people to change however it is also not impossible. One of her team member resigned as he was not able to cope with the change. Kathryn had to fire a second member of her team as she was not able to work with the team and she didn’t respect them most of the time.
Kathryn used a model to fix the main five dysfunctions of a team. The first dysfunctions is the “absence of Trust” among the team members where each team member’s fail to trust their peers’ ability to perform and hence create the tendency of each team members not to be opened with each other about their mistakes and weaknesses. The absence of Trust usually leads to the “Fear of Conflict” between the team members and create an artificial harmony. The lack of healthy conflict between team members lead to the “Lack of the commitment” on the decisions made in all meetings despite their artificial harmony and agreements. Not being committed to decisions, team members develop an “Avoidance of Accountability” and each team members often hesitate to call their peers accountable for their actions and behaviors. Finally, the failure in holding one another accountable lead to “Inattention to results” and the team members put their individual needs such as ego, career development or recognition above the team’s goals. Hence this destroy any work being done within the team and individuals will always try to prioritize their own goals which usually don’t go along with the team’s goals and objectives.
The model seems simple and straightforward however taken this model into a practical actions and practices is very challenging. It requires a true leader who accept the painful continuous process of getting each member to understand and accept their mistakes and wrong behaviors. It requires levels of discipline and persistence.
In the story, Kathryn with her with no real experience in technology managed to bring a failed company because of its low performing executive to a very successful company within one year. The main success factor of her work is the team work!
The Model in Summary
The book in its second half elaborated more in the model used as shown in the below:
However the first step before understanding the model is to assess the team and evaluate their susceptibility to the five dysfunctions. The writer recommends a questionnaire that helps a leader to evaluate his or her team as a practical method of evaluation.
Understanding the five dysfunctions are very important to avoid any ambiguity. The first dysfunction is the “Absence of Trust”. Trust in the context of team building is the confidence among the team members that their peers’ intentions are good and there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. Teams that lack of trust waste their time and energy managing their behaviors and interactions within the group. They are reluctant to take risks in asking for or offering assistance from others. The below tables explain the symptoms of teams with absence of trust and trusting teams:
There are few suggested tools to overcome the first dysfunction:
1. Personal Histories Exercise.
2. Team Effectiveness Exercise.
3. Personality and behavioral preference profiles.
4. 360-Degree feedback.
5. Experiential Team Exercises.
Each of the above exercise targets to build different blocks to improve the trust within the team an remove the barriers that might exist.
By building the trust, a team makes the healthy conflict possible and members don’t hesitate to engage in debates as they confident that this will not translated as destructive or critical. Visa-versa, absence of trust leads to the next dysfunction “Fear of conflict”
The healthy conflict is the conflict that is the ideological productive conflict and it is completely different from the destructive fighting and interpersonal politics. Ideological conflict is limited to concepts and ideas and avoid personality-focused attacks. Most important to know that the only propose of a team to engage in productive conflict is to produce the best possible solution in the shortest period of time. They engage passionately in the debate with eager and readiness to take on the next important step. On the opposite side, teams that avoid ideological conflict avoid discussions on important issues, they don’t debate openly and their disagreements of ideas. Hence, this results in revisiting issues again and again without resolution. The below are the symptoms of teams who fear conflicts and the other team who engage in ideological conflict:
The writer suggests different tools and exercises to resolve this issue or at least to push the team toward the healthy ideological conflicts, some of them are:
1. Mining: assigning the role of “miner of conflict” who extract buried disagreements within the team and sheds the light on them.
2. Real-Time Permission: it is effective to coach and remind team members the necessity to have such ideological debate and conflict.
3. Other personality style and behavioral preference tools that help team members to understand each other in a better way. One of the tool which is related to conflict is “Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)”
By engaging in productive conflict and exchanging different opinions and perspectives, a team can confidently commit and buy-in in to a decision. This lead to a full committed team to the decisions that benefits the whole team. However, fear of conflict on the opposite side lead to the next dysfunction; the “Lack of Commitment”.
Commitment in a team is a function of two things; clarity in decisions and buy-in from all members even from those who voted against them. The two greatest causes of lack of commitment is the desire of consensus and the need of certainty. Teams need to understand that consensus is usually impossible and hence always try to find ways to get buy-in from all. In addition, great team realize that it is better to make a decision boldly and be wrong and then change direction with equal boldness. Dysfunctional teams tend to delay important decisions. This dysfunction has the greatest consequences for an executive team that doesn’t commit to clear decisions as this create discord deeper in the organization. Small gaps between executives high up in an organization become major discrepancies by the time they reach employees below. Below are some symptoms of teams that fail to commit and teams that commit:
Some the suggestions to overcome this dysfunctions are:
1. Cascading Messaging
2. Deadlines
3. Contingency and Worst-Case Scenario Analysis
4. Low-Risk Exposure Therapy.
Lack of commitment within a team definitely lead to an “avoidance of accountability”. Members of great teams improve their relationship by holding one another accountable, thus demonstrating that they respect each other and have high expectations for one another’s performance. There are some symptoms of team that avoid accountability as shown below:
There are some tools suggested by the writer to overcome the dysfunction of “Avoidance of Accountability”:
1. Publication of goals and standards
2. Simple and regular progress reviews.
3. Team rewards.
When a member is not being held accountable for their performance and contributions, they will be more likely to turn their attention to their own needs. Therefore, the absence of accountability is an invitation to team members to shift their attention to areas other than collective results. This is the last dysfunction “Inattention to results”. Many teams do not live to achieve meaningful objectives, but rather merely to exist to survive. Team status and individual status can be the prime candidates for teams that are not focused on results. Symptoms of teams that are not focused on results are shown below:
Results must be clear for the team to enable them to achieve them and only reward those behaviors and actions that contribute to those results. There are tools that might help a leader to overcome this last dysfunction:
1. Public declaration of results.
2. Results-Based rewards.
By fixing these five dysfunctions, the team starts working together toward the common goals and with a real harmony and consequently the organization will achieve their different goals and objectives. The book is very well structured and provides a practical model to tackle the main five dysfunctions of a team. It is important to highlight that the model might seem to be simple to implement however the reality remains that teamwork ultimately comes down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. I totally recommend this book for all leaders in all type of organization. It is worth mentioning also that there is another supporting book which provides field guide to implement his model.
وحسرات ، وفي القلب وحشة تعصر القلب لفراقك يا أبي
