The Five Dysfunctions of a team

What makes a team amazing?

One word, teamwork.

So what's teamwork and why is it important?

Teamwork is the process of working collaboratively with a group of people towards a common goal. And more importantly it's a key factor in making a team successful.

A successful team is like a well-oiled machine, every part coordinates with the others in order to operate efficiently.

But making our team that well-oiled machine isn't easy, even the most talented group of people can and will fail in the absence of teamwork, so what should we do in order to develop this winning formula?

The Model

This pyramid is the model proposed by the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.

The model describes the set of problems that every team needs to overcome in order to become a successful team. Each of these dysfunctions lead into the next one and ultimately ends up making one giant snowball that crushes the team morale.

Absence of trust

Trust is the foundation of any relationship. If we let the foundation get weak, the building will collapse soon.

A successful team needs to trust each other. What I mean by this is that every member of the team needs to know that they can be vulnerable, they can express their shortcomings and ask for help without fear of being judged. This allows the team to communicate more efficiently and deal with important issues that otherwise may be left untouched.

Fear of conflict

It's normal to think that conflict it's bad, but that's not entirely true, constructive conflict it's actually really good. It helps people, teams and organizations move forward.

We can easily see that if there's no trust between team members they won't feel confident enough to engage in constructive conflict in fear of damaging the artificial harmony they've built.

So in order to have a successful team we need to encourage constructive conflict, the clash of different perspectives among team members can lead to new and more polished ideas that otherwise may have been left unexplored.

Constructive conflict can only occur when everyone knows that they can trust one another, and that nothing should be taken personal.

Lack of commitment

Successful teams have all their members row in the same direction, they get to places, even if the initial decision may be wrong. The reason for that is that teams can learn from their mistakes and adapt, and as long as everyone's working together they will achieve great things.

Dysfunctional teams on the other hand avoid commitment until they are sure they are making the "right decision" or have achieved a consensus. There's a reason for quoting right decision, and that is you get nothing if you just sit around to wait.

Consensus is also impossible to achieve sometimes so it shouldn't be the goal. The goal here is for everyone to put team priority's before their own and moving together as a unit.

Lack of commitment creates ambiguity for the team, resulting in members second guessing an idea, not doing anything at all or just having disaligned priorities and goals.

Avoidance of accountability

One of the hardest parts of being in a team is holding a fellow team member accountable for their behavior or their performance.

It's especially hard to hold our friends or people we care about accountable for something because we don't want to hurt their feelings or damage the relationship.

Not holding someone accountable for their actions actually damages the relationships and the overall team atmosphere. This will result in poor team performance, missed deadlines and maybe even resentments among team members.

Team members that hold one another accountable end up having better performance and relationships, as they all trust and respect each other to live up to the same standards.

Innattention to results

This might be the easiest dysfunction to explain, there's no "I" in team. Team members need to put aside their individual goals (ego, recognition, etc.) in order to prioritize common goals.

This goals should be crystal clear so everyone is on the same page, rowing in the same direction.

Just like in a basketball team, at the end of the day it's not about how many points you score individually, it's about if you won or lost, and you win and you lose as a team.

Whether you win or you lose, it's important to know that you did it as a team and that as a team you can achieve so much more than individually so maybe even if it's not the result the team wanted, a fully functional team is capable of transforming that result into something awesome.

Final comments

There's no simple formula to teamwork, however this model comes pretty close at being a guideline on how to improve.

Any team that works on overcoming these dysfunctions and building a trust-based environment is heading towards a bright future.