Toolkit exercise: The five dysfunctions of a team

This is the fifth post in a series of ten blog posts about the exercises in the Toolkit for Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters. All exercises the blog posts in this series are about, are available in our free promo version of the book .

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team exercise requires a bit of preparation and isn't necessarily the easiest exercise to execute. However, it's incredibly powerful mostly because it all boils down to trust. Not the 'trust to do your work' trust, but the 'I know you will have my back and be honest with me' trust. If you're wondering if I'm still talking about work relationships rather than friendships: yes, I am. As a group of professionals with a common goal, trust is absolutely paramount. Without trust, you'll avoid conflict, lack a certain commitment, avoid accountability, and ultimately don't pay enough attention to results.

A great way to kick off this exercise is to show the video of Patrick Lencioni's talk in 2013: Five Dysfunctions of a Team??Patrick Lencioni Talk 2013 . This will add about 30 minutes to the total time of the exercise. However, every single group that I've shown this video to over the course of my career was blown away. While the video is entertaining, the examples Lencioni gives are those that we can all relate to. We've all been guilty of some of the behavior he talks about in the video. And we might have recognized some of the behavior in others as well. So, use this video to introduce the topic and your exercise will be much more powerful!

With the topic fresh on everyone's mind, you can run the exercise as normal. As a facilitator, you need to pay close attention to what's happening here. What you want to focus on is what is not being written down. When you do an exercise like this, especially when there's a lack of trust, it's all about what people don't say rather than way they do say. Try to see if you can pick up on some of the unsaid things and bring that up for discussion in a way that it's not personal to someone, or related to an individual. A great strategy here is to give examples from your own behavior or experience. (You're going to have to be vulnerable here.) But, you can also stick to generic talking points to get the point across.

Don't go overboard with this exercise. You don't want to damage a team by forcing too much to the surface at once. I've been on the observing side of that happening once and it wasn't pretty. It set the team back for about 3-4 months before they recovered from the damage that was done. If you want to go deep, do it for one topic or sticky at a time and see how the team responds. If they're ready, they'll use the example to go deeper on other stickies as well. If not, leave it for now and do it again in the future. You can always bring this topic up during retrospectives. Keep the board and go back to it every now and then.

As with most exercises, the most important thing here is to end up with a least 1-3 actions the team is going to take as a result of this. We are looking to improve, get better as a team, and work on some of the imperfections of the team. A single action provides the most focus for the team, but if there are one or two more that's not a problem. Make sure you check back whether they are followed up on, otherwise the team might feel they have wasted their time on this exercise.

In my experience, you'll always strike gold with this exercise. As an Agile Coach or Scrum Master there's always a big take-away from running this exercise, and it's a great way to get a read of your team to see what is not being said.

Next week, I’ll write about Stakeholder Mapping. Stakeholder mapping is paramount for Product Owners, but very useful to teams and others as well. Want more exercises to choose from? Buy the toolkit in paperback or on Kindle!