The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
A Leadership Fable
Patrick Lencioni
TL;DR
This is offered as a “leadership fable” where he tells a story of a startup that has the right tools, but a management team that exhibits the “5 Dysfunctions” and thus can’t execute. A new CEO comes in to school them on their faults.
The issues, which stack on each other, are:
- We at Wave say we value trust. For Lencioni, trust is the ability to be vulnerable in front of your peers or others (esp. leaders / senior people). Only in showing vulnerability (and not getting beat up for it) do we gain trust.
- Without trust, we avoid conflict. This is the “healthy conflict” where ideas and plans are hashed out, and people are not afraid of being wrong.
- If we don’t go through the conflict, and agree on the other side, we won’t commit to the plan of action.
- Without commitment, we can’t be held accountable by our peers.
- If we’re not accountable, we miss results.
All pretty simple stuff, but hard to do in practice. The “fable” part of seeing how a fictional CEO brings her team together is helpful for role-playing how this might come up.
Plus, it’s a really short book and very easy to read.