The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

This simple yet compelling tale of an organization’s executive team has spoken to dozens of executives about how they can overcome resistance and get their team to pull in the same direction. The characters are well defined and the challenges they face are commonplace. And it can be read on a plane ride.  

I loved how Patrick Lencioni provided clarity and simplicity in avoiding the pitfalls which cause dysfunction among team members.

It’s a great reminder for me to have awareness in the five areas which include the absence of trust, a fear of conflict, a lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results.

It also reminded me about the importance of building trust, being committed to the goal, holding each other accountable, and having open communication in building a healthy culture with your team.

We’ve heard that trust is a foundational part of high-performing teams for decades, but no one does as good a job connecting the dots between a lack of trust and low performance as Lencioni does in this book.

I continually use his five dysfunctions model in reverse to spot toxic company cultures and then walk leaders backward to see how the root cause is a lack of trust. Once leaders see this with their own eyes, they can’t shake it, and they immediately start to see how detrimental it is when they make their organizations unstable with constant reorganizations and… show more.

I am fully convinced that the best leaders are the best team builders, and if you want to be a successful leader, then learn how to build teams. This book highlights Five common mistakes in team building.

What I like best is that not only does the author highlight the mistakes, but he teaches how best to overcome them. Although this book has been out for a number of years, if you are a leader, and you have not had the chance to read this book, then get it today and read it!

This book was so helpful that reading it inspired our company to actually hire Lencioni to coach us for the first couple of years of my tenure.

The book analyzes why teams fail and what can be done to prevent it. The causes Lencioni identifies are almost universal and his suggestions for avoiding these pitfalls are both practical and effective.

This book can help any leadership team improve.

Growing up I hated reading but after reading Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of A Team, I realized I didn’t hate reading, I just hated what I was reading. 

While a fictional account, the book shares all of the barriers keeping teams and organizations from achieving success and then provides tools, tips, and techniques to overcome these challenges.

We can find ourselves feeling helpless in a dysfunctional team situation. This book normalizes the experience and maps out a path for improvement. It’s written in a fictional-novel format that makes it fun and easy to read. The book describes how a leader helps get her team in shape, but anyone can make change. The core dysfunction is lack of trust, followed by fear of conflict. I have found that in my work, that building trust and competency around healthy conflict is absolutely key for organizations. I won’t spoil the other 3 dysfunctions, I’ll let you read it yourself!

Lencioni provides helpful insights into many of the most common causes for the relational failures that sabotage teamwork and sidetrack the mission. While I've never been a fan of using a business fable to present leadership principles, the practical insights and principles more than make up for a motif I don’t enjoy personally.