Lifecycle M.I.T Program Book of The Month—The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

The Lifecycle Book of the Month is part of our ongoing M.I.T Program. The program enrolls employees who are currently at Lifecycle and helps prepare them to take on larger roles in the company. At Lifecycle, we try to use the talent that we already have at our disposal, and a large part of that is simply training and mentoring employees so that they have the tools they need to move up through the organization successfully.

The program involves our Book of the Month and this month’s book is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.

Lencioni provides a fascinating and thought-provoking take on what causes dysfunction in a team. Surprisingly, it isn’t just one problem that causes performance within a team to break down. Rather, there are five different dysfunctions that can occur, any one of which can stop a team from acting cohesively and achieving their full potential, but these dysfunctions are all interrelated.

Lencioni sets up the dysfunctions similarly to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If a dysfunction occurs at the bottom, the team can’t advance past the most basic teamwork issues; At the very top are the dysfunctions that prevent the team from reaching full teamwork. A dysfunction at the bottom is the root cause of those further up the pyramid and they’re all interrelated.

Here’s a brief breakdown of how they are all related to each other.

• The first dysfunction, at the bottom of the pyramid, is an absence of trust. This stems from team members’ unwillingness to be open with each other about mistakes and weaknesses. This is a dysfunction that will keep a team in constant turmoil because it causes all kinds of problems.
• Fear of conflict is the next dysfunction. When a team lacks trust—the first dysfunction—their conversations and engagements are filtered and guarded. They don’t engage freely and provide their real thoughts and arguments.
• The third dysfunction is a lack of commitment. Because the fear of conflict keeps true debate and reflection from occurring, team members will rarely buy into the decisions that are made. They may feign agreement when called upon for an answer, but their work and actions won’t show a commitment to these decisions.
• This leads to the fourth dysfunction—avoidance of accountability. No one has truly bought into these decisions. This makes it hard for peers to hold each other accountable for counterproductive actions, as they themselves aren’t fully committed to the process.
• When no one is being held accountable, the fifth dysfunction—inattention to results—is free to thrive. Team members not holding each other accountable leads to members putting their individual needs above that of the team. Egos, desire for recognition, and career goals can all begin to supersede the goals of the team.

As you can see, each of these is related to the next. A failure in one area affects the others. If you look at the flip side of these—trust, acceptance of conflict, commitment, accountability, and attention to results- they are all linked as well. That’s exactly what we’re trying to foster here at Lifecycle – an atmosphere where our teams can thrive.

If books like these seem interesting to you, then why not pick up your own copy and follow along? Each month we’ll post the next book that we’ve decided is valuable for our team members to read and we’re sure you’ll get something out of it as well.