Good Day Leaders,

Today I will add some notes from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. 

As mentioned before, I know some coaches feel they do not have a great deal of time to read so I have created key words for you to find, depending on your interest and need, throughout this post. So hit Command+f on a Mac or control+f on a PC to find something specific within one or more of the themes I have created. The themes are as follows:

• Quotes
• The Model
• Trust
• Ideological Conflict
• Commitment
• Accountability 
• Attention to Results
• Goal-Setting
• Truly Cohesive Teams
• Method to Run a Management Team

Quotes

• "A fractured team is just like a broken arm or leg; fixing it is always painful, and sometimes you have to re-break it to make it heal correctly. And the re-break hurts a lot more than the initial break because you have to do it on purpose." (Pg. 37)
• "If everything is important then nothing is." (Pg. 106)
• "We have more money, better technology, and more talented and experienced executives than our competitors, and yet we are behind. What we lack is teamwork, and I can promise you all that I have no greater priority as CEO than making us more effective as a group. During the next two weeks, I am going to be pretty intolerant of behavior that demonstrates an absence of trust, or a focus on the individual ego. I will be encouraging conflict, driving for clear commitments, and expecting all of you to hold each other accountable. I will be calling out bad behavior when I see it, and I'd like to see you doing the same. We don't have time to waste." (Pg. 113)

The Model (Pg. 188-189)

1. The first dysfunction is an absence of trust among team members. Essentially, this stems from their unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust. 
2. This failure to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments. 
3. A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy-in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings. 
4. Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers, on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team. 
5. Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.  

Trust

• A lack of debate that exists during staff meetings and other interactions among teams often signals to a lack of trust. (Pg. 45)
• Trust is not the same as assuming everyone is on the same page as you, and that they don't need to be pushed. Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they're doing it because they care about the team. (Pg. 148-149)
• Members of teams with an absence of trust (Pg. 197)
• Conceal their weaknesses and mistakes from one another
• Hesitate to ask for help or provide constructive feedback
• Hesitate to offer help outside their own areas of responsibility
• Jump to conclusions about the intentions and aptitudes of others without attempting to clarify them
• Fail to recognize and tap into one another's skills and experiences
• Waste time and energy managing their behaviors for effect
• Hold grudges
• Dread meetings and find reasons to avoid spending time together. 
• Members of trusting teams (pg. 197)
• Admit weaknesses and mistakes
• Ask for help
• Accept questions and input about their areas of responsibility
• Give one another the benefit of the doubt before arriving at a negative conclusion
• Take risks in offering feedback and assistance
• Appreciate and tap into one another's skills and experiences
• Focus time and energy on important issues, not politics
• Offer and accept apologies without hesitation
• Look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group
• Focused exercises to establish trust:
• Personal Histories Exercise - Required time: 30 minutes (Pg. 52).
1. What is your hometown?
2. How many kids are in your family?
3. What were your interesting childhood hobbies?
4. What was your biggest challenge growing up?
5. What was your first job?
• Team Effectiveness Exercise Required time: 60 minutes (Pg. 198)
• Team members must identify the single most important contribution that each of their peers makes to the team, as well as one area that they must either improve upon or eliminate for the good of the team. 
• All members report their responses, focusing on one person at a time, usually beginning with the team leader. 
• Personality and Behavioral Preference Profiles - Required time: 4 hours (Pg. 199)
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
• 360 Degree Feedback (Pg. 200)
• Risky because they call for peers to make specific judgement and provide one another with constructive criticism, but the key to making it work is to divorce it from compensation and formal performance evaluation. 
• Use it as a development tool to identify strengths and weaknesses without any repercussions. 
• Experiential Team Exercises (Pg. 200)
• Can be valuable as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes. 
• Trust requires shared experiences over time, multiple instances of follow-through-credibility, and an in-depth understanding of the unique attributes of team members. (Pg. 197)
• The most important action that a leader must take to encourage the building of trust on a team is to demonstrate vulnerability. Leaders must also create an environment that does not punish vulnerability. (Pg. 201)

Ideological Conflict

• Ideological conflict is limited to concepts and ideas, and avoids personality-focused, mean-spirited attack. (Pg. 202)
• Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think. (Pg. 88)
• Movies Vs. Meetings (Pg. 102-103)
• Meetings should be at least as interesting as movies. A movie, on average, runs anywhere from ninety minutes to two hours in length. Staff meetings are the same. And yet meetings are interactive, whereas movies are not. We can't yell at the actor on the screen, "Don't go into the house, you idiot!". More importantly, movies have limited to no impact on our lives. They don't require us to act a certain way based on the outcome of the store. And yet meetings are both interactive and relevant. Everyone should get to have their say, and the outcome of any given discussion often has a very real impact on our lives. The difference is that every great movie has conflict. Without it, no one would care what happens to the characters. If there is nothing worth debating then there shouldn't be a meeting. 
• Teams that avoid ideological conflict often do so in order to avoid hurting team members' feelings, and then end up encouraging dangerous tension. When team members do not openly debate and disagree about important ideas, they often turn to back-channel personal attacks which are far nastier and more harmful than any heated argument over issues. (Pg. 203)
• It is ironic that so many people avoid conflict in the name of efficiency because healthy conflict is actually a time saver. Contrary to the notion that teams waste time and energy arguing, those that avoid conflict actually doom themselves to revisiting issues again and again without resolution. (Pg. 203)
• Teams that fear conflict (Pg. 204):
• Have boring meetings
• Create environments where back-channel politics and personal attacks thrive
• Ignore controversial topics that are critical to team success
• Fail to tap into all the opinions and perspectives of team members
• Waste time and energy with posturing and interpersonal risk
• Teams that engage in conflict (Pg. 204):
• Have lively, interesting meetings
• Extract and exploit the ideas of all team members
• Solve real problems quickly
• Minimize politics
• Put critical topics on the table for discussion
• Focused exercises to encourage Ideological Conflict:
• Mining (Pg. 204-205)
• Assign a member of a meeting to take on the responsibility of mining of conflict. 
• Someone who extracts buried disagreements within the team and sheds the light of day on them.
• Real-Time Permission (Pg. 205)
• Teach team members about the need for them to coach one another not to retreat from healthy debate. 
• Recognize when people engaged in conflict are becoming uncomfortable with the level of discord, and then interrupt to remind them that what they are doing is necessary.
• Other Tools (Pg. 205-206)
• Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)
• Allows members to understand natural inclinations around conflict so they can make more strategic choices about which approaches are most appropriate in different situations. 
• Key for leaders to demonstrate restraint when their people engage in conflict, and allow resolution to occur naturally. (Pg. 206)
• A leader's ability to personally model appropriate conflict behavior is essential. (Pg. 206)

Commitment

• Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy in (Pg. 207)
• The two greatest causes of the lack of commitment are the desire for consensus and the need for certainty (Pg. 207):
• Consensus
• Having a consensus on a topic is horrible. If everyone really agrees on something and consensus comes about quickly and naturally, that's terrific. However, that isn't how it usually works, and so consensus becomes an attempt to please everyone. (Pg. 95)
• Most reasonable people don't have to get their way in a discussion. They just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to. (Pg. 95)
• Certainty
• Hedging bets and delaying important decisions until enough data to feel certain that an organization is making the right decision is often dangerous because of the paralysis and lack of confidence it breeds within a team. (Pg. 208)
• A decision is better than no decision. It is better to make a decision boldly and be wrong - and then change direction with equal boldness - than it is to waffle. (Pg. 208)
• A team that fails to commit (Pg. 209)
• Creates ambiguity among the team about direction and priorities
• Watches windows of opportunity close due to excessive analysis and unnecessary delay. 
• Breeds a lack of confidence and fear of failure. 
• Revisits discussions and decisions again and again. 
• Encourages second-guessing among team members. 
• A team that commits (Pg. 209)
• Creates clarity around direction and priorities
• Aligns the entire team around common objectives
• Develops an ability to learn from mistakes
• Takes advantage of opportunities before competitors do
• Moves forward without hesitation
• Changes direction without hesitation or guilt
• Focused exercises to ensure commitment:
• Cascading Messaging - Minimum time: 10 minutes (Pg. 210)
• At the end of a staff meeting, a team should explicitly review the key decisions made during the meeting, and agree on what needs to be communicated to employees or other constituencies about those decisions. 
• Members of team will learn that they are not all on the same page about what has been agreed upon and that they need to clarify specific outcomes before putting them into action. 
• Members will leave meetings clearly aligned with one another.
• Deadlines (Pg. 210-211)
• Committing to all deadlines, including for intermediate decisions and milestones is just as important as final deadlines, because it ensures that misalignment among team members is identified and addressed before the costs are too great. 
• Contingency and Worst-Case Scenario Analysis (Pg. 211)
• Allows for team members to reduce fears by helping them realize that the costs of an incorrect decision are survivable, and far less damaging than they had imagined. 
• Low-Risk Exposure Therapy (Pg. 211)
• Get the team to force themselves to make a decision after a substantial discussion but little analysis or research has been completed. 
• A leader must be comfortable with the prospect of making a decision that ultimately turns out to be wrong. (Pg. 212)

Accountability

• People aren't going to hold each other accountable if they haven't clearly bought into the same plan. (Pg. 99) 
• The most effective and efficient means of maintaining high standards of performance on a team is peer pressure. (Pg. 213)
• A team that avoids accountability (Pg. 214):
• Creates resentment among team members who have different standards of performance 
• Encourages mediocrity
• Misses deadlines and key deliverables
• Places an undue burden on the team leader as the sole source of discipline
• A team that holds one another accountable (Pg. 214):
• Ensures that poor performers feel pressure to improve
• Identifies potential problems quickly by questioning one another's approaches without hesitation
• Establishes respect among team members who are held to the same high standards
• Avoids excessive bureaucracy around performance management and corrective action
• Focused exercises to encourage accountability:
• Publication of Goals and Standards (Pg. 214)
• It is important to keep agreed upon set plans and behavioral standards in the open so that no one can easily ignore them.
• Simple and Regular Progress Reviews (Pg. 214-215)
• Team members should regularly communicate with one another, either verbally or in written form, about how they feel their teammates are doing against stated objectives and standards. 
• Team Rewards (Pg. 215)
• A team is unlikely to stand by quietly and fail because a peer is not pulling his or her weight. 

Attention to Results

• Do not leave any room for interpretation when it comes to your team's success, because that only creates the opportunity for individual ego to sneak in. (Pg. 77)
• A leader's job is to make the results the team needs to achieve so clear to everyone that no one would even consider doing something purely to enhance his or her individual status or ego. That would diminish the group's ability to achieve their collective goals. Everyone would lose. (Pg. 77)
• A team that is not focused on results (Pg. 218):
• Stagnates/fails to grow
• Rarely defeats competitors
• Loses achievement-oriented employees
• Encourages team members to focus on their own careers and individual goals
• Is easily distracted
• A team that focuses on collective results (Pg. 218):
• Retains achievement-oriented employees
• Minimizes individualistic behavior
• Enjoys success and suffers failure acutely
• Benefits from individuals who subjugate their own goals/interests for the good of the team
• Avoids distractions
• Focused exercises to facilitate attention to results:
• Public Declaration of Results (Pg. 219)
• Teams that are willing to commit publicly to specific results are more likely to work with a passionate, even desperate desire to achieve those results. 
• Results-Based Rewards (Pg. 219)
• Tie their rewards, especially compensation, to the achievement of specific outcomes. Do not rely on this alone as it assumes that financial motivation is the sole driver of behavior. 
• Team leaders must be selfless and objective, and reserve rewards and recognition for those who make real contributions to the achievement of group goals. (Pg. 220)

Goal-Setting

• Group Activity (Pg. 79)
1. Group breaks into smaller groups of two or three.
2. With smaller groups, propose a list of results categories that might serve as the team's scorecard.
3. Bring everyone back together and, through group discussion, combine all results categories and then eliminate some to arrive at seven key performance indicators. 
4. Discuss how often these key performance indicators should be measured. 

Truly Cohesive Teams (Pg. 189-190)

1. Trust one another.
2. Engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas. 
3. Commit to decisions and plans of action. 
4. Hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans.
5. They focus on the achievement of collective results. 

Method to run a Management Team (Pg. 222)

• Annual planning meeting and leadership development retreat (three days, off site)
• Topics
• Budget
• Major strategic planning overview
• Leadership training
• Succession planning
• Cascading messaging
• Quarterly staff meetings (two days, off site)
• Topics
• Financial review
• Strategic discussions
• Employee performance discussions
• Key issue resolution
• Team development
• Cascading messages
• Weekly staff meetings (two hours, on-site)
• Topics
• Key activity review
• Goal progress review
• Sales review
• Customer review
• Tactical issue resolution
• Cascading messages
• Ad hoc topical meetings (two hours, on-site)
• Topics
• Strategic issues that cannot be adequately discussed during weekly staff meetings

"A fo ben, bid bont"