Tool 3: Why aren’t the team committed to the mission?

Here is a summary of Patrick Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team [3] and a video on how it has influenced the teams John works with. 

Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a model that highlights the common pitfalls and challenges that teams face, hindering their performance and effectiveness. This model identifies five interrelated dysfunctions that can undermine a team’s ability to collaborate and achieve optimal results.

The dysfunctions can be explained as follows:

Absence of Trust: Trust is the foundation of a high-performing team. When team members are hesitant to be vulnerable and open with one another, an absence of trust arises. This lack of trust leads to guarded communication, a fear of conflict, and an unwillingness to ask for help or admit mistakes. 

Fear of Conflict: In a dysfunctional team, members avoid healthy debates and conflicts. They prioritize artificial harmony over productive discussions, resulting in unresolved issues, simmering tensions, and compromises that do not reflect the best decisions for the team. 

Lack of Commitment: Without trust and healthy conflict, team members struggle to fully commit to decisions. They may hesitate to support ideas they didn’t personally champion or to make sacrifices for the greater good of the team. This lack of commitment undermines accountability and slows progress. 

Avoidance of Accountability: Dysfunctional teams often shy away from holding one another accountable. This leads to a lack of individual and collective responsibility, missed deadlines, and a decline in performance. The team becomes complacent, and low standards become the norm. 

Inattention to Results: When team members prioritise personal goals or the success of their own department over the collective results, the team as a whole suffers. Ineffective teams fail to establish clear goals and do not hold themselves collectively accountable for achieving those goals. 

By addressing these dysfunctions, teams can transform into high-performing units that thrive on trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, and a focus on shared results. Effective leadership, open communication, fostering a culture of trust, and creating shared goals are crucial in overcoming these dysfunctions and enabling teams to reach their full potential.

Watch the below video to hear how this has influenced John’s leadership.

3. Lencioni, P. (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. Jossey-Bass.