FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM
BUILD A LEADERSHIP TEAM THAT WORKS AS A TEAM
A leadership team can be filled with capable, experienced people and still struggle to work effectively together. The problem is often not individual competence. It is what happens between the people around the table.
Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team model provides a practical framework for understanding the behaviours that can prevent a team from becoming cohesive and effective.
Athena uses the model to help leadership teams examine how they work together, have more useful conversations about what is getting in the way and strengthen the foundations of better teamwork.
A PRACTICAL MODEL FOR TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
FIVE FOUNDATIONS OF A COHESIVE TEAM
TRUST
Create the conditions for team members to be open about mistakes, weaknesses, concerns and the need for help.
CONFLICT
Develop the ability to debate important ideas and issues openly rather than protecting artificial harmony.
COMMITMENT
Create enough clarity and buy-in for the team to make decisions and move forward together.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Strengthen the team’s willingness to address behaviours and performance that work against its commitments.
RESULTS
Keep collective outcomes ahead of individual status, functional interests or personal priorities.
WHEN THE TEAM ISN’T WORKING AS A TEAM
THE PROBLEM OFTEN SHOWS UP SOMEWHERE ELSE
Leadership teams do not usually announce that they have a trust, conflict or accountability problem. The symptoms tend to appear in the way the team works.
Meetings may be polite but unproductive. Important disagreements happen after the meeting instead of during it. Decisions get revisited. Leaders protect their own functions. Difficult behaviour goes unchallenged. Everyone may be working hard while the team as a whole accomplishes less than it should.
The Five Dysfunctions model gives the team a common language for looking beneath those symptoms and identifying what may be getting in the way.
FROM MODEL TO REAL WORK
APPLY THE MODEL TO YOUR LEADERSHIP TEAM
Understanding the Five Dysfunctions is relatively straightforward. Changing the way a leadership team works together is harder.
Athena uses the framework as a starting point for conversations about the team’s actual relationships, meetings, decisions and ways of working. The objective is not simply to learn the model. It is to identify where the team is getting stuck and make practical changes in how its members work together.
Depending on the team’s needs, the work may include a team assessment, facilitated discussion and focused work on the areas where greater trust, productive conflict, commitment, accountability or attention to collective results would make the greatest difference.
UNDERSTAND
Clarify the team’s circumstances, objectives and the issues that are affecting its effectiveness.
ASSESS
Use discussion and, where appropriate, a team assessment to identify where the team is strong and where it may be getting stuck.
WORK THROUGH
Help the team address the issues that matter most rather than treating all five areas as equally important.
REINFORCE
Identify practical changes the team can carry into its meetings, decisions and everyday working relationships.
START WITH THE TEAM
A STRONGER TEAM AT THE TOP CHANGES WHAT HAPPENS BELOW IT
When a leadership team develops greater trust, works through important disagreements, commits to decisions, holds one another accountable and stays focused on collective results, the impact reaches beyond the leadership table.
If your leadership team is capable but isn’t working together as effectively as it should, let’s start by understanding where it is getting stuck.