Pyramid of Dysfunctions: Overcoming the Barriers to Teamwork
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (2002)
Founder of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational health.
Patrick Lencioni's model identifies five interrelated issues that prevent teams from reaching their full potential. These dysfunctions build upon each other in a pyramid structure, you must address the foundation (trust) before you can effectively tackle the higher-level issues.
The Dysfunction: Team members are unwilling to be vulnerable within the group. They hide weaknesses and mistakes, hesitate to ask for help, and don't acknowledge the skills of others.
The Solution: Build vulnerability-based trust by encouraging team members to share personal histories, admit mistakes openly, and ask for help without fear of judgment.
The Dysfunction: Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered, passionate debate about ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments.
The Solution: Encourage healthy, productive conflict around ideas (not personalities). Mine for conflict by asking probing questions and acknowledging that disagreement is valuable.
The Dysfunction: Without airing opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely buy into decisions. Ambiguity prevails, and people don't commit to a clear course of action.
The Solution: Ensure clarity and closure at the end of every discussion. Review key decisions at the end of meetings and set clear deadlines. Remember: consensus is not the goal, buy-in is.
The Dysfunction: Without commitment to a clear plan of action, even the most focused people hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the team.
The Solution: Publish goals and standards clearly. Conduct regular progress reviews. Make it acceptable to question each other's approaches and hold each other accountable.
The Dysfunction: Team members place their individual needs (ego, career development, recognition) above the collective goals of the team. The team loses sight of what they're trying to achieve together.
The Solution: Make team results clear and reward behaviors that contribute to team goals. Keep the team focused on collective outcomes rather than individual achievements.
Trust is the foundation of all teamwork. Without it, teams cannot engage in healthy conflict, commit to decisions, hold each other accountable, or focus on collective results. Address these dysfunctions from the bottom up, you cannot skip levels. A team that trusts each other, engages in healthy conflict, commits to decisions, holds each other accountable, and focuses on collective results will outperform any group of individuals.
