The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

by Patrick Lencioni

And the rebreak hurts a lot more than the initial break, because you have to do it on purpose.”

She took comfort in knowing that she was finally about to begin what she had been waiting to do for almost a month.

“We are not functioning as a team. In fact, we are quite dysfunctional.”

it is very possible that some of us here won't find the new company to be the kind of place where we want to be.

“Let me assure those of you who might be wondering about all of this that everything we are going to be doing is about one thing only: making this company succeed.

I can promise you that none of that will happen if we do not address the issues that are preventing us from acting like a team.”

“Trust is the foundation of real teamwork. And so the first dysfunction is a failure on the part of team members to understand and open up to one another.

“Great teams are honest with one another,” she said. “They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”

I see a trust problem here in the lack of debate that exists during staff meetings and other interactions among this team.

I'd have to say that every effective team I've ever observed had a substantial level of debate. Even the most trusting teams mixed it up a lot.”

I don't think we lack the time to argue. I think we're just not comfortable challenging each other.

“So you don't agree on most things, and yet you don't seem willing to admit that you have concerns.

be present and participate. That means everyone needs to be fully engaged in whatever we're talking about.”

I had the same issue there. It's more of a behavioral issue than a technological one.”

But Kathryn had been through this enough to know that the euphoria would diminish as soon as the conversation shifted to work.

For the next ninety minutes, Mikey didn't say a word, but sat silently as the group continued their discussion.

she couldn't overlook the fact that Mikey's behavior was speaking volumes about her inability to trust her teammates.

“Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”

Martin, to everyone's surprise, voiced his agreement. “Isn't that usually the case?”

Kathryn would later kick herself for not calling Mikey on her remark, which at the time Kathryn attributed to her astonishingly low emotional intelligence.

the tendency of team members to seek out individual recognition and attention at the expense of results.

The key is to make the collective ego greater than the individual ones.”

“The key, of course, is to define our goals, our results, in a way that is simple enough to grasp easily, and specific enough to be actionable.

“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.”

“If we don’t trust one another, then we aren’t going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict. And we’ll just continue to preserve a sense of artificial harmony.”

“Once we achieve clarity and buy-in, it is then that we have to hold each other accountable for what we sign up to do, for high standards of performance and behavior. And as simple as that sounds, most executives hate to do it, especially when it comes to a peer’s behavior, because they want to avoid interpersonal discomfort.”

“The peer-to-peer thing is certainly one of the issues that makes team accountability hard. But there’s something else.”

“If everything is important, then nothing is.”

“During the next two weeks I am going to be pretty intolerant of behavior that demonstrates an absence of trust, or a focus on 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.”