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June 3 - August 17, 2020
building a strong team is both possible and remarkably simple. But it is painfully difficult.
“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 do not hold back 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.”
“Remember, I want to hear about your life as a child, but I’m not interested in your inner child.” One by one the DecisionTech executives answered the questions. Hometown? Number of kids in the family? Interesting childhood hobbies? Biggest challenge growing up? First job?
AWARENESS Walking back to the white board, Kathryn explained, “Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” She wrote the word invulnerability next to trust on the white board. Then she continued. “And so, we are all going to demonstrate vulnerability this morning in a low-risk but relevant way.” She then asked everyone to spend five minutes deciding what they believed were their single biggest strength and weakness in terms of their contribution to DecisionTech’s success or failure. “I don’t want you to give me some
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“My biggest strength is my lack of fear when it comes to negotiation and management of outside companies, whether they’re partners, vendors, or competitors. I don’t have any problem pushing them to do more than they want to do. My biggest weakness, however, is that I sometimes come across as arrogant.”
“Yes, I’ve had that problem since I was in college, and probably before. I can be sarcastic and even rude at times, and sometimes I come across sounding like I think I’m smarter than everyone else. And that might be okay, I suppose, if I’m dealing with a vendor, but with you guys, it could probably piss you off a little, which I don’t think is going to help us get where we want to go.”
“Good. That was exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for. Who’s next?”
“I am pretty afraid to fail.
I’d say that I’m good at solving problems, doing analysis—stuff like that. What I’m not so good at is communicating with human beings.”
Does that make sense?”
“The problem is that it can sometimes make people think you don’t like them. That they’re a waste of your time.”
“No, that’s not it at all. I mean, that’s not what I intend. Crap. That’s bad. I don’t mean that at all, but I suppose I can see how it comes across that way. I don’t know how to change that.”
it was clear to her now that Mikey’s behavior was having a very real impact on the rest of the group.
The key is to make the collective ego greater than the individual ones.”
No matter how good an individual on the team might be feeling about his or her situation, if the team loses, everyone loses.”
Ken always says that his job is to create the best team possible, not to shepherd the careers of individual athletes. And that’s how I look at my job.”
“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.”
When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board.”
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.”
Some people are hard to hold accountable because they are so helpful. Others because they get defensive. Others because they are intimidating. I don’t think it’s easy to hold anyone accountable,
Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team.”
genuine teamwork in most organizations remains as elusive as it has ever been.
organizations fail to achieve teamwork because they unknowingly fall prey to five natural but dangerous pitfalls, which I call the five dysfunctions of a team.
unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group.
Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas.
veiled discussions and guarded comments.
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.
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.
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.
In the context of building a team, trust is the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. In essence, teammates must get comfortable being vulnerable with one another.
it is only when team members are truly comfortable being exposed to one another that they begin to act without concern for protecting themselves. As a result, they can focus their energy and attention completely on the job at hand, rather than on being strategically disingenuous or political with one another.
Individual developmental areas must be revisited to ensure that progress does not lose momentum. Even on a strong team—and perhaps especially so—atrophy can lead to the erosion of trust.
The most important action that a leader must take to encourage the building of trust on a team is to demonstrate vulnerability first.
team leaders must create an environment that does not punish vulnerability.
Even well-intentioned teams can subtly discourage trust by chastising one another for admissions of weakness or failure.
One of the best ways to lose the trust of a team is to feign vulnerability in order to manipulate the emotions of others.
By building trust, a team makes conflict possible because team members do not hesitate to engage in passionate and sometimes emotional debate,
Ideological conflict is limited to concepts and ideas, and avoids personality-focused, mean-spirited attacks.
They must have the courage and confidence to call out sensitive issues and force team members to work through them. This requires a degree of objectivity during meetings and a commitment to staying with the conflict until it is resolved.
once the discussion or meeting has ended, it is helpful to remind participants that the conflict they just engaged in is good for the team and not something to avoid in the future.
the desire to protect members from harm. This leads to premature interruption of disagreements, and prevents team members from developing coping skills for dealing with conflict themselves.
it is key that leaders demonstrate restraint when their people engage in conflict,
commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in.
The two greatest causes of the lack of commitment are the desire for consensus and the need for certainty:
reasonable human beings do not need to get their way in order to support a decision, but only need to know that their opinions have been heard and considered.
a decision is better than no decision.
