The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

by Patrick Lencioni

Some leaders have a hard time believing this. They feel that if they entertain disagreement around a contentious topic, they’ll make it less likely that they’ll be able to gain commitment. But this is selling their employees short. The truth is, very few people in the world are incapable of supporting a decision merely because they had a different idea. Most people are generally reasonable and can rally around an idea that wasn’t their own as long as they know they’ve had a chance to weigh in. But when there has been no conflict, when different opinions have not been aired and debated, it becomes virtually impossible for team members to commit to a decision, at least not actively.

When people leave a meeting without active commitment around a decision, they don’t go back to their offices and design a plan to sabotage the idea. That happens only on television and in the movies, and it makes for great theater. In real life, what actually happens is far more boring—and more dangerous. Most leaders have learned the art of passive agreement: going to a meeting, smiling and nodding their heads when a decision is made that they don’t agree with. They then go back to their offices and do as little as possible to support that idea. They don’t promote it on their own team, and they certainly aren’t willing to run out onto the tracks waving their arms to prevent a train wreck. Instead, they sit back and watch problems develop, quietly looking forward to the day when things go badly and they can say, “Well, I never really liked that idea in the first place.” The impact of this is often embarrassing and costly for the organization.

The only way to prevent passive sabotage is for leaders to demand conflict from their team members and to let them know that they are going to be held accountable for doing whatever the team ultimately decides.

I’ve always been amazed that even teams that embrace conflict and honest debate can still struggle with commitment. That’s because they fall short of arriving at specific agreements at the end of their discussions. Although they are sitting in the same room and speaking the same language, they often leave with different ideas about what was just decided. There is only one way I know to prevent this. At the end of every meeting, cohesive teams must take a few minutes to ensure that everyone sitting at the table is walking away with the same understanding about what has been agreed to and what they are committed to do. Unfortunately, people are usually eager to leave the room when a meeting is coming to a close, and so they are more than susceptible to tolerating a little ambiguity. That’s why functional teams maintain the discipline to review their commitments and stick around long enough to clarify anything that isn’t crystal clear. A good way to ensure that people take this process seriously is to demand that they go back to their teams after the meeting and communicate exactly what was agreed on. When team members know that they are going to have to stand in front of the people they lead and vouch for a decision, they are much more likely to push back on that decision if they don’t understand it or don’t agree with it. As painful as this may be to a group of executives who are more than ready to get out of a meeting, the only thing more painful than taking additional tim...

Although few would doubt the importance of achieving active and clear commitment at the end of a discussion, many don’t really think about the practical reason that that is so critical. It’s only when people know that their peers have completely bought in to a decision that they will have the courage to embrace the fourth and most difficult behavior of a cohesive team: accountability.

Of course, people aren’t going to be willing to do this if they have doubts about whether their peers bought into—really bought into—the decisions that were made. That’s why commitment is so important. When colleagues know that there has been only passive commitment around a decision, they aren’t going to feel good about confronting a peer about their behavior. Nor should they. After all, if a person never really bought into something, why would she heed a reminder from a peer who points out her deviation?

At its core, accountability is about having the courage to confront someone about their deficiencies and then to stand in the moment and deal with their reaction, which may not be pleasant. It is a selfless act, one rooted in a word that I don’t use lightly in a business book: love. To hold someone accountable is to care about them enough to risk having them blame you for pointing out their deficiencies.

It’s difficult to overstate the competitive advantage that an accountability-friendly organization has over one where leaders don’t hold one another accountable. More than anything else, problems are identified and solved earlier and without the collateral damage of politics. Whether you measure that in terms of greater revenue, higher productivity, or reduced turnover, the benefits are massive and real.

It’s worth pointing out here that people often confuse accountability with conflict because both involve discomfort and emotion. But there is an enormous difference between the two. Conflict is about issues and ideas, while accountability is about performance and behavior. As difficult as it is for many people to engage in conflict, at least it is somewhat objective, removed from a person’s behavior. It is much harder for most people to hold one another accountable because it involves something of a personal, behavioral judgment.

No matter what the situation, there will always be some discomfort as team members confront one another about their behavior. In the end, however, the level of cohesion and personal satisfaction among team members who embrace the new philosophy overwhelms any temporary discomfort.

I’m often asked whether leaders should hold their people accountable privately during one-on-one sessions or in more public forums with the whole team, like during meetings. Although every case is a little different, generally I believe that on cohesive teams, accountability is best handled with the entire team. I say this because when leaders and team members call one another on issues in front of team members, they get benefits that don’t occur when it takes place individually. First, when accountability is handled during a meeting, every member of the team receives the message simultaneously and doesn’t have to make the same mistakes in order to learn the lesson of the person being held accountable. Second, they know that the leader is holding their colleague accountable, which avoids their wondering whether the boss is doing his job. Finally, it serves to reinforce the culture of accountability, which increases the likelihood that team members will do the same for one another. When leaders—and peers—limit their accountability discussions to private conversations, they leave people wondering whether those discussions are happening. This often leads to unproductive hallway conversations and conjecture about who knows what about whom.

when it comes to addressing relatively serious issues, or matters of corrective action in which a leader is wondering whether a member of the team might not be worthy to be on the team anymore, then everything changes. These are best handled privately, in a one-on-one situation, to respect the dignity of the person being held accountable. However, and this can be dicey, the leader is often well advised to let her people know that she is addressing the situation to avoid unproductive and dangerous speculation.