Teams can have accomplishments, but are they working at a level of effectiveness where they are truly inspiring others, building loyalty and getting results as best they can? Often teams are dysfunctional at some level. This week we’re talking about the model Patrick Lencioni presented in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Transcript
Good day and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill and this week we’re going to be talking about the five dysfunctions of a team. This is a book originally written by Patrick Lencioni. I have it right here. If you’re watching the vlog on YouTube, you can see the book cover. I’ll link to it in the description and I want to speak to it because really it provides some great a model forward for teams that are just not functioning as high of a capacity as they could be. And I’m not talking about like ringing every last drop out of the potential of your team. I’m talking about how do we get a team that functions really, really well.
And so the first thing I want to talk about, the first dysfunction that Patrick Lencioni speaks about in his book is trust. And we’re not speaking about the trust that I have in you to do your job or for you to be skilled. The trust we’re talking about is the trust that says, if I share vulnerability with you if I come to you in confidence and say, you know, I’m not quite getting what we’re supposed to be achieving here or I’m having a real conflict with our CEO, I trust that you will not then turn around and use that against me or use that to gain an advantage for yourself. That’s what trust is all about and that’s the first dysfunction. The base layer. Without trust, you can’t really have a highly effective team. You can’t really build loyalty or get results in the way that would be possible if you worked on trust. Now, there are definitely ways you can build trust and it’s not all about trust falls or you know, sharing of intimate stories and crying around a drum circle or something, which, which by the way, all of those things can be really effective in different arenas, but you can build trust in your team.
Now, often it’s hard to do it without a facilitator or an outside person from the team, but I’d love to talk to you about it further. But for now, for more on this topic, visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Talk to you and tomorrow.
Good day and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill, and this week we’re talking about building an effective team and we’re using Patrick Lencioni’s work in his book, the five dysfunctions of a team. And this is a great book. It outlines everything we’re talking about. Definitely. if what I say this week resonates with you, pick up a copy reach out to me. I’d love to work with how it can help you and your organization. But today we’re going to talk about the second dysfunction, the fear of conflict.
And what this really means is exactly what it says. Your inability to have conflict with each other because you’re afraid of hurting somebody’s feelings. You’re afraid of being left out of other decisions because it’s taken personally. But think about what a fear of conflict do to your team. If somebody brings forward an idea that you might think is good but isn’t great, are you going to have the confidence that you can challenge that idea and not get tremendous pushback on a personal front or insult or any other number of ways that I could go bad for you? Will you be able to actually have a great conversation where somebody defends her point, helps define what they see the value in, or is a conflict going to be where you end up just not liking each other and not talking to each other?
The fear of conflict can be debilitating. You might as well not even meet or if you’re meeting, you’re basically going to meet to be a yes person and not a lot is going to be achieved. Now again, the fear of conflict I think is really bad when we are just bringing good ideas to the table and not great ideas or when every idea is good. That’s where the fear of conflict really hurts. Not when bad ideas are brought forward. Like usually those can die and in some other sort of way, but it’s when we aren’t capable of challenging each other. Now again, there are ways to overcome this in your team. Oftentimes outside facilitator is the best way to do it and I’m not suggesting that just because that’s what I do. It could be somebody else from inside the company, but often it’s great to have somebody outside help facilitate that team because they can call out different things and while you’re rebuilding and learning and becoming cohesive, it’s often good to have that outside person so there’s no hangover of what the facilitator did internally.
Anyhow for on this topic, please visit Leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty, and get results, talk to you again tomorrow.
Good day and welcome to the leading with nice daily. Today we’re going to talk further about this week’s topic, which is the five dysfunctions of a team based on Patrick Lencioni’s book, the five dysfunctions of a team. I recommend if you haven’t read it and some of this resonates with you, pick it up. It’s a really short read. He writes in a fable format so it’s very easy to add to digest. Awesome. People tell me they read it in like one sitting. So today we’re going to talk about a big problem and it’s the inability to commit. It’s a third dysfunction that Patrick Lencioni describes and what the, what the inability to commit is really a child of his, what we talked about yesterday, the fear of conflict and his inability to commit is this, if you haven’t had a robust debate, if you haven’t had an honest and trusting conversation in your group when you decide on an action, it’s much less likely.
Others around you will be committed to that initiative that if they had had a chance to speak very honestly and openly into it, they will buy-in. If they’ve had a chance to say things vulnerably, say things with conflict and then be able to resolve their issues and be like, you know what? Okay, I’m in. They may not agree or believe in everything, but they will have your back if you don’t have the conflict and if you don’t have the trust down, there’s no way you can commit. A commitment to commitment takes a lot of work and you’ve probably experienced this in your own company when you have brought a great idea forward, you’ve done the research, you’ve gotten some buy-in from other team members and you bring it forward and people are just like, yeah, sounds great. Go for it, let’s do it.
And then you turn around and two months later it’s not going very well because nobody else really cares, you know? How often do you see that where others just don’t care enough to make it happen? And it can be really hard for individuals in a company trying to move things forward. Also, what happens is you get different departments siloing, so this really helps break down silos as well. Your ability to commit to something, a commitment to commitment, and again, you can overcome this. It’s often easier when you work with somebody outside of your company, consultant, a facilitator, etc. For more of this topic. Visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty, and get results. Talk to you again tomorrow.
Good day, and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill, and this week we’re continuing our discussion on the work that Patrick Lencioni developed in a book he wrote called the five dysfunctions of a team in it, he presents a model for teams developing to be highly effective and that’s something us here at leading with nice, really strive to help you and your team become highly effective.
Now yesterday we spoke about the commitment, commitment problem, the lack of commitment, and today we’re going to talk about the avoidance of accountability and that’s the fourth dysfunction and they dovetail together. You might see, you might’ve experienced an avoidance of accountability when things aren’t going well and you’re like, why isn’t somebody bringing that up? Why isn’t that being brought to the table? Why does it seem to be ignored? Well, it’s being ignored because nobody is committed to results. It’s being ignored because nobody had a conflict. So they weren’t able to say their piece and they didn’t actually buy into the project and they didn’t do that because there’s not really high trust at your team level. So what this stage does, this fourth dysfunction when you work on it is it teaches you, it enables you, it gives team members the ability, the understanding of how to hold each other accountable.
And it’s when things aren’t going right to say to them, Hey, this isn’t how it should be. Here’s what it should look like. What’s preventing you from achieving this? And you can do that because you have the high trust level. You can have conflict, you are committed to it. This is not about the opposite of avoidance of accountability isn’t ultra accountability where you’re being micromanaged. It’s when you come together as a team and you’re asking each other, why are we not achieving? It’s the ability to say, well, I think I know some reasons or I think I have the questions to ask as opposed to, well, just it’s the wrong time. Or Oh, we misjudged that one. And moving on. You’ve probably experienced this at your work where a project has launched and gone forward and just kind of faded and the reason it’s happened or the first three dysfunctions, but there’s no accountability.
You avoid it. Does that resonate with you? I bet it does. I know I’ve been in situations where it, it certainly does and the worst is, is when there hasn’t been the commitment to commitment and then somebody all of a sudden is holding people accountable. We’re like, well, you’ve never really bought people that are bought in, in the first place. You just skipped all these other four, four functions that a team, a highly effective team should be doing and you’re going rate to accountability. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not going to work and you’ve probably experienced that. If you’ve been listening to this week and you feel, man, that sounds a lot like what I’m experiencing. I’d love to talk to you about it. Often you can overcome these. However, it’s often great to work with a facilitator or a coach or a consultant.
It’s what we hear it leading with Nice do all the time and I’d love to talk to you more about it. But for more on this topic, visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. Talk to you and tomorrow.
Good day and welcome to the leading with nice daily. My name is Mathieu Yuill and this week we’ve been talking about Patrick Lencioni’s book, the five dysfunctions of a team, and the model that it presents for you and your organization building highly effective teams. Now today we’re going to be talking about the fifth dysfunction and that’s the inattention to results. Now basically this is exactly what it sounds like. This is where your team is not really paying attention to the results for the team, but instead prioritizing their own personal results, their career, their ego, their personal freedoms or ability to get what they want done over the priorities for the organization.
So why would this happen? Well, if you look back at yesterday’s, the inability to hold each other accountable, then you can see why when you’re not holding each other accountable, it’s like a Petri dish for the inattention to results to thrive and it really, when you’re at this point, when you’re seeing how so many of these other layers of a highly effective team just haven’t happened, why it’s so disheartening. This probably, if you’re listening this week and you’ve read, it’s resonated with you earlier on, I guarantee you this feels very familiar to you. I’d love to help you with this. Often you can definitely overcome this and oftentimes it’s much better, much more successful when you work with a consultant or somebody from outside your organization, a coach or a facilitator because it allows that person to dig deep and drive hard and allow any, anything that might hold people back or hiccups puts it on the third party as opposed to having a really hardcore session and then the next few weeks while you’re having that gap to work on it, like seeing the person that was really challenging you in the hallway when you’re not prepared for it, you’ll get there.
If you’d like to talk about this, I would love to talk to you about it. If you just want to find out more about this topic, visit leadingwithnice.com where we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty, and get results. Talk to you again tomorrow.