Transcript How to conquer team dysfunction

What are the 5 dysfunctions of a
team and how can we overcome
them?
How to conquer team dysfunction
•All teams can experience dysfunction, because they are
made up of fallible human beings. But tackling this is
solvable and worthwhile.
•Patrick Lencini identifies 5 basic sources of dysfunction
which teams experience.
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Absence of Trust
Fear of Conflict
Lack of Commitment
Avoidance of Accountability
Inattention to Results
•He also shows how we can establish the problem within a
particular team by asking 5 simple questions
5 questions to help identify and tackle
dysfunction in teams
• Lencini’s 5 questions for clarifying whether there is a
problem:
–do team members openly and readily disclose their opinions?
–are team meetings compelling and productive?
– does the team come to decisions quickly and avoid getting
bogged down by consensus?
– do team members confront one another about their
shortcomings?
–do team members sacrifice their own interests for the good of
the team.
•He suggests the best way to create an effective
environment for teamwork is to try and ensure team
members say yes to these questions
Absence of Trust
• Lencini suggests that
– trust is an indicator of the confidence of the team members that
their peers’ intentions are good.
– Indicators of an absence of trust include team members being
reluctant to be vulnerable with one another and unwilling to
admit their mistakes, weaknesses or needs.
– building trust within a team is a lengthy process. The best way to
achieve it is to help team members to understand and value
each other’s working styles and personalities.
• Kiersey’s work shows‫ י‬that people with people with
diametrically opposed approaches to reaching decisions
( delaying decisions to make them better at one end,
making a decision quickly and making it work at the
other) can have difficulty trusting each other’s motives.
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see separate bite/ taster and tool on this line
Fear of Conflict
• Teams need to be able to openly discuss their opinions,
including their disagreements, for team work to be
effective.
• Avoiding conflict is often considered more important in
the workplace than airing criticisms and concerns, and
this tendency increases the higher one goes up the
management chain.
• People with an introverted temperament are particularly
likely to struggle with engaging with conflict, as they are
generally less inclined to get involved in a lively debate
with other people.
Lack of Commitment
• Lack of direction and commitment for teams, says Lencini,
can make employees (particularly “star” employees)
disgruntled.
• Lencini suggests that lack of commitment is usually caused by
the desire for consensus and the need for clarity. Even when
not everyone in a team agrees with the majority opinion, it is
important to find ways everyone can buy-in to that opinion.
• This obviously links with Kiersey’s work, in particular with the
difference between people who want to try hard to reach a
decision quickly and get on with making it work and people
who prefer to leave further options open to reach a better
decision, and may appear to judgers to lack commitment.
• It is important to remember this clash and find ways to work to
reduce it.
Avoidance of Accountability
• When teams don’t commit to a clear plan of action, even the
most focused and driven individuals hesitate to question their
peers on actions which are counterproductive.
• This can be a particular problem with teams who are close, as
they may fear damaging their relationships by holding each
other accountable. In fact, teams who hold each other
accountable can grow closer than they would otherwise, by
demonstrating mutual respect.
• Teams are strengthened by having members with different
perspectives and temperaments and accountability helps
reveal the need for a range of contributions. But avoiding
accountability risks surfacing differences without clarity about
their purpose and thus increases conflict.
Inattention to Results
• When team members put their own needs (such as their
careers, egos etc) ahead of the collective goals of the team it
is hard for teams to succeed.
• This can grow out of a lack of accountability, or simply when
the divisions between team members are particularly
problematic.
• Lencini says that the only way to conquer this dysfunction is
to make the team’s goals and desired results as clear as
possible. This makes it possible to reinforce and even reward
actions which contribute to the team’s goal and establish
positive feedback cycles.
• It is possible that those who prefer to work intuitively from a
big picture will have particular difficulty agreeing with team
members who prefer to work from carefully measured data
will have difficulty building a shared orientation to results, as
hey often see goals differently.
Implications
• Lencini identifies 5 questions which can help teams
clarify whether there is a problem (as set out in slide
three above). Ask each team member to reflect on
their responses to the questions; at first people may
want to contribute their response anonymously on
printed notes. Exploring the collective responses
could help you identify a priority area for
development.
• Once you have identified a priority area can you
discuss as a team the strategies for strengthening it?
For example, if you need to further develop trust you
might want to explore each other’s working styles and
preferences.
Find out more
•Study reference
–Lencioni, P. (2002) The five dysfunctions of a team.
England: Jossey-Bass.
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Further reading
– Using the Myers-Briggs instrument with Lencioni’s 5
dysfunctions of a team model:
https://www.cpp.com/pdfs/mbti-lencioni-guide.pdf