Episode 40 - Review and Summary of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

We all have to work with other people in every facet of our lives, whether it be in our careers, business organizations and even at home. We can all agree that this is no doubt is incredibly challenging but important to achieve something.

Great teamwork is not born out of luck but requires specific strategies and effort. This is simply because of our human nature, we are imperfect individuals with egos and self-centered goals in life.

This is my second book by management expert and best-selling author Patrick Lencioni in this Podcast series.

In this book, Patrick presents a fable that peels back the veil on the basics of teamwork, a story of a technology company that struggles to grow and finds customers. A new CEO Kathryn sees the potential of the company and its people. But the management team is having a hard time accepting its role and agreeing, which results in negative feelings around the organization.

As Kathryn finds this, she begins to immediately review the situation and implement an aggressive team building effort to turn things around.

in this process, she discovers and works to understand 5 dysfunctions of a team that holds it back. And how she can address them separately to achieve the growth and greatness they all desire.

Patrick says “Organizations fail to achieve team - work because they unknowingly fall prey to five natural but dangerous pitfalls.”

Let's dive into these 5 pitfalls and learn some of the strategies we can use to overcome them in our teams today.

Allow me to leave you with this final thought.

As a leader and entrepreneur, having a great team is a powerful competitive advantage to have on our road to success. But achieving harmony and teamwork is an ever increasing challenge we face on a day to day basis. With workforces of today comprised of Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millenials, it’s become more and more difficult to avoid the natural dysfunctions of a team.

What we need to do is to acknowledge, recognize and practice the small set of principles in overcoming the five dysfunctions of a team, which allows us to develop a truly cohesive team that.

1. Trust one another.

2. Engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas.

3. Commit to decisions and plans of action.

4. Hold each other accountable for delivering against those plans.

5. And Focused on achieving collective results.