Book Review: Five Dysfunctions of a Team

One of the ways to keep your process both honed and up to date is to continue your learning.  The master of creativity, the great Pablo Picasso once said, "Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility."  So in light of learning from the insight of others, 2-Pros brings you our first book review.


The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni is perhaps the best professional book I have read to date.  In it Lencioni discusses the dysfunctions of Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, and Inattention to Results.  He really does a phenomenal job of showing how each of these dysfunctions impact one another and how suffering from one can escalate up the list and cause issues in later areas.  He ties the whole thing together with a short story that is simplistic in nature, but provides the right amount of color to really help you absorb the depth of his concepts.


In reading this book I really felt like Lencioni helped me to determine who my teams were in the workplace.  First my management peers at other offices, next my management team in my office, and finally my team of subordinates that I lead.  In my line of work, that concept really got me thinking as to how important it is to ensure that teams operate effectively down the priority scale to ensure that corporate messages are delivered consistently at all levels by ensuring that I don't lead my team in a direction that all other teams are not headed in.  Thus avoiding a separate topic of discerning the fine line between motivated innovation and disregard for corporate branding.  


Once I was able to identify my teams, I was quickly able to start putting the litmus tests together to gauge where each team stood in regards to the five dysfunctions.  Lencionci's concepts were evident and several levels and I'm happy to have been able to define them and put things in place to start pull together those teams for even better performances in the future. 


These additions to my existing team-building structure will largely impact my processes in that area and greatly assist me as I continue to work with teams in the future.  With the exception of those of us who live on deserted islands, who doesn't need a little more focus on team as part of their process?


If you are looking for a great read, I strongly suggest picking this one up.  Because of the short-story nature it is a reasonably quick read, and once you begin to connect the concepts to the teams that you're a part of you will not want to put it down.