11/11/2024
I’ve been fortunate enough to see Patrick Lencioni speak twice now, and each time I’m struck by how his ‘Five Dysfunctions of a Team’ framework cuts through the noise of modern leadership theory. Even after years of consulting with leadership teams across Australia, I still find myself sketching out Lencioni’s pyramid in client meetings.
Why? Because it just works.
The 5 Dysfunctions:
- Absence of Trust
- Fear of Conflict
- Lack of Commitment
- Avoidance of Accountability
- Inattention to Results
What fascinates me is how often the complex challenges facing modern leadership teams can be traced back to one (or more) of these fundamental issues. It’s like having an X-ray machine for team dynamics—suddenly the underlying problem becomes visible.
But Here’s What Most People Get Wrong
Reading Lencioni’s book and understanding the framework intellectually is the easy part. The hard part is honestly diagnosing which dysfunction is actually limiting your team’s performance, and then doing the uncomfortable work to fix it.
In my experience working with executive teams, here’s what actually addressing each dysfunction requires:
Building Trust: More Than Team-Building Exercises
Absence of trust isn’t solved by ropes courses or trust falls. It’s built through vulnerability—leaders being willing to admit mistakes, acknowledge weaknesses, and ask for help without fear of it being used against them.
When I work with leadership teams on trust, we start with simple vulnerability exercises: sharing something about your background that shaped who you are, or admitting a mistake you made recently. The goal isn’t therapy—it’s creating an environment where people can be honest about what they don’t know or where they need support.
Trust is the foundation. Without it, everything else collapses. But building it requires leaders who are willing to go first in showing vulnerability.
Embracing Conflict: The Uncomfortable Truth
Fear of conflict manifests as artificial harmony—teams that are unfailingly polite in meetings, then complain in the hallway afterwards. This isn’t collaboration; it’s dysfunction wearing a smile.
Productive conflict isn’t about being combative. It’s about being able to passionately debate ideas without making it personal. When we worked with Natrio’s leadership team through significant structural changes, part of the work was teaching them how to disagree productively—how to challenge each other’s thinking without challenging each other’s worth.
The best leadership teams I’ve seen don’t avoid conflict—they lean into it, because they know that’s where better decisions emerge.
Achieving Commitment: Not Consensus
Lack of commitment often stems from teams confusing consensus with commitment. You don’t need everyone to agree with a decision for everyone to commit to it.
What you need is clarity: a decision has been made, everyone’s voice was heard in the process, and now we’re all moving in the same direction—even if some people would have chosen differently.
This requires leaders to be explicit: “We’ve heard all perspectives. Here’s the decision. Can everyone commit to this direction, even if it wasn’t your preference?” Then actually checking for genuine commitment, not just nodding heads.
Holding Each Other Accountable: Peer Pressure Done Right
Avoidance of accountability happens when team members rely on the leader to be the sole source of discipline. High-performing teams hold each other accountable directly—peers calling out peers when standards aren’t being met.
This only works when there’s trust (so feedback isn’t received as an attack) and commitment (so there are clear standards to hold people to). See how the dysfunctions build on each other?
In practice, this means creating explicit agreements about how the team will work together, then giving team members permission and expectation to call each other out when those agreements aren’t honored. It’s uncomfortable. It’s also essential.
Focusing on Results: Collective Over Individual
Inattention to results happens when team members prioritize individual goals, departmental goals, or personal status over collective team outcomes. The symptom? People celebrate their area’s success while the overall business struggles.
The antidote is ruthless clarity about what success looks like at the team level, and making sure incentives, recognition, and consequences are aligned to collective results, not just individual performance.
When I facilitate strategic sessions with leadership teams, we spend significant time defining what “winning” means for the team collectively—not just for each function. Then we track and discuss team-level results relentlessly.
Why This Framework Still Matters
What makes Lencioni’s framework timeless is that it’s not about complex solutions or fancy strategies. It’s about addressing the basic human elements that make or break team success. Technology changes. Business models evolve. But the fundamentals of how humans work together effectively—or don’t—remain constant.
The framework is hierarchical for a reason. You can’t skip levels. You can’t build accountability without commitment. You can’t get commitment without healthy conflict. You can’t have productive conflict without trust.
The Question Worth Asking
Here’s the diagnostic question I ask leadership teams: Which of these dysfunctions would your team members privately say is your biggest challenge?
Not which one you think it is. Which one would they say, if they were being brutally honest?
That gap—between what leaders think the problem is and what team members experience—is often where the real work needs to happen.
At Beacon Consult, we don’t just help teams understand the Five Dysfunctions intellectually. We work with leadership teams to honestly diagnose where they’re stuck, then do the uncomfortable work of building trust, embracing conflict, achieving commitment, holding each other accountable, and focusing relentlessly on collective results.
Because frameworks are useful. But execution is everything.
Quick self-check: Which of these dysfunctions resonates most with your team’s current challenges?
#Leadership #TeamDevelopment #OrganizationalCulture #PatrickLencioni #TeamPerformance
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