I’ve found some fascinating material covering a range of subjects, including research on the brain and its function in learning and emotional intelligence, coaching and teams.

The continuous learning we experience in our lives is a journey that has no final destination. However, I thought I would highlight a model on teams that is elegantly simple and makes sense. This model is called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team from a book of the same name written by Patrick Lencioni.

We have all worked on teams and undoubtedly can each recall being part of a healthy, functioning team. When a team is working really well, it most likely has these five key elements – trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results. But when a team is not working well, at least some of these elements will be missing.

Let’s explore Lencioni’s model further:

TRUST: No surprises here—trust is the foundation of all well-functioning teams. In this context, trust is our ability to be vulnerable with one another; to be able to admit mistakes and to not always know the answers. It is not just a transactional relationship where I trust you to do what we agreed. There is a deeper connection in the relationship which contributes to our understanding of each other.
There are many ways to build trust—from simple methods like personality profiles to other, more complex processes in which team members can come to understand one another better. Trust is one of those elements that you can’t have too much of. It is something that you need to continually build upon for good relationships. Interestingly, you can tell a good team trusts one another when they exhibit healthy conflict (the ability to fiercely debate issues, rather than attacking personalities).

CONFLICT: Each of us has our own threshold of comfort with conflict. A team needs healthy conflict so that better decisions can be made. Without it you have boring meetings and artificial harmony. It is a leader’s job to ‘mine’ for healthy conflict, surface views from everyone and bring the team to agreement. This is not about consensus, which often waters down a good decision. In healthy conflict, the leader will ultimately make the call when agreement isn’t reached.
When you are able to share your view within the team, to feel heard and understood, regardless of the final decision, it is easier to commit to that decision because your understanding of each viewpoint is made possible by healthy debate. Unfiltered debate achieves buy-in.

COMMITMENT: How many times have you walked out of a meeting where members of the team have different opinions about what is supposed to happen next? To achieve commitment, assumptions and ambiguity must be avoided. Each discussion needs to end with a clear understanding about what has actually been decided and the next steps to be taken. At the end of a meeting or conversation there needs to be a quick summary of what’s been agreed upon and what happens next. This step is so obvious we miss it. I have walked into subsequent meetings where members are shuffling through their papers and saying ’What did we agree to?’ It is a waste of valuable time.
In a team, commitment has at least two facets. There is commitment to agreed decisions and actions and there is commitment to the behavioural norms we set with one another. We need as much healthy debate and clarity when setting behavioural norms as we do when making strategic decisions. When this is in place, accountability is natural.

ACCOUNTABILITY: ’There’s no accountability!’ We have all heard this catch cry more times than we care to recall. From Lencioni’s model it’s possible to see how accountability is built in. When the team trusts one another to have healthy and fearless debate and then drives for clarity around agreements, members can hold one another to those agreements. Without accountability you get low standards. With accountability you build trust and achieve results.

RESULTS: If you have the foundation of trust, and keep building on this model, you’ll go a long way as a team. However, we can’t lose sight of the fact that there are results to be achieved. Results are the core reason for the existence of your team and organisation. This model looks quite linear and indeed we have walked through it that way, but results need to be woven into every element of the model along the way.
In this context, results are about achieving what you set out to accomplish for the organisation as a whole. When team members are more focused on their own unit or division than what is best for the organisation as a whole, then there is competition for status and egos get in the way. Achieving results for the whole team or organisation must take precedent over individual or unit results. The way to avoid a turf war is to ensure you have good measures that contribute to the whole.

As you can see, each level in this model interacts with and builds upon the others. Hats off to Patrick Lencioni for his insightful work in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. While this book is written as a leadership fable, don’t be fooled by the easy read. The simplicity is part of the beauty of the model.

What Patrick doesn’t mention is that using the model involves skill. Most of us need to understand one another better and explore our threshold of comfort with conflict. It takes time to build trust of the quality required to have a functional team, but the effort it takes to achieve this is more than worth it.