The Five Disfunction of a Team, Patric Lencioni model

Introduction

According to Leigh Thompson , "a team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to information, resources, knowledge, and skills and who seek to combine their efforts to achieve a common goal". That being so, the main feature that differentiates a Team from a group of individuals, is that their work is based on a joint effort which creates synergy, which allows each member to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Based on this necessity of creating synergy within the members of the group Patrick Lencioni introduced a new model, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" , in which he addresses the five main causes that prevent a group from being an effective team. These dysfunctions can cause significant barriers to a team's and project’s success, so they must be monitored and addressed by managers to achieve the desired goals. The five dysfunctions proposed by Lencioni are Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, and Inattention to Results.

Absence of trust

The absence of trust is the unwillingness of team members to be vulnerable within the group. Team members are not genuinely open and honest with each other, leading to missed opportunities and ineffective problem-solving.

According to the Cambridge dictionary " , the definition of trust is “to believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable”. This is a very accurate definition to explain what it means in the context of a team; trust is the confidence among team members that their peer´s intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. Having trust within a group requires team members to be confident that their respective vulnerabilities, weaknesses, skill deficiencies, mistakes, misunderstandings, and requests for help will not be used against them. Then, they can focus their energy and attention completely on the actual job, rather than, being wasting time and energy managing their behaviors and interactions within the group. This Dysfunction leads directly to the following, fear of conflict, as teams that have trust can engage in passionate debates, without the fear of thinking that what is being said is destructive or critical.

Suggestions for overcoming Dysfunction 1

Achieving team trust requires that members had shared experiences and an in-depth understanding of their attributes. This is something difficult to gain and it also requires time, however, by taking a focused approach the manager can accelerate the process. Some of the tools that can be used are:

• Personal Histories Exercise: This exercise requires nothing more than going around the table during a meeting and having team members answer a short list of questions about themselves. The questions should be related to the personal life of each member, and also about their hobbies, interests, family, former jobs, and anything that the person considers important for his life. This method leads to greater empathy and understanding and discourages inaccurate behavioral attributions. The minimum time required for this practice is 30 minutes.
• Team Effectiveness exercise: This method requires team members to select one attribute or contribution that each of their teammates makes for the team and one area that they have to improve or eliminate for the good of the team. This is a more rigorous and risky method that requires a certain degree of trust among the members.
• 360-degree feedback: this tool is based on the call for peers, managers, customers, or other job-related people to make specific judgments and provide one another with constructive criticism. It is important that this feedback is not related with formal performance evaluation.
• Experimental team exercises: such as outdoor team-building activities. They involve collective support and cooperation, but their benefits do not always translate to the job place. Thus, these activities should be layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes.