Brooke Campanelli: Patrick Lencioni, author of several business book classics joins us to discuss his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Can you summarize for us the five dysfunctions of a team?
Patrick Lencioni: So the first dysfunction of team is the absence of trust. That’s when team members are not comfortable being vulnerable and open and honest with one another.
The next dysfunction of a team—if there is no trust is the fear of conflict because people on a team should be comfortable engaging in good healthy conflict around ideas. When there is no conflict, then we get to the next one which is the lack of commitment. When people won’t commit to a decision, because they haven’t waded in on a topic, they don’t buy into that topic. Conflict enables people to commit to something.
When there’s not commitment we’re lead to the fourth dysfunction of a team which is the unwillingness to hold one another accountable. Great team members hold each other accountable at a peer to peer kind of thing because they’ve committed to the decision because they had conflict and they trust each other, of course when they’ll enter the danger and hold each other accountable for what’s necessary for the team.
And then if there’s not accountability then we have the fifth dysfunction of a team which is the inattention to results. And what that is when team members aren’t focusing on the collective results of the team, they’re focusing on their own ego, or their own budget or their own department or their career.
Brooke Campanelli: Who is this book written for?
Patrick Lencioni: I specifically targeted to executives in a company, but it’s not limited to them. Luckily and I’m glad to know that people from churches and sports team and the military, a non-profit and schools are using it as well. So it’s a very broadly based, but it was written about an executive team because that’s how I started my company working with CEOs and their teams.
Brooke Campanelli: Back stabbing and office politics can really cripple a company’s operations? How can a leader curtail or stop this kind of interaction?
Patrick Lencioni: Well, the first thing you need to do is build trust on a team because politics is a very natural result when there’s a lack of trust because many people are trying to organize what they say and weight them, manipulates the audience or they’re trying to win rather than really solved a problem. The other thing a leader has to do is call it out. There’s nothing more powerful than when you see someone say something that sounds like it passive, aggressive or politically say. You know that sound of pretty passive, aggressive or political you take the oxygen out of the room, and you make it so it’s very difficult for someone to continue to do that.
Brooke Campanelli: How can the new leader of a team not be intimidated by the team?
Patrick Lencioni: A new leader on a team is so tempted to not let people see them sweat, to be perfect. But truthfully, the best way to overcome intimidation among the new group of people that you have to lead is to be very comfortable with your own vulnerabilities. People want to follow a leader who is real and human, and so I may see that a person knows who they are you know faults and strengths like. They are much more likely to trust and to do what asked.
Brooke Campanelli: Tell us about some of your best selling books.
Patrick Lencioni: The Five Temptations of a CEO is the first book I wrote which was based purely on my observation to various CEOs and leaders I knew. The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive is about our entire practice. How to build a healthy organization? One that minimizes politics and confusion and maximizes morale and productivity and retains really good people. I started my own company to help organizations be more effective, but The Three Signs of a Miserable Job is my first real addressing of that issue.
Brooke Campanelli: You also have a book called Death by Meeting. Why is it that so many meetings fail to accomplish anything?
Patrick Lencioni: People don’t want to sit in a room for an hour or two hours and be bored. And there are things that you can do to make meetings a less boring. But the other reason which is even more important is they lack contexts. Meetings are to often a combination of every topic under the sun which ends up really accomplishing nothing. Meetings have to have more focus and more clarity. So that when people go to that meeting they know why they are there.
Brooke Campanelli: Your models are so simple and actionable. Tell us how they are developed?
Patrick Lencioni: The field research I do is just working with my clients and I enjoy that a lot, and that’s where I get the ideas. All of my ideas come from the real world. The other thing is as you said they’re all very simple. And that’s because I’m a real believer that we overcomplicate things too much. When we overcomplicate things we make it hard for people to grasp it and put it into practice. And my readers seem to really appreciate that.
Brooke Campanelli: Well, thanks so much for sticking with us today Patrick.
Patrick Lencioni: Thank you Brooke.
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