Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators

Ego is the ultimate killer on a team

Ironically, for peer-to-peer accountability to become a part of a team’s culture, it has to be modeled by the leader. That’s right. Even though I said earlier that the best kind of accountability is peer-to-peer, the key to making it stick is the willingness of the team leader to do something I call “enter the danger” whenever someone needs to be called on their behavior or performance. That means being willing to step right into the middle of a difficult issue and remind individual team members of their responsibility, both in terms of behavior and results. But most leaders I know have a far easier time holding people accountable for their results than they do for behavioral issues. This is a problem because behavioral problems almost always precede results. That means team members have to be willing to call each other on behavioral issues, as uncomfortable as that might be, and if they see their leader balk at doing this, then they aren’t going to do it themselves.

Teams have to eliminate ambiguity and interpretation when it comes to success

I honestly believe that in this day and age of informational ubiquity and nanosecond change, teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped.

If team members are never pushing one another outside of their emotional comfort zones during discussions, then it is extremely likely that they’re not making the best decisions for the organization.

Keep in mind that a real team should be spending considerable time together in meetings and working sessions. In fact, it is not uncommon that as much as 20 percent of each team member’s time is spent working through issues and solving problems with the team as a whole. p. 105

Because when a team recovers from an incident of destructive conflict, it builds confidence that it can survive such an event, which in turn builds trust. This is not unlike a husband and wife recovering from a big argument and developing closer ties and greater confidence in their relationship as a result.

Adrenaline addiction The unwillingness or inability of busy people to slow down and review, reflect, assess, and discuss their business and their team. An adrenaline addiction is marked by anxiety among people who always have a need to keep moving, keep spinning, even in the midst of obvious confusion and declining productivity

Rather than coming together to make the best possible decision for the entire organization, they become lobbyers for their own constituents

Employees know that they ultimately pay the price when their manager doesn’t get along with or cooperate with managers of other departments, leaving the staff to navigate the treacherous and bloody waters of organizational politics.

Peer pressure and the distaste for letting down a colleague will motivate a team player more than any fear of authoritative punishment or rebuke.

I define accountability as the willingness of team members to remind one another when they are not living up to the performance standards of the group.

The fundamental attribution error is simply this: human beings tend to falsely attribute the negative behaviors of others to their character (an internal attribution), while they attribute their own negative behaviors to their environment (an external attribution).

People who don’t like conflict have an amazing ability to avoid it, even when they know it’s theoretically necessary

No quality or characteristic is more important than trust

KEY POINTS—FOCUSING ON RESULTS • The true measure of a great team is that it accomplishes the results it sets out to achieve. • To avoid distractions, team members must prioritize the results of the team over their individual or departmental needs. • To stay focused, teams must publicly clarify their desired results and keep them visible.

There is always that little voice in your head saying, “What about me?” Sometimes that little voice drowns out the cry of the team, and the collective results of the group get left behind.

When players on a team stop caring about the scoreboard, they inevitably start caring about something else.

We have a strong and natural tendency to look out for ourselves before others, even when those others are part of our families and our teams.

KEY POINTS—EMBRACING ACCOUNTABILITY • Accountability on a strong team occurs directly among peers. • For a culture of accountability to thrive, a leader must demonstrate a willingness to confront difficult issues. • The best opportunity for holding one another accountable occurs during meetings, and the regular review of a team scoreboard provides a clear context for doing so.

What’s critical is that team members know that the areas that were identified will not go away, and that they will have to answer for their progress in the not-too-distant future.

Help people realize that when they fail to provide peers with constructive feedback they are letting them down personally. By holding back, we are hurting not only the team, but also our teammates themselves.

What is the single most important behavioral characteristic or quality demonstrated by this person that can sometimes derail the team?

The most important challenge of building a team where people hold one another accountable is overcoming the understandable hesitance of human beings to give one another critical feedback.

commitment cannot occur if people are unclear about exactly what is being committed to.

commitment is not consensus. Waiting for everyone on a team to agree intellectually on a decision is a good recipe for mediocrity, delay, and frustration, which is why it amazes me that so many of the teams I work with still seem determined to achieve consensus.

Commitment is about a group of intelligent, driven individuals buying in to a decision precisely when they don’t naturally agree. In other words, it’s the ability to defy a lack of consensus.

Teams that commit to decisions and standards do so because they know how to embrace two separate but related concepts: buy-in and clarity. Buy-in is the achievement of honest emotional support. Clarity is the removal of assumptions and ambiguity from a situation.