Book Report: The 5 Dysfunctions Of A Team

Book: The 5 Dysfunctions Of A Team by Patrick Lencioni

I wanted to reflect on a book I read this last week. It was a good book, told as a story about a fictional company and its team of executives. It is also a quick read, taking only ~4 hours to consume.

My reason for reading the book is that I am part of a new team. I was recommended the book as a way of understanding the stages that the new team will need to go through before we become a functioning team, let alone a performing or even high-performing team.

Anyone who has lots of experience and has seen lots of different team dynamics will recognise some of the dysfunctions and how they manifest. How different personality types and work maturity levels will contribute to the severity of these manifestations.

My first takeaway from the book is to recognise that my team is in the first base dysfunction at the moment. Absence of trust. Team meetings are not yet brimming with discussions and rarely does anyone challenge anyone else. This is part of the process, one member of the team is new to the company and the other has worked in different teams in different areas of the business. These factors contribute to members not yet ‘settling’ into their role or codebase and we haven’t been a team long enough to ’trust’ each other, but week-on-week I can see the improvements already.

A second has been a reflection on myself. In the past few weeks, I have often tried to bring the team together on the journey or lead discussions. But I may actually be doing more harm than good as it could be preventing others from stepping up. I have been trying to sit with silence more or to call out members of the team for their opinions. I would hate to think that people have been disagreeing with me silently, pushed down further because of fear of conflict (the second dysfunction) and how confident and vocal I have been.

The important thing is that teams can progress through and away from the dysfunctions. Often new teams have to work through these situations as part of gelling together. We may not exactly be allowed right now to schedule several off-sites to encourage team bonding. Hell, even a trip to the pub would be helpful but we are right at the beginning of this journey and my outlook is positive.