Patric Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team

In Patric Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team he talks about five key reasons teams often fail to work together, and ways to overcome these problems. The five dysfunctions include teams that do not trust each other, do not engage in productive conflict, can not commit to decisions, do not hold each other accountable, and teams do not focus on collective goals. These five dysfunctions are all linked together, and if your team becomes a victim of one the other four are soon to follow.

The most important aspect of any successful team is trust. Many people find it hard to trust one another because they are unwilling to show their strength and weaknesses with each other. People are scared that if they admit their weaknesses that it can be used against them someday, but in reality admitting their strengths and weaknesses can better help the team.
If your team knew that you were great at budgeting, but marketing wasn’t your best quality then as a team you can put the best people in charge of each aspect of the project. Organizations often create a since of distrust among the workers hoping it will spark healthy competition. Once a the CEO major newspaper chain held one on one meetings with three members of the executive board, and told them that a major promotion was coming up and three people were in the running. In the CEO’s mind he was hoping that the three individuals would then work even harder to get the promotion. The problem with this that the three people may work in different departments, therefore first of all it is hard to judge. Second of all instead of just working harder it often sparks a rivalry between the individuals. With this kind of mentality people don’t like to work together for a common goal in fear that their rival is getting the upper hand. When this kind of conflict is introduced into the company and the people in the running for the job don’t get the promotion they often feel overlooked or unappreciated and