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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
The Highlights and Themes: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

running one group for six months or longer seems quite exorbitant! The theme of this book was based on an organizational approach to effective team building skills. The fable began by giving a brief background of the cooperation, DecisionTech, Inc. which was what this story was centered around. There was a new CEO, of the corporation, Kathryn, and her main task was to create effective teamwork among her staff who were the key leaders of this company. After observing the interaction and dialogue of all team members for several weeks, she finally decided to call an off-site meeting and invited her staff members to attend. The meeting was to take place just far enough to where it would be considered out of town and she also made it mandatory attendance. She experienced some animosity from her colleagues but she was determined that what she had in mind for their off-site agenda would soon render their cooperation.
When the off-site began she immediately started to work on creating team cohesion among the leaders of her company. She proposed a model that touched on five dysfunctions of a team. The model was similar to that of a hierarchal model in that a team needed to conquer one aspect or dysfunction of the model before they could effectively move on to the next dysfunction. The first dysfunction of the model is an absence of trust among team members. This stems from their unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group setting. It concludes that team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation of trust. This ties into the second dysfunction in that a failure to build trust among team members solicits a fear on conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they rely on guarded comments and keep the tone at a surface. The lack of healthy

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