The Triora Group

It seems that in every organization we work with that there are always as many people/organizational challenges as there are technical challenges. Often when doing assessments we find that there are organization problems that have contributed to the situation. Sometimes different departments don’t communicate well with each other and tasks fall through the cracks. Or maybe there is a lot of distrust between groups and the tend to compete with each other rather than collaborate. It seems we must tackle both to some degree if we hope to have better effectiveness.

Several years ago I was working in non-profit organization and this issue of improving team productivity became a big topic. How could we improve the way the various departments and teams worked together? How could we reduce the amount of friction and distrust that tends to build up over time?

We were fortunate to have a facilitator introduce us to a book from Patrick Lencioni, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”. Lencioni works with all types of organizations to improve productivity and he has summarized the issues that need to be addressed before organizations can improve their results.

The five dysfunctions he identifies are built one on top of the other. The first dysfunction that must be dealt with is LACK OF TRUST. Trust means that the team members have confidence that their team members intentions are good and that honest communication is ok. Teams without LACK OF TRUST don’t ask for help, hide their problems, jump to conclusions, waste time, hold grudges and have unproductive meetings. To build TRUST requires management involvement to help break down barriers between groups and create honest communication. The book provides recommendations on how this is done.

The next dysfunction is FEAR OF CONFLICT. All great working relationships inevitably require some conflict because of differing opinions. Teams that avoid conflict at all costs or those that are the opposite and are always involved in conflict are usually unproductive. Certain conflict in meetings is healthy and needed to find the best solution and get everyone’s input. If your teams have a FEAR OF CONFLICT, they will have boring meetings, use back-channel politics/personal attacks, ignore controversial topics and spend a lot of time posturing.

The next three dysfunctions of teams that Lencioni discusses include LACK OF COMMITMENT, AVOIDANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY and INATTENTION TO RESULTS. As a team or organization builds trust, becomes comfortable with conflict, rebuilds commitment, encourages accountability and attends to the results then its productivity exceeds that of its competitors.

Since almost all of us work in teams to complete projects, it’s important to understand the dynamics within the team and work to avoid these types of dysfunctional team behavior. Just being able to identify the behaviors can help to work through them before the team productivity is impacted.

Lencioni has written several other interesting books on leadership and how to conduct good meetings. I encourage you to check them out. As I said at the beginning, the organizational issues can often be more difficult to address than the technical issues, but you can’t separate them. Teams that have strong trust inevitably perform more effectively and have more camaraderie. Who wouldn’t want that type of environment all of the time?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!