'Dysfunction' is not the problem

A little while back, Patrick Lencioni wrote a book. Perhaps you’ve heard of it - it’s called the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.

I love the book. But.

It’s been sooo popular, I think it’s actually made it harder for leadership teams to work on themselves.

Why?

Because here’s how the story often goes: ‘If we’re bringing in a coach or a consultant to help us as a team, it must mean the boss thinks we’re dysfunctional.’ 

Or, ‘I’m not engaging a coach, everyone will think I’m calling them dysfunctional.’

But the truth is, very few of the leadership teams I work with are actually dysfunctional. As one CEO put it to me recently: “We're a great group of leaders. We’ve just never worked out our collective value as a team.”

And the answer to that usually starts in a deceptively simple place.

Alignment.

Not just “are we all aligned?” alignment.

Fierce alignment.
Radical alignment.

Alignment that comes from grappling with questions like…

• What are our highest priorities?
• Where are the trickiest trade offs?
• Where is there structural conflict in our organisation and how will we resolve that? 
• What’s the single narrative we are telling our teams that cuts through ambiguity rather than papering over it?
• What’s the unhelpful ‘street talk’ in our organisation that we are actively debunking?
• What are the things we should measure to track our team effectiveness, and when will we measure them?
• How do we reconcile conflicting incentives?

These are the kind of conversations way too few leadership teams sit and really grapple with.  

Because they’re hard. And that’s the point. 

So, stop asking “Are we dysfunctional?”.

The better question is:
Are we doing the work that leadership teams are supposed to do - or are we just boring each other with status updates?  

Until next time,
Simon