The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
Fictional CEO Kathryn Petersen asks her executive team, “How many of you would rather go to a meeting than a movie?” No one. Why? Good movies embrace conflict. Whereas most team meetings are superficial consensus-building exercises, and therefore boring. “Fear of Conflict” and other common team dysfunctions are brought to life in Lencioni’s fable of a fearless leader racing to align her team before her company gets crushed in the marketplace. The book is super-readable, comprised of short chapters, compelling characters, believable dialogue, plenty of conflict and even cliffhangers (which team member won’t make it to the next offsite? Not the one you’d most expect!) Leveraging our love of a good yarn, Lencioni teaches the fundamental causes of team failure and how to lead around them. As hard as it can be to build a cohesive team, it’s not that complicated – a simple matter of embracing common sense with an uncommon level of discipline and persistence.
HIGHLIGHT(S): “When an executive team fails to achieve buy-in from all team members, even if the disparities that exist seem relatively small, employees who report to those executives will inevitably clash when they try to interpret marching orders that are not clearly aligned with those of colleagues in other departments. Like a vortex, small gaps between executives high up in an organization become major discrepancies by the time they reach employees below.”
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