The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni - Essay Example

The author of the book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team " has provided an insight into the ways a team can achieve higher levels of performance by focusing on five key areas that have the potential to lead to decreased productivity of the workforce.A Fully Functioning TeamAccording to the author, a fully functional team is one that has the potential to achieve team goals and objectives within the given time frame. To achieve the goals, each team member must show commitment and dedication to his/her assigned roles and responsibilities.

The team members should have complete working harmony between them, as well as a high level of trust in each other. They should hold meaningful meetings to discuss critical issues instead of doing filtered communication to avoid conflicts. Moreover, they should be able to hold themselves accountable for the results (Lencioni, 2002).Five Dysfunctions of a TeamThe five main dysfunctions of a team include the absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment and dedication, accountability avoidance, and inattention to results (Lencioni, 2002).

Let us discuss all of these in some detail.Absence of TrustThe absence of trust is one of the main factors that lead to the poor functioning of a team. Team members with a lack of trust try to hide their project-related mistakes and weaknesses from each other in order to show that they are fully capable of fulfilling their assigned roles. This attitude of employees harms the overall functioning of the team. Similarly, employees with a lack of trust hesitate from taking help from others because of poor working relationships.

They also avoid providing any constructive feedback to their team members on their performance. They neither take the help of others nor offer their help to others, even if they can provide some guidance to them beyond their own area of expertise. In teams with a lack of trust, the lack of communication also occurs, which adversely affects the productivity level of the whole team. Members of such teams are usually very reserved. They do not offer any sort of assistance to others because of which workplace conflicts also occur at times.

They have no idea of the skills and abilities of one another because their focus is just limited to their own selves (Lencioni, 2002).