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| Home - Industry Article - Dec 02 Issue |
Conquer Team Dysfunction
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The first step in conquering this dysfunction is to acknowledge that conflict is productive and many teams have a natural tendency to avoid it. As long as some team members believe that conflict is unnecessary, there is little chance it will occur. However, there are a number of tools and exercises that may help teams overcome the struggles of engaging in appropriate, ideological conflict. The Thomas Kilman Index is an excellent measure for understanding team members’ different conflict styles. Once a team is bought-in to the idea of conflict, it helps to role-play conflict by assigning a devil’s advocate at each meeting.
Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment
Without conflict, it is difficult for team members to commit to decisions, creating an environment where ambiguity prevails. Lack of direction and commitment can make employees, particularly star employees, disgruntled.
Often times a lack of commitment is caused by the desire for consensus and the need for clarity. It is important for teams to be able to find ways to achieve buy-in, even when complete agreement is not possible. Great teams make sure all the opinions are heard and then reach a decision based on the best solution. Certainty can impact commitment when teams are constantly searching for more information to make the “right” decision, which can paralyze a team.
Teams can create alignment by using a number of tools and exercises. Two exercises designed to promote a sense of commitment are cascading messaging and deadlines. Cascading messaging forces teams to explicitly review the key decisions made during a meeting and agree on what needs to be communicated to employees and other constituencies. Team members then cascade the carefully articulated messages by sending consistent clear, messages to employees. Simple as they may seem, deadlines are also one of the best tools for ensuring commitment.
Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability
When teams don’t commit to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven individuals hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that may seem counterproductive to the overall good of the team.
Team members who are close may hesitate holding one another accountable for fear it could jeopardize their relationships. Ironically, this only causes the relationships to deteriorate as team members begin to resent one another for not living up to expectations. Members of great teams improve their relationships by holding one another accountable, thus demonstrating that they respect each other and have high expectations for one another’s performance.
Peer pressure helps in maintaining high standards as does, published goals and regular progress reviews.
Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results
Team members naturally tend to put their own needs (ego, career development, recognition, etc.) ahead of the collective goals of the team when individuals aren’t held accountable. If a team has lost sight of the need for achievement, the business ultimately suffers.
The only way to conquer this dysfunction is to make desired results clear and reward those behaviors and actions that contribute to those results.
The Rewards
In today’s age of nano-second competitive advantage and rapid change, teamwork can provide a company with a variety of meaningful and sustainable competitive advantages. First, functional teams avoid wasting time talking about the wrong issues and revisiting the same topics over and over again because of lack of buy-in. Second, functional teams also make higher quality decisions and accomplish more in less time and with less distraction and frustration. Finally, “A” players rarely leave organizations where they are part of a cohesive team. If all of this sounds simple, that’s because it is.
Successful teamwork is not about mastering subtle, sophisticated theories, but rather about embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence. Ironically, teams succeed because they are exceedingly human. By acknowledging the imperfections of their humanity, members of functional teams can overcome the natural tendencies that make teamwork so elusive and accomplish more than any mere group of individuals could ever imagine.
Patrick Lencioni is the author of three best-selling leadership fables—The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. He is also the president of The Table Group (www.tablegroup.com), a San Francisco Bay Area management-consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational health.
 
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