User:Robert.elbrecht/sandbox

Disclaimer

The following information was pulled from Patrick Lencioni's book entitled, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This information is being provided for informational purposes only and has no intention to break the laws of copyright infringement.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
True teamwork in organizations today is lacking at best. Organizations are in panic mode when dealing with the multiple racial, ethnic, and faith affiliations. The politcal correctness that has overtaken the world has clouded the clear ability for teams to function properly to a point where organizations have decided to please everyone instead of solving critical organizational issues. Because of this, Patrick Lencioni has outlined five dysfunctions that hinder team success. These five dysfunctions are noted below.

Absence of Trust
Trust is the confidence among team members that their peers' intentions are good and there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. Team mates must get comfortable being vulnerable with each other. Standard definition of trust centers around the ability to predict the person's behavior based on past experience. For example, one might trust that a given team mate will produce high-quality work because he has always done so in the past.

Trust requires team mates must make themselves vulnerable to one another and be confident that their respective vulnerabilities will not be used against them. These vulnerabilities include weaknesses, skill deficiencies, interpersonal shortcomings, mistakes, and requests for help. When team members are truly comfortable with one another they begin to act without concern for protecting themselves. Team mates can focus their energy and attention completely on the job at hand, rather than on being strategically disingenuous or political with one another. Teams that lack trust waste large amounts of time and energy managing their behaviors and interaction within the group. They dread team meetings, reluctant to take risks in asking for or offering assistance to others. Morale on distrusting teams is low and turnover is high.

Overcoming This Dysfunction Building trust requires shared experiences over time, multiple instances of follow-through and credibility, and an in-depth understanding of the unique attributes of team members. Tools to assist in building trust include:


 * Personal Histories Exercise - During a meeting have team members answer a short list of questions about themselves; such as number of siblings, hometown, unique challenges of childhood, favorite hobbies, first job, and worst job. Team members begin to relate to one another as human beings with life stories and interesting backgrounds. This encourages greater empathy and understanding, therefore discourages unfair and inaccurate behavioral attributes. Just a small amount of information begins to break down barriers.


 * Team Effectiveness Exercise - This exercise requires some degree of trust in order to be useful.  Members identify the most important contribution that each of their peers makes to the team as well as one area that they must improve upon or eliminate for the good of the team.  Members then report their responses focusing on one member at a time beginning with the team leader.


 * Personality and Behavioral Preference Profiles - An effective and lasting tool for building trust are profiles of members behavioral preferences and personality styles such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The assessment allows people to better understand and empathize with one another.  These tools  provide practical and scientific behavioral descriptions according to the way team members think, speak, and act.  Some of the best characteristics of these tools are nonjudgmental nature, their basis in research, and the extent to which participants take an active role in indentifying their own types.  These tools require participation of a licensed consultant to avoid the misuse of their implications and applications.


 * 360-Degree Feedback - This type of feedback is riskier than other tools because they call for peers to make specific judgments and provide one another with constructive criticism. These tools should not be connected to any formal performance evaluation or compensation because it can take on dangerous political undertones. The 360-degree degree feedback should be used as a developmental tool that allows employees to identify strengths and weaknesses without repercussion.


 * Experiential Team Exercises - Experiential teams exercises such as rope courses and other team activities can be valuable tools for enhancing teamwork as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes.

Applying these tools can have impact on the teams ability to build trust, however, they must be accompanied by regular follow-up in the course of daily work.

The Role of the Leader

To encourage the building of trust on a team the leader must demonstrate vulnerability first. This requires risk of losing face in front of the team, so that subordinates will take the same risk themselves. Team leaders must create an environment that does not punish vulnerability. Displays of vulnerability by the team leader must be genuine not staged.

Fear of Conflict
Like all relationships, conflict often arises. The longer the relationship, the greater the possibility of encountering a conflict. This idea rings true in marriage, parenthood, and business. Unfortunately, conflict is often considered counterproductive in many situations, especially within the workplace. As we climb further and further up the latter of progress, we find ourselves going out of our way to avoid conflict. Even conflict that would generate passionate debates, we find ourselves running for the door.

Confronting conflict is very important for team progression. Teams that openly deal with conflict know that there is productive benefits when confronting conflict. These know that the purpose is to produce the best possible solution for their respective organizations. Teams that are eager to confront conflict discuss and resolve conflict more quickly and completely than teams who avoid conflict at all costs.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, teams who avoid conflict are only hurting their organization. These teams often avoid conflict to keep from hurting other people's feelings. They might nt hurt people's feelings, but these teams that avoid conflict are, in fact, encouraging volitile tension within an organization. These teams that avoid conflict find themselves attacking their members quietly which further encourages dissent within an organization. Moreover, these teams that openly avoid conflict do so with the idea that avoiding conflict improves organizational efficiency. Contrary to this popular belief, healthy conflict actually solves problems faster greatly improving organizational efficiency, avoiding conflict only serves to hinder progress.

Overcoming This Dysfunction

The first step to overcoming this disfunction is the hardest to accomplish. First, teams have to realize that conflict is a productive team tool and can be use to solve problems faster. There are many methods available to teams to generate conflict and to aid in the realization that conflict is healthy. The first tool is mining.

Mining is when individuals on teams unbury past disagreements and sheds some light on them. This technique requires a great deal of objectivity and level-headed thinking. An individuals who employs this tool must not take anything said personally and must keep the team focused on the disagreement so it can be solved. Another tool to use is real-time permission.

Real-time permission is a technique where members of the team openly encourage others to engage in healthy debating. Individuals who use real-time permission are able to realize when a conflict is becoming too tense for individuals to handle and they step in to remind the team that what they are doing is necessary.

Lack of Commitment
There are many causes for lack of commitment to plague a team, but the below list represents the most common issues.


 * Desire for consensus – members are unwilling to buy-in to a decision that they do not fully support
 * Need for certainty – members are unwilling to move forward with a decision until every last detail has been considered

Characteristics of a team that fails to commit


 * Creates ambiguity among the team about direction and priorities
 * Watches windows of opportunity close due to excessive analysis and unnecessary delay
 * Breeds lack of confidence and fear of failure
 * Revisits discussions and decisions again and again
 * Encourages second-guessing among team members

Characteristics of a team that commits


 * Creates clarity around direction and priorities
 * Aligns the entire team around common objectives
 * Develops an ability to learn from mistakes
 * Takes advantage of opportunities before competitors do
 * Moves forward without hesitation
 * Changes direction without hesitation or guilt

Suggestions for overcoming lack of commitment


 * Cascading messaging – Review key decisions after every meeting with fellow team members and agree on what needs to be communicated to employees or other constituents about those decisions.
 * Deadlines – Set clear deadlines for when decisions need to be made and honor those dates with discipline and rigidity.
 * Contingency and worst-case scenario analysis – Discuss contingency plans and clarify worst-case scenario plans up front to help team members realize that the costs of an incorrect decision are survivable, and far less damaging than they might have originally thought.
 * Low-risk exposure therapy – Use low-risk situations as an opportunity to get team members comfortable making quick decisions with little to no information.

Avoidance of Accountability
Definition of Avoidance: The act of avoiding or keeping away from (dictionary.com)

Definition of Accountability: The state of being accountable, liable or answerable (dictionary.com)

What is Avoidance of Accountability in a team setting?

If you put the above definitions together you get “keeping away from being liable or answerable.” Basically this means that team members aren't required to justify their actions or held to the standards that the group agreed upon. This can occur because the standards aren't clear or were never laid out, because team members fear “calling each other out” or even because they are afraid to ruin a good relationship. However, if these actions continue, resentment will eventually build due to members not accomplishing what they were supposed to on time, as well as they should have or even at all. (Lencioni, 2002, p212,213)

How do you fix it? A lack of accountability within a team can be remedied with several management tools. The first to publishing the standards for which everyone is to be held. That way everyone knows what they and their team mates are required to accomplish and when. Another are progress reports. This encourages communication between team members and offers them a chance to provide feedback for one another. The last is shifting from individual to team awards. Team awards promote holding others accountable within the team where as individual awards only promote individual accountability. All of this culminates in the shift from the leader as the sole source of discipline (aka calling people out) to a team approach. The leader still retains the final say however, which is important in the case that the team experiences a major failure. (Lencioni, 2002, p213-216)

Inattention to Results
Of the five dysfunctions of a team, inattention to results is the ultimate dysfunction, as it can easily derail team members from reaching the group’s desired outcomes or goals. As defined by Patrick Lencioni, inattention to results is the tendency of group members to place more concern on something other than the collective goals of the team. Results in the context of this dysfunction represent a broader meaning than simply profit or revenue and include anything related to outcome-based performance. Some common objectives or results that individual team members often focus on instead of the team’s shared goals include: Certain behaviors and actions can overcome the dysfunction of inattention to results, to include focusing on results-based rewards. Results-based rewards tie the rewards for team members to the achievement of specific performance outcomes. However, this must be used in conjunction with other techniques, such as committing publicly to specific results, in order to encourage a sense of pride and passion for team members to achieve certain goals. Also, the team leader must set the tone for other members and it is important that his/her actions align with the team’s goals. An overall summary of the inattention to results dysfunction is listed below: A team overcome by this dysfunction and not focused on results will: A team that overcomes this dysfunction and remains focused on results will:
 * Team status: revolves around the idea that simply being a part of a certain team or group 	is enough, and that no personal sacrifice is needed to help the team reach its goals
 * Individual status: relevant to natural human tendency of self-preservation, when 	individuals focus on their own positions or career possibilities at the expense of other 	team members
 * Fail to grow or will reach a point of stagnation
 * Seldom defeat its competitors
 * Lose its achievement-oriented employees
 * Encourage team members to focus on individual outcomes and goals, rather than on the 	team’s goals
 * Become easily distracted
 * Minimize individualistic behavior
 * Retain employees with an achievement-orientation
 * Enjoy success and will not be overcome or heavily impacted by failures
 * Benefit from individuals who put team goals above their own, true “team players”
 * Avoid distractions