Analysis: The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team

Improved Essays
Introduction
When one works with a team, you should assume that not everything will go as according to plan. Whether it is a lack of trust, a lack of commitment, or a lack of responsibility, you must always anticipate a possible conflict in your group. In this book “The five dysfunctions of a team,” written by Patrick Lancing, we will learn five major dysfunctions of a team. These dysfunctions are the absence of trust, avoiding accountability, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, and inattention to results.
Absence of Trust
Trust is important to the well-being of a team. You need to be able to trust your coworkers with their part of the job. The trust required to make a great team is the kind of trust that makes you vulnerable to one another
…show more content…
As long as some team members believe that conflict is unnecessary, there is little chance that it will occur. Members of teams that tend to avoid conflict must occasionally assume the role of a miner who is the member of a team who extracts buried disagreements within the team. It would be wise to assign one of these arbiters before each team meeting.
In the process of mining for conflict, team members need to make sure not to retreat from healthy debate. One easy way to do this is to recognize when the people engaged in conflict are becoming uncomfortable, and then interrupt to remind them that what they are doing is important. There is also the Thomas-kilman instrument, which allows team members to understand the natural inclinations around conflict so they can make decisions about which approaches are the best depending on the situation.
It is important that leaders demonstrate restraint when their workers engage in conflict, and allow resolution to occur naturally, although it may sometimes come out messy. A leader’s ability to personally model appropriate conflict behavior is essential. By avoiding conflict when it is necessary and productive, something many executives do, a team leader will encourage this dysfunction to
…show more content…
They realize that it is better to make a decision boldly and be wrong, and then change direction, than it is to waste time. How does a team go about ensuring commitment? They can do this by taking specific steps to maximize clarity and achieve buy in, and by resisting consensus and an over reliance on certainty.
The first thing that should be done is that at the end of a staff meeting or off-site, a team should review the key decisions made during the meeting and agree on what needs to be told to employees or other details about those decisions. Another good tool for ensuring commitment is to use clear deadlines for when decisions will be made and honor those dates. It is also important to note that a team that struggles with commitment can overcome this problem by briefly discussing back up plans up front or clarify the worst-case scenario for a decision they are struggling to

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Furthermore, Lencioni’s point with trust is that it is the very foundation of a leadership team and really what it comes down to is venerability and willingness to own…

    • 780 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The purpose of a team it to work together in a cohesive atmosphere. To be a successful team, communication plays a fundamental role. Successful teams have to be willing to communicate. Teams are composed for the purpose of working together to complete a task. It all starts with knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses.…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    It matters how the team handles the dispute. There will be times when members DIVERGE but what matters is how they UNITE back and work towards the same goals. As it is said, an effective leader confronts conflicts, not “sweep it under the rug”! (Fayard). RECOMMENDATIONS: INDIVIDUAL ASSESSMENT:…

    • 892 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Recommendations for Struggling Managers Identifying the difficulties that managers may be having in establishing self-directed, high-performing teams, first you have to look at the basics that include team building, having a clear purpose, problem solving, decision making, negotiation, setting goals, conflict, effective leaders, and proactive planning. All of these together help create a self-directed high preforming team, so you need to look at each of these to find out what problems you are experiencing in your teams and then assess what steps you need to take. We will look at the ineffective issues we find and look at what will make them effective, with the team. We found that the team was not a cohesive team, using ineffective work methods…

    • 991 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As conflict management entails appropriate strategy it is crucial to understand the group’s conflict before applying one of the following models: A-E-I-O-U, negotiation, mediation, and arbitration (Wynn & Engleberg, 2007, pp. 182-187). For example applying the A-E-I-O-U model is a way to clearly communicate concerns and suggest alternative actions to achieve the department goals, help decreased job satisfaction, and address perception distortions (Wynn & Engleberg, 2007, pp. 184-185). However, it must be noted that not all conflict is negative since some conflict such as task conflict relates to the content and goals of the work support and improves performance as functional conflict (Robbins, 2005, p. 195).…

    • 393 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lack of cooperation and engagement are also attributes that can cause a team to fail. Lack of trust and relationship makes it difficult for members to accomplish shared goals and objectives (Lepsinger,…

    • 912 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team The success of an organization is determined by the success of the teams within the organization. Generally, individuals believe that talent alone will ensure success. The misunderstanding is that a group of gifted individuals is the same as a team.…

    • 1450 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nancy Dubuc Essay

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Background Of the five profiles I read, the person whose style of leadership I most admire is Nancy Dubuc. Dubuc is the chief executive of A&E Networks, and her adaptable, encouraging and organization-oriented management style make her a noteworthy leader. Before joining A&E Networks, Dubuc worked as a manager at a television production company for five years. At this job, Dubuc managed the logistics of production more than the creative aspects. Over time, Dubuc’s role in the creative process expanded, and she was hired as a development executive for A&E.…

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hawkins_Charles_ BUS1100_Week2_Assignment TimeSpent: 6Hours0Minutes 2-1 As their team leader, I would need to guide the development of the two groups in order for the teams to agree upon which should be a priority, the performance or the aesthetics. They can start by practicing the five phases that a group goes through as it develops. The five stages are: Orientation, Conflict, Brainstorming, Emergence, and Reinforcement. When the groups understand and exercise these phases, they will be able to prevent glitches that could arise, including issues with poor group dynamics. I would also sit the team down and make them understand how much their disagreements is causing our company.…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Whenever working on a team, with different opinions, there is always going to be conflict or disagreement within a group. Now disagreement has a way of either making the team work better, or the disagreement could cause the team to break down if certain viewpoints are not resolved. A cognitive conflict disagreement is a difference of opinion. For instance, a cook with a certain food contracted company has the task of cooking the dinner meal for 240 residents at a nursing home.…

    • 225 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “Trust enhances collaboration, for the ability to work together towards common goals” (Hocker & Wilmot, 2014, p.…

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Grouped together in the same activities often on the same team, it seemed anywhere I turned they were next to me. Spending mass amounts together like we did, conflict was bound to emerge. And believe me it did. More times than not these conflicts were minor, but major flairs would erupt into screaming back and forth. Managing or dealing with conflict is something all people must engage in but it becomes especially important for those sharing a confined space.…

    • 1194 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, when these conflicts arise it will be up to the individuals to manage and resolve the conflict. Successful organizations have learned how to minimize conflicts instead of allowing conflicts to impact their culture. Through communication, listening and collaboration conflicts can be resolved with a solution that everyone can live…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Workplace conflict is an unfortuante scourge that is all but inevitable in today’s highly competitive businesses. Competing values, personalities and motives all combine to create ideal conditions in which conflict germinates. As the stewards of organizational mission and performance, leaders and managers must be adept at resolving, or at the least reducing, workplace conflict. Research has found that conflict is an unavoidable human phenomenon, but that managers can take steps to reduce its impact (Zia, 2013). This paper will discuss a occurring workplace conflict and identify methods that can be utilized to reduce the problem behavior.…

    • 1369 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Monitoring and cause conflict in the workplace by means of a survey. This conflict is inevitable in the workplace. But these things can be controlled when it is managed properly. The study found that the conflict has been resolved positively contribute to the development of an effective team.…

    • 1783 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Decent Essays

Related Topics