The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Mary Ann Damian
Granite State College
October 18, 2015 Abstract
Teamwork is about a supportive effort on the part of a group of persons working together in the interests of a common cause. Effective teams are essential in every area of a company. The fast-growing and ever-changing nature of business today sets a demand for building high performance teams. The paper focuses on the dysfunctions of a team and how to address those dysfunctions. The five types of dysfunctions in a team are reviewed: absences of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results.
I. Introduction
Team building is an important subject in the current business climate
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The following five tools can be used to achieve trust in a team. First, the Personal Histories Exercise can be used by having the team members spend a short amount of time sharing information about themselves that others in the group may not already know about them. Second, a Team Effectiveness Exercise can be helpful when each member of the team focus on one person at a time to share what they believe is the most important contribution that member makes for the team. Then the same team member must also state what they believe the one area that person must improve or eliminate. This is done until each team member has gone through the process. Third, the Personality and Behavioral Preferences Profiles is considered to be the most effective with helping the team members better understanding each other. One of them to consider is the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), it gives nonjudgmental results that will assist the team in figuring out how to work together. This particular profile, “…is commonly used in business and team building to encourage optimal communication and teamwork among different personalities. Awareness of personality differences, or to “know thyself” as well as know others, is crucial for effective communication within an organization” (Schorr, 2012). Fourth, the 360-Degree Feedback should be given without being tied to compensation and formal evaluations. In doing so, the evaluation will be done more openly knowing it is for only individual development. The 360-Degree Feedback is when your peers make specific judgements on your performance. Finally, the Experiential Team Exercises is the last tool and one that should be considered an addition to the other tools. The exercises are when you get your team to go off-site and figure out how to work together in a situation that requires them to trust each other. This could be a
Prompt #4 Response: Successful team performance first includes a clear sense of self. It is easier to work with a team when you know yourself first and then get to know the others on the team. A defined strategy and a clear vision of success are key in working with a team. Threats to a team are indecisiveness, not understanding your team members. Psychological factors include internal functioning and expectations in team performance.
The purpose of this paper is to give a review of the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by author, Patrick Lencioni and provide teams and team members with a sense of the strengths and weaknesses that can be used to make or break teams in certain areas. The following will give you a summary of Patrick Lencioni’s teamwork model and how it can be a road map for your team and your leadership skills.
The challenging process of being a leader worth following is an arduous task. Yet, in the book the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the fictional leader Katherine seemingly demonstrates it with an effortless ease. She established her position as a leader while standing her ground, and encouraging group engagement. Katherine also showcases high emotional intelligence with well thought out responses. Constant reevaluation of her team leads to astounding team building and development. All of these individual traits enabled her to not just be a great CEO, but a leader. A leader which would propel DecisionTech forward, among its competitors.
The leadership fable, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, examines the leadership qualities and professional dialogue that makes teams effective. Throughout the novel, Lencioni provides an effectual illustration to lead a professional team to utilize open dialogue, including conflict, to reach their goals. Leadership is a multi-faceted topic, which requires much collaboration, research, and a never-ending search to find and refine oneself; hence, it is vital to surround and immerse oneself in literature from profound leaders and to mold your leadership style as a model for personal change to effectively engage in future relationships with others. When one practices leadership
Teams have become integral parts and driving forces of success in organizations. A key common attribute among highly
As the processes and systems used in business have become more complex, teams, not individuals, have become popular in many organizations. Teams are made up of individuals from an organization brought together to solve a problem, improve a process or implement a new process. “A major advantage that a team has over an individual is its diversity of resources and ideas” (Burns, 1995, p. 52). However, this diversity can cause conflict within the team. The success of the team is strongly influenced by the team’s ability to recognize the causes of, manage and resolve conflict.
Larson, C. and LaFasto, F. (1989), Teamwork: What Must Go Right/What Can Go Wrong. Newberry Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Team Dynamics is how a group of two or more that works together for a common goal. One definition of a team is: two or more individuals associated in some joint action. (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1976). In the business & education world, these joint actions should have some mission or objective that achieves results like a research paper. My Team C has come together with a common goal: Writing a successful paper for week 5 on “What safeguards exist currently to ensure academic honesty & are they working?” For this to be possible we must learn how to work as a team.
...rs but the goal is not achieved until each member has completed his part. The Factors that influence teamwork are impacted trust and have an impact on trust. When communication breaks down, trust is reduced and communications can help to build trust (Rocco, Hofer, and Herbsleb).Research shows that conflict has a negative impact on performance. A conceptual model is developed which explores relationship between conflict and performance and conflict impact performance through its effect on exchange and trust (Lau & Cobb, 2009).
Each member is comfortable in finding their place and can feel a sense of belonging within the team. As a team member, I portrayed the roles of a team player and a researcher. I may not be the brain of the group, but I was very eager to help and became a reliable member that follows-through on tasks to resolve conflicts. Also, I became a researcher too, at some point. I formulated various questions and gathered the information and data from the group. According to Sussex (2013), a researcher “is always asking a question and then finding their own answers.” She also stated in her blog that a team player is someone that the team could rely on because they are eager to help and resolve a conflict in a very calm way. I based my personality as a team member according to her seven types of a well-rounded team member in her blog. Each team member has different tasks to do. In our team, we focused on what the content should be and briefly discussed about the structure of the mind map. My biggest contribution would be completing my task, being creative and being able to contribute purposeful ideas to the team. Through teamwork, I learned to develop my strong points and found a way around to my
Companies that have been successful in organizing hi performing teams have reaped the benefits of having appropriate team cohesiveness. However, contrary for companies that have tried and failed at the everchanging task of keeping the lines of communication open between employees and leaders to reach a final product. It is not wise for a leader to place emphasis on team member relationships alone, but more importantly on problem solving techniques and motivating each individual and the team as a whole. Organizations that have set out to improve the quality of the products and business structu...
In conclusion, we feel as if we built trust in our team. Seeing as how we’re leaders in our own way, we each created a culture of trust among ourselves. Once we got to know each other personally and shared some personal information about ourselves, our families, hobbies, and other interests, that’s when we started to develop a bond and all the trust built up between us. And this paper assessed our group’s 3-5 major strengths and weaknesses and what successful strategies we hope to add to our team to build a more effective team in the future. Thank you for reading.
When we think of the word team, individually many different ideas may come to mind about what a team really is. Some may think of an NFL team (Tennessee Titans), an NBA team (Sacramento Kings), or a NASA astronaut team with such pioneers as Edwin Aldrin, Jr. and Neil Armstrong as members. You might even think of the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, or Marines as teams. In fact they all are, and they have a great deal in common as teams. However, for the purposes of this paper I will examine the characteristics of work teams, as they apply to organizations and I will supply answers to the following questions: What is a team? Where did the team concept come from? What are the types of teams? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having teams in organizations? What does it take to make a team effective?
Many businesses place an emphasis on the importance of teamwork. A good team consists of people with different skills, abilities and characters. A successful team is able to blend these differences together to enable the organisation to achieve its desired objectives.
Skills and knowledge possessed by every member is also important for a team to become high performance. Although it is among the most important factors, however, it must be coupled with a good working relationship with every team member and good collaboration with every team member. The members who possess the good skills and wide knowledge will be a useful resource to the team if that team member can share their strengths with the other team members and vice versa. It is usually misconstrued that having skillful and intelligent team members is already enough to make a team work right. This kind of thinking is the reason why most teams, despite all of those competent members they have, fail to achieve their goals. A team should establish one common goal, not to think that way and develop a good working relationship with each member. (retrieved from: http://www.strictlysuccess.com, August 18, 2005) This can be done by self awareness exercises, like the DISC assessment and other assessments or any other kind of self awareness exercises regarding communication style differences. Then these factors and important pieces of information should be taken into full consideration before the actual project is begun. These exercise or assessments can be great ice breakers and mark the difference between a group of individuals merely assigned to a team, as opposed to functioning as...