The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
Summary
A practical model for diagnosing why teams stall: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results.
How it personally impacted my leadership
It gave me a shared language to address team breakdowns without personalizing them. I stopped treating dysfunction as morale and started treating it as a leadership design problem that can be repaired with clarity, commitments, and visible accountability.
Leadership maturity fit
People Leader
How to best absorb and apply it
- Map your team to the five layers and identify the lowest layer that is weak.
- Run one meeting focused on commitments: who owns what, by when, with what measure.
- Make accountability visible with artifacts, dashboards, and recurring check-ins, not emotional escalation.