Book Review: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
I finally got around to reading another one of Patrick Lencioni’s business “fables”: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This one involves an elaborate fictional scenario in which a new CEO rescues a splintering senior leadership team. Presumably, the lessons are just as applicable down the org chart. The format gives Five Dysfunctions two major advantages over like-minded ‘team building’ texts: It makes it eminently readable (no dry theory here) and it makes it memorable. No doubt readers will be able to recall the umm — confrontation — with Mikey for years to come.
After Lencioni has you hook, line, and sinker on the story, he spends the last portion of the book breaking down what happened according to the five dysfunctions, and explaining how to avoid and/or fix these pitfalls.
Dysfunction 1: Absence of Trust
Dysfuntion 2: Fear of Conflict
Dysfunction 3: Lack of Commitment
Dysfunction 4: Avoidance of Accountability
Dysfunction 5: Inattention to Results
This is a winner. Yes it occasionally steps into pop-business-psychology territory, but most of the time it is on point as a basic team building primer. There is nothing groundbreaking here, but there never is with Lencioni. He has built a nice little niche gathering assorted insights on some business subject and embedding them into something which is actually readable. He succeeds once again here and you’ll learn a few tricks in the process.
Recommended.
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