A review of 5 Dysfunctions of a team

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of Definitely Maybe Agile with your hosts Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock. And uh it's the two of us today. So we have another exciting conversation. Uh uh we've done a couple of these recently where we've uh gone out and read a particular book and then uh come back and sort of give given our thoughts. And uh so what's the uh topic today? Which book are we gonna?

Well, this one is Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Um I think it's Patrick Lencioni. And it's a book that I mean I've been referencing and using in so many conversations now for close on it'll be probably 15, 10, 15 years. I mean, just as long as I've known of this book. It's such a natural sort of description of some of the challenges that we meet, and as we'll be talking about, somehow dispiriting in some ways when we actually use the uh models in the book and and work with teams. But we'll come to that in a bit. Uh but it's great. It's you know what I like about these uh sort of parable type books is how quick and easy they are to read. This is one that you pick up on a Saturday and you're wrapped up by Sunday comfortably and in a so it's it's summertime, sun's out there, grab the book, read it, and you get lots out of it type of thing.

Yeah, it's nice. Uh it in in some ways it's similar to um uh helper iceberg is melting the the uh cotta fable that we were reviewing recently or discussing recently. It's uh uh be telling things in terms of story. I mean, people have always relayed information and uh this way. Uh it's uh it's a very good way of uh helping communicate ideas uh by being helping people relate them back to things that they see in their day-to-day life, uh especially in this case. Uh the where uh it's all about the uh the new CEO and uh coming into the company and uh taking her team off on a retreat, and uh the fable itself that uh gets built around that, uh, and the somewhat recognizable characters in the different roles that uh get described. Uh a lot of those those pieces are there as a very solid foundation for communicating um the five dysfunctions in a in a way that people can relate to.

Yeah, and right from the outset, one of the things I appreciated is um it's really easy to point the finger down the food chain, as it were, and look at the teams and say these teams should perform better. And this is a fable about the team at the top of the house and how the business is performing. And I think a very interesting, just you know, a walkthrough not just of why things are dysfunctional, why the team at the top of the house is not performing, but also the behaviors and the consequences of that. So we start seeing it's really a a book about the functions of a high-performing team, but told in that view of, and here's what you'll see not working.

Yeah, and and I think you touch on an interesting point there that it um because we do go into organizations and it's uh the leadership team, if uh the ones engaging us are like, well, it's not us, it's all the teams under us suck, you need to go fix them. It's like it's nothing about us, it's not no not our behavior, but the this is really starting from the uh well, if the the leadership team is dysfunctional, that will be the cause and drive dysfunction to the rest of the organization. And and in the in the fable, I mean, the this organization has lots of money, lots of funding, they've got the best of the best, they've got lots of high-quality people, and the that leadership team is made up of very seasoned and uh uh skilled people who really know how to do their jobs well, they're just not performing as a team.

Right. We better start tackling some of the messaging in the book. So so I I always find this quite interesting. So the pyramid really goes from the concept of absence of trust through fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. And the the parable really being that absence of trust feeds into, or or if without trust you can't have constructive conflict. Without constructive conflict, you can't. And so the whole thing kind of leads one step to the next. So if we start right at the beginning, trust.

Trust, yes. Like the the ability to be vulnerable in front of others. Are we are we willing, are we willing to make mistakes? It's uh is one of those underlying pieces I always think of there is that if um if you if you have that feeling of invulnerability um or that you're and you're unwilling to be uh vulnerable, it's uh like I can't make a mistake and I won't uh I won't make a mistake. I can't, and I certainly can't allow others to see me making a mistake or being anything less than perfect. Um and which that that definitely is something we see. And it's the foundation of so much of the topics that so many of the topics that we talk about is this uh uh the need for trust as a foundation to build so many of the other uh types of cultural changes that we look to introduce into organizations on top of.

Well, and we talk about it in the um sort of principles of things like transparency from an agile perspective or the retrospective. Anytime I think of trust, I think of looking at the conversation, listening to the conversation in a retrospective. And invariably, any team that's struggling with performance, that's trying to learn how to do things, will the the the start is always trust. As a coach, as a scrum master working with that team, uh the need is for trust right at the outset. And I think one of the the things that uh honestly you you nearly always see, and this is that kind of dispiriting thing that I was mentioning, is the trust is so foundational, it's so commonly missing.

Yes, and and it's one of these things that uh can be hard to build, but it's so easy to destroy as well. That's the there's always this piece with trust in any relationship, right? And uh no less in an organization or out of an organization, it's uh we see this in our day-to-day lives. It's uh and who do we trust, why do we trust them, what is it about them that we trust? And uh once that trust is broken, it can be very, very hard to uh bring back and put into place.

I think one of the um things we need to recognize though is that the trust aspect, although it's very much a people thing, it's often systemically driven. So what I mean by that, if your team continually changes it's uh, you know, the people on the team, the members on the team, it's continually moving backwards and forwards, it's really difficult to build trust in that environment unless your culture really is built on it and it's deeply ingrained in the in the culture, it's going to be very difficult because you're all always seeing new people. And we're naturally cautious. We've got to wait to figure out who, you know, how can we build that rapport and that understanding. The other side is if your team is is castigated for not hitting, not doing something, you end up in an environment where the team as a whole is not in a position to be able to be vulnerable. If the team can't be vulnerable, there's absolutely no way anybody on the team can be vulnerable and build trust with one another on the team. So I think the starting point whenever we look at trust is what in the system is creating an environment that is making vulnerability, making trust and openness about what's going on, basically what's not working, because there's never a problem with vulnerability about what about what's working, right? I mean, that's part of the headache.

Yes, yeah. Well, and then this obviously, as we were saying, and the model is very well done. It's a pyramid is what leads into the some of the next pieces that uh I mean, if we if we this the absence of trust and the absence of being able to be open means that we don't have the conversations that we should be having, which brings us on to the next layer of our pyramid.

This is the fear of conflict. I mean, and and again, if you don't trust one another, the simple thing is you're not going to disagree with one another. Um, and fear of conflict is really about how do you put it? It's um about construct it's always that phrase constructive criticism, but it's constructive discussion, right? It's discussion which is about the object, not about the person.

And and the piece here that um I the it's the absence of that that uh you're looking for. It's like if if people aren't discussing things, if everybody always agrees, like this group thing, everyone's like sort of, yep, no, let's go that way. It's like if it happens every single time and nobody ever discusses or has any kind of objection, then yes, you you're probably suffering from a fear of conflict.

It's it's funny, there's um what whenever I look at how teams mature over time, one of the uh my my common um identification, I'm bringing in another model, the Tuckman model, from forming, storming, norming, performing. And the big difference between a team that's forming and a team that has learned to storm, has learned to be able to disagree with one another, is when you get to that norming phase, the they argue about everything. Harmony is no longer there. So, and I really appreciate it, like the book describes it in terms of harmony or artificial harmony, which I think is a great way of looking at it. But that when somebody makes a recommendation and everyone just kind of takes it and says, yes, fine, and it looks like it's a harmonious decision and it's actually an undiscussed decision. That's that norming phase, right? When uh forming phase, when a team has learned to disagree and somebody says we're going to do this, you get this eruption of conversation, and everybody's discussing and looking, and it looks, does not look harmonious, right? Not sure if it's unharmonious or disharmony, disharmony or something along those lines. So we'll let we'll figure that out. But now the team will discuss everything around the idea and then settle on a way forward and move forward. It's a very different atmosphere in that team, and it's driven by that. Can I disagree with what you said, Peter, without that becoming a problem?

Right, right. Which requires trust that I can be vulnerable, I can be wrong. Right? It's the and it also then leads us into the next piece. If we if we can't have that conversation, so if we're artificially artificial harmony, if we're all saying we're going in a particular direction, then we're never truly getting to something that we're committing on. We're never really truly committing. We're we're just going along and following everybody else. We're not we're not having the discussion that needs to happen. Uh and that leads to ambiguity. It means that we're we're not aligned, we're not really talking about all the pieces. So there's a lot of stuff being um left unsaid, as you put it, and uh and that means that we uh we're not all on the same page as to where we should go.

The uh the objective is unclear and uh Well, it's uh I like when you're saying the objective is unclear, when I look at that ambiguity piece, there's a huge that there is in organ in dysfunctional organizations, what we find is because that that ambiguity, that lack of commitment is driven by ambiguity. And so, in order to avoid it, in order to get commitment, we need to be crystal clear about what we're committing to. And and that's a leadership responsibility. This is what I need you to do, and we make it crystal clear. What I find is fascinating is when you step into organizations which are just inherently just a little bit dysfunctional in this space, the this is what I need you to do is diffuse. It's ambiguous. You're sitting there and going, Well, what exactly do you mean by that? And and look at mission statements, look at value, like vision statements of a team where there's lots of ways of hitting it and it's not really super clear what the outcome is versus the vision statements, which are like, you know you've hit it or you know you've missed it. That ambiguity in the in the guidance as to what it is that we're going for is critical. That's or the lack of ambiguity, I should say, is the critical piece there. And again, if you don't know what you're going to hit, then accountability to getting there, that next layer that we bring into it, we need to know what we're committed to. Then the accountability comes in. Are we doing the work necessary to hit the commitment, the clear, unambiguous commitment that we have all made a commitment to?

Right. And uh with and without that, if we're gonna like avoid um being accountable for things, like and uh this is one I I've seen so many places that the the accountability itself is ambiguous. We don't know who it is that's supposed to deliver on this, and or people end up taking on accountability, or the perception of accountability which shouldn't really belong with them. That's another interesting piece of where you you end up with accountability in the wrong places, or um people think that somebody else is doing something when actually they're not, because they never knew that there was theirs to do, because everything's all starts to become muddled, and nobody really is sure of what they're supposed to be doing or where they should go. Um, and I've I've seen instances uh also where they this leads to where where somebody's been because the conversation hasn't happened well, and uh they be in the description of what it is you should be doing is so ambiguous that um the the teams then go away and try and deliver on that set of ambiguous goals. And even if they manage to do a good job of delivering to something, they then get um yelled at and told off that well, you didn't deliver the thing I was expecting you to. And which in turn now gives you this uh which destroys trust, which means everything comes quickly down, and yeah, it's uh and so it goes.

Well, and I I I really like that because it uh in the book they talk about they they highlight this focus on standards, and again, it draws attention to things like knowing what good looks like and having clarity about it. The definition of done is a practice that we often use. But it's also the if if I deliver something and one of my peers is calling out, is that really at the level we need it to be? That open conversation about there requires that transparency into the work and it requires a clear understanding of what good looks like, those standards that are there. Because I think it we've all been in a situation where, and I always like fingers crossed behind your back when that somebody says, Have we got this done? You go, Yeah, definitely. We're almost certainly probably there. And you're making a mental note to go and fix it before it has to get used, whatever it is, right? We've all been through that, whether it's you know, whatever. There's every circumstance under the sun. So that transparency and an understanding of what good looks like is something that should be discussed and shared and understood on the team.

Yeah, and I think it often gets forgotten about or not discussed enough. It's it's one of these pieces where we we don't spend enough time to go and truly define what that is. And that's what then gets us into trouble later when whatever gets produced isn't up to the standard that we never defined.

So isn't it it's it's a great topic that you see great teams bring into their retrospective continuously, even though they meet their goals, they they hit their objective, their commitment, whatever it is. There's that sort of reflection, a self-reflection of a team of did we do it well? Did we get where we needed to because we were doing the right thing?

Yeah, I think that takes us nicely into the uh the next level too, where we're we're talking about um once you have the virtual actors, the team has to uh them hold each other accountable to what gets delivered. And the and this is where you um if the team isn't holding each other accountable, then you uh don't you don't get the results you're expecting. And so all of this builds on. So where we start to get this this inattention to producing those results, and that's uh where everybody gets unhappy because the team isn't producing, uh, the people in the team don't trust each other, the everything starts flying, we're not accountable to what we should do, and um individual status and ego takes over versus looking at the uh holistic team and how the team is uh delivering.

And I think that this is uh I mean uh a really great reflection because that whereas everything else, it's an individual contribution to the whole, if that makes sense. When I look at the inattention to results, it's really this is often where we pull the wool over our eyes as we're as we're trying to say that we're hitting something. So this is those agile, again, if I go back to the context of agile teams, where they're delivering on their stories every single sprint. Everything looks fine, but they're not getting something out of the door. And they're doing everything they have to, but it's almost that self-sabotaging at the end, whether it's driven by ego or status, or we can't say that this isn't working, or something along those lines. And it's that just the little extra piece that turns that team that looks from the outside like they're doing everything right into a team that's absolutely just delivering things, is because of that attention to why are we really here and what's our purpose in terms of getting whatever it is we do completed and finished and out of the door? What are the results that we're impacting?

And and how having defined uh what that success looks like, what are the metrics we're going to use to measure whether we were successful and how what and with what we delivered, did it have the impact that we were expecting it to? Um or can can we measure the impact of what it is that we did so we can tell what happened as a result of it? Um then and the that ability to then also look at are we rewarding the team or are we rewarding the individual? Like it's the the is it the is it the team's result that we did this together, or is it the uh the individual, there's like one individual on the team, it's all it's them who did all of this, right?

Fascinate it's fascinating how it all comes back again to that team dynamics and the trust and uh who you know transparency around the team and some sort of you know basic uh understandings of what teamwork looks like.

Yeah.

So uh now there's there's five levels to the pyramid, so I dare you to try and draw three conclusions from this.

Yes, yeah. Well the I well I I can, but it'll have nothing to do with the five levels in the uh we could well I I think one of the conclusions uh is uh and this you have to be careful I'm not doing correlation or causation here, but the uh versus causation, but one of the uh acts that um happens in the book is that the CEO gets them out of there where they are and takes them away to an off site and moves them away from their day-to-day work, and they hate it. They think, well, this is a total waste of time. They they start off with this like, why the hell are you making me do this? This is awful. And you're like, we should not do this under any circumstances. Like we've got deals to do, and then they they they instead of going and doing this sale over here because we're losing money, you've got us sitting around talking about our feelings. And and uh it takes a lot of time, and they don't all come around, but they they mostly come around with the idea of okay, now I see the value of why you made us go through this because this is actually what needs to happen in order to drive the organization forward. So the importance of all of this to do that from a at a leadership level and taking time out to sharpen that axe in some way, right?

Yeah.

Yes, yeah. So so there you go. I that's one that's one takeaway, I would say, which uh from the book.

Well, so let's I I've I suggest because we've already talked to five levels, we just hit with two takeaways. So you've added one, I'll just add one more. Um, and and that is and and again it's part of the parable when unexpected behavior happens from the team. And this is when the team actually they're growing and then they now split. And that's driven by somebody saying, I shouldn't be in this meeting, this conversation, this team. I'm gonna go start a different team over here. And it's seen through a political lens right at the outset, and it yet it's actually driven by the individual that's being discussed. That individual who leaves one team and joins another. And what I like it just it's a reminder that as teams move up through this pyramid of functionality of a team, of a high-performing team, they actually start behaving in ways which are remarkable, which do things which uh again, uh and I just it came from the example yesterday on the team that I have back at the office where they started doing things and communicating and and and taking actions way beyond what would naturally have been expected. And I think this is something to remember is the benefit of investing in teams and getting them out there is that they do things that will move you forward quicker, more completely, than they do than when you're trying to corral teams just to get the basics done.

Yes, yeah, exactly. So the the the value in um in bringing people together to act as teams, then looking at the results of them as teams and all of this stuff all coming together to um create uh greater value than the individuals probably would have on their own. Uh so I I think uh I think this is a good book that people should read. I think the fable is fantastic as a way of communicating it. I think the I mean the first published in 2002 and it stood the test of time without a shadow of a doubt. We we still see all of this in uh our day-to-day lives. So uh I think it's uh fantastic from that point of view as well. Um so so with that in mind, I'd like to uh invite people to send us any feedback at feedback at definitely maybeagile.com and uh hit subscribe so you get the latest episodes, and uh I'll look forward to next time.

Excellent a pleasure yet again, Peter.

You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts are Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock focus on the art and science of digital agile and development.