After years of coaching teams in small and medium-sized businesses, the value of Patrick Lencioni’s research work became increasingly apparent. Patrick Lencioni is an American expert in leadership and team development. He wrote the bestseller: ‘The five dysfunctions of a team’. Highly recommended for anyone who guides a team or is part of one!

Lencioni discovered that people in organizations pay little or no attention to each other, the team, the dynamics between people in the work environment. From these experiences and the determination that this can be changed, he developed his own vision of leadership, teamwork and healthy organizations. His approach is practical and clear. And useful for anyone who wants to work in and with a strong team.

His model is a pyramid consisting of 5 layers

Let’s take a closer look at this model

1. **Trust**

In a strong team, each team member dares to be vulnerable. They can trust that their vulnerability will not be used against them.

Being vulnerable means: admitting that you can’t do something, that you did something wrong, asking for help. Being vulnerable should be possible in complete freedom. Without fearing the reaction of the other members.

How can trust be fostered? Some tips

• Team members share some personal information about their families, hobbies, first job, career… This creates a personal bond and breaks down barriers.
• Team members give constructive feedback on each other’s work: what is good and what could be better. Each team member has a say. Everyone addresses one person.
• Personality and behaviour profiles enable people to understand each other better and communicate better.
• A team building activity outside the organization fuels team spirit.

It is very important that the leader be the first to show vulnerability. He is partly responsible for creating an environment that does not punish vulnerability. Trust creates opportunity for constructive conflict and discussions.

2. **Constructive conflict**

Productive discussions are essential to a team. They serve to reach solutions faster. Avoiding in-depth discussion leads to dangerous tensions and a lack of solutions.

Some tips for holding constructive discussions:

• Appoint a team member to identify hidden conflicts within the team or to get to the bottom of the conflict during meetings.
• Encourage team members not to withdraw from the conflict because they feel uncomfortable but point out to them the value of constructive discussion.
• Personality tests provide insight into how different team members handle conflict.

Leaders must also learn to seek conflict and engage in conflict behaviour. Engaging in positive conflict allows the team to rally behind decisions made. This increases commitment.

3. **Commitment**

2 major causes of lack of commitment are desire for consensus and need for certainty.

1. Consensus, according to Lencioni, is downright dangerous. Reasonable people do not necessarily need to have their way in order to get behind a decision. All that is needed is to hear their views and include them in decision-making.
2. Certainty: it is more important to make decisions about which there is little certainty than to make no decisions at all.

Tips to increase commitment

• List the decisions after each meeting. Check whether decisions are really worded clearly enough. And whether all noses are pointed in the same direction.
• Set deadlines for making decisions. And create a clear schedule as markers to the deadlines.
• Don’t waste too much time on analysis and research. Often decisions are at least as good provided they were preceded by a thorough discussion.

Leaders must insist on making quick decisions to meet deadlines. The leader should not be afraid to make a decision that may turn out to be wrong. In-depth discussions produce clear decisions. That way everyone knows what is expected of them. This allows each member to hold the others accountable.

4. **Responsibility**

Responsibility is about the willingness of team members to hold colleagues accountable for performance or behaviors that may harm the team. Holding each other accountable improves personal relationships. It demonstrates respect and the high expectations held about each other’s performance.
Avoiding accountability encourages mediocrity and burdens the team leader because he becomes the sole source of discipline.

Tips for integrating responsibility into the team

• Make goals unambiguously public. And clearly communicate who should do what.
• Team members should have the opportunity to give each other feedback on behaviour and performance (verbal or written)
• Choose team rewards rather than individual rewards. This creates a culture of accountability.

The leader must not fall into the trap of being the only one who maintains discipline, but must also not fail to act when necessary. If team members are not held accountable for their actions, they will focus primarily on themselves rather than the team interest and collective results.

5. **Results**

Any team judged by performance benefits from focusing on results. A team focused on results is not distracted and consists of members who subordinate their own goals to those of the team.

Tips to improve the focus on results

• Making goals public is contagious to achieving those goals. Consequently, results should also be made public.
• Deploy results-based rewards.

Leaders must communicate very clearly that achieving results is a priority. Valuing members should be linked to achieving group goals.
Do you feel that there is a lack of trust in your team? Or that conflicts are avoided and therefore the team is not engaged? Do you see that everyone is pointing fingers at each other and there is no shared focus on results? Our team includes NLP-certified coaches. Get in touch with us.

Have an outside consultant look in. An outside view often sees more and can detect your team’s weaknesses and strengths more quickly.