The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team: A Leadership Fable

Artificial harmony refers to a situation within a team where there is an apparent lack of conflict or disagreement, but it is merely a façade masking unresolved issues or unexpressed opinions. In such cases, team members may avoid healthy conflict and instead opt for a surface-level agreement or consensus, often to maintain a sense of false harmony. Artificial harmony can hinder productive discussions, stifle creativity, and lead to suboptimal decision-making.

Avoidance of accountability, another dysfunction, goes hand in hand with a lack of commitment and further exacerbates poor team performance. As the DecisionTech team learns how to establish clear roles and responsibilities, they also learn how to hold each other accountable for their actions and thereby further their collective goals.

Decision making by consensus is an approach that involves reaching a collective agreement or resolution that is supported by all team members. It emphasizes the importance of open dialogue, collaboration, and finding solutions that accommodate the needs and perspectives of everyone involved. Decision making by consensus requires active participation, effective communication, and a willingness to seek common ground. It recognizes that decisions made through consensus tend to have greater buy-in, leading to increased alignment and shared responsibility. It is important to note that consensus does not necessarily mean unanimous agreement; rather, it involves achieving a broad consensus that the majority of the team can support.

Derived from the Latin fabula, meaning “discourse” or “story,” a fable is a short story that teaches a succinct moral such as “the early bird gets the worm” or “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush” through a limited set of characters (or character types) and actions. Among the oldest and simplest forms of storytelling, fables traditionally use anthropomorphic animals and naturalistic settings to convey their message.

Fear of conflict is another one of the five dysfunctions that can undermine team effectiveness. This fear often leads to team members avoiding difficult issues, so that even when those issues need to be resolved, an artificial harmony prevails and further discourages honest debate. By learning how to disagree without becoming defensive or resorting to personal attacks, the team at DecisionTech not only overcomes their fear of conflict, but also addresses critical issues and ultimately makes better decisions.

Inattention to results, the fifth dysfunction highlighted in the book, occurs when team members are more concerned with individual goals than team goals. Inevitably, as poor performance and lack of commitment reveal these disordered priorities, the success of the team becomes fundamentally compromised. At DecisionTech, as Kathryn Petersen guides the leadership team toward greater collective understanding of the impact of this dysfunction, she is able to articulate the need to prioritize collective work and results over individual ambition.

The third dysfunction, lack of commitment, results from a combination of the absence of trust and the fear of conflict. When team members don't trust each other and fear open disagreements, they can’t commit to one another or to the organization itself. As Kathryn coaches the leadership team at DecisionTech on how to make clear and timely decisions, their commitment to each other and their collective goals strengthens.

This is a tool used to provide individuals with feedback from multiple sources, including peers, subordinates, and supervisors, so that they can understand how they are perceived by others. When deployed constructively, this feedback helps each member of a team identify areas where they can improve and thus contributes to their long-term team effectiveness.