The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

On this site, we select a monthly “Best Business Book”. You should know that all books profiled here are ones that I 1) Have read, 2) Have applied the information contained in the book in my own businesses, and 3) Have experienced increased effectiveness as a result.

This month’s Best Book is Patrick Lencioni's “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”. Teams are an increasing emphasis of every enterprise, organization, and business. Simply assembling a team does not ensure that projects get done at all, get done better, quicker, or more effectively. In fact, putting a bunch of people together in shared responsibility can lead to worse results, if the team is not taught how to work together.

Left to their own devices, teams will degenerate into a collection of people with no results AND hurt feelings because they 1) Don’t trust one another, 2) Loose focus on what needs to be accomplished, 3) Are afraid of and don’t understand conflict, 4) Lack commitment to a meaningful course of action or set of objectives, and 5) Struggle with both sides of accountability.

Lencioni’s book teaches leaders/team members how to overcome these Five Dysfunctions in any team (business, sports, family, community, religious) and enable the members to work more effectively and enjoyably together. It should be required reading for business leaders, parents, boards of trustees/directors, committee members, and everyone else involved in team work.

The Contrarians Guide to Leadership

This book, by the current president of USC, successfully posits a unique and successful view of leadership. Sample, previously in the corporate world researching and developing electronics, has for the last 20 years, spent his time turning around two universities - USC being one of them.

No ivory tower treatise – this is a well written, thoughtfully explained, description of the elements required to lead people in organizations to accomplish more together, than what can be accomplished by a single leader, frequently under difficult circumstances. (Getting everyone to agree to pull and then actually pull in the same direction in academia is a challenge to say the least).

While the concepts Sample explains and illustrates in the book are certainly desirable and easily understood at a simple view, his contrarian (perhaps "counter intuitive") approach allows much more to be accomplished, by more people inside the organization, to the benefit of more people inside and outside, at exactly the critical point:

- Making good judgments at the right time
- Process of producing innovative ideas
- Deciding what issues are truly non-negotiable
- Effective information gathering
- When and how to employ “experts”
- Choosing what to read
- Developing down line leadership
- Leading effectively in challenging environments

The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership is a "Best Book" and well worth your time and expense to read it.