Team health exercises help open communication among your team members, build trust, improve collaboration, and boost morale. One of our favorite team health exercises at Ninety is based on Patrick Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. We’ll walk you through how to conduct this exercise and use it to increase cooperation and build trust within your teams.
The Origin of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a must-read for founders — it explores the five factors that lead to either great teamwork or a breakdown of collaboration. Lencioni ranks these factors in a pyramid and states that the foundation must be strong in order to build at the next level. According to Lencioni, the basic foundation of a healthy team is trust, and conducting this exercise helps teams ensure that they not only do good work but they enjoy doing good work together.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni presents various issues that typically impact virtually every team’s performance. These issues are broken into five levels, and each dysfunction builds upon the one below, meaning if the lower levels are weak, the higher levels will struggle. The goal is to discover the root of these issues and deal with them in a way that improves teamwork, efficiency, and trust in the company.
The Three Dimensions of Trust
Trust is an essential component of building a great team, and it originates at the top of the organization. Trust should begin with your Senior Leadership Team and resonate down through the rest of your frontline team members, then out to every stakeholder.
Trust within the workplace exists in three dimensions — character, competency, and connection. Character-based trust assesses whether an individual consistently does the right thing, aligning their actions with ethical standards and integrity. Competency-based trust evaluates an individual's ability to perform tasks effectively, based on their skills and knowledge. Finally, connection-based trust refers to the personal bond between individuals, fostering open communication and vulnerability.
It’s essential to understand the dimensions of trust as you undertake the Five Dysfunctions of a Team exercise so you can determine where any breakdowns occur. Lencioni is predominantly leaning into issues of character and connection rather than competency, and this exercise will help you strengthen relationships between team members.
What are the Five Dysfunctions of a Team?
This list summarizes the individual dysfunctions Lencioni believes could negatively impact your team’s performance.
Absence of Trust
The absence of trust occurs when team members hesitate to be vulnerable with one another. Instead of focusing energy on their work, teams may avoid admitting mistakes, asking for help, or sharing concerns due to fears of judgment or rejection from their colleagues. This lack of vulnerability often stems from deeper issues related to character, competency, or connection that we’ve covered in the sections above. This dysfunction leads to team members being focused on self-preservation rather than collaborating toward shared goals.
Lencioni believes this is the most fundamental principle of team health. Without trust, a team is likely to fail. Communication becomes strained, and teams struggle to engage in honest dialogue, make unified decisions, or hold one another accountable.
Fear of Conflict
A fear of conflict manifests as a false harmony within the team. While outwardly it may seem that everyone is working well together, a fear of conflict can lead to unresolved tension simmering beneath the surface. This tension can eventually boil over into more aggressive and emotionally charged conflicts. In such instances, things said in the heat of the moment can severely erode trust, damaging relationships and requiring significant time and effort to repair.
The fear of conflict can arise from numerous factors, including personality differences, cultural norms, and past experiences with poorly handled disagreements. This is why tools like Kolbe, TypeCoach, and the Enneagram are invaluable for fostering self-awareness and understanding others’ unique approaches to problem-solving.
Lack of Commitment
Lencioni defines lack of commitment as a dysfunction that arises when team members don’t agree with or understand the business decisions being made. This dysfunction often results in hesitancy, second-guessing, or veering from established plans. Without commitment, the team lacks the unity and determination needed to execute effectively, leading to confusion, wasted effort, and diminished results.
Keeping team members committed requires two things: clarity and buy-in. Team members should understand the vision of your business and how their contributions ladder up to future plans. Strong commitment and genuine agreements enable teams to move forward decisively and maintain momentum.
Avoidance of Accountability
Avoidance of accountability is the fear of addressing negative behaviors, including underperformance, missed deadlines, and behavior that undermines the team. This fear is often rooted in a desire to avoid conflict, discomfort, or potential harm to relationships. However, avoiding accountability only exacerbates dissatisfaction, fosters resentment, and erodes trust within the team. Lencioni encourages teams to bring these issues to the forefront, believing all team members can meet company standards.
Inattention to Results
The final dysfunction is a failure to remember the overall priorities of the business. Inattention to results occurs when team members lose sight of the team’s collective goals and prioritize personal achievements, recognition, or departmental goals. This dysfunction undermines the team’s ability to deliver on its broader objectives to the detriment of larger goals set by the company.
Benefits of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team Exercise
Since team health is an ongoing challenge for businesses, we always recommend that you read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It can help you predict and counteract the typical challenges that arise as teams grow, all while building trust every step of the way. We also recommend you explore our Trust brief for more tips on how to create collaboration between the seven primary stakeholders that make up a business.
How to Conduct the Five Dysfunctions of a Team Exercise
Running this exercise is extremely simple:
Make sure everyone in the room has read the book beforehand, then ask your team to take two minutes to honestly rate your leadership team on a scale of 1–10 for each of these items (with 1 being the lowest score and 10 being the highest):
- Trust
- Conflict
- Commitment
- Accountability
- Results
Once everyone has given their ratings, take a moment and discuss the weaker numbers (anything lower than a 7 or an 8). You should repeat the exercise at your future Quarterly Planning Meetings and Annual Planning Meetings to see how your scores change over time.
Once you’ve completed the entire exercise, take a moment and discuss the big picture. Are there any potential Rocks, To-Dos, or issues coming out of this? What steps can your Senior Leadership Team take to improve scores in the future?
Why Is the Five Dysfunctions of a Team Exercise Important?
Running the Five Dysfunctions of a Team exercise opens communication between your team members in a transparent and honest channel. High-trust teams are composed of members who are very comfortable being open with one another.
They are unafraid of exposing their weaknesses and mistakes, so they don’t need to be overly cautious or develop unhealthy defense mechanisms. Since each team member feels safe, they can individually and collectively focus on their goals and tasks.
They have no problem asking for help and are more likely to take risks. But building this trust takes time, working together, and even failing together. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team exercise brings these efforts to the forefront and clearly presents any opportunities for improvement.
When to Run the Five Dysfunctions of a Team Exercise
Your Annual Planning Meeting is the ideal time to discuss team health and engage in the Five Dysfunctions of a Team exercise. By bringing your Senior Leadership Team together to explore weaknesses in your communication and collaboration, you can begin to create a high-trust company. Having this annual check-in also allows you to compare your ratings year-over-year and ensure your efforts are working.
