The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Look at what your team can say and do together

At a company I led, the executive team built a charter that made room for people to say what they thought and challenge each other, including me.

In a planning meeting, an executive who reported to me said I wasn't close enough to the technical detail of a project to defend it in budget meetings. He was right. I had confidence in the project and too little command of the specifics.

We agreed that he would join the budget meeting as the technical resource. The project was approved.

That is the kind of team behavior I want you to build. Someone could identify a weakness in my preparation, I could accept the challenge, and we could change the plan. The charter mattered because we used it when the conversation became uncomfortable.

Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team gives you a way to discuss what makes those conversations possible. Use it on a decision your team needs to make. You'll learn more from that discussion than from asking everyone whether they think the team is effective.

At a glance

• Lencioni's model arranges five dysfunctions as a pyramid, from absence of trust at the base to inattention to results at the top.
• The sequence helps you look beneath a visible problem, and it works best as a starting point for diagnosis.
• You'll learn more by walking through a real decision with your team than by asking whether the team is effective.

Where the model comes from

Lencioni introduced the model in his 2002 leadership fable, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It describes absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results, arranged as a pyramid.

The sequence helps you look beneath a visible problem. If nobody challenges a missed commitment, you should check whether the commitment was clear and whether people could disagree before it was made.

Use that sequence as a starting point for diagnosis. A team may need clearer priorities, enough capacity or different incentives at the same time as it needs stronger relationships. Address the conditions you've actually found.

The table below summarizes each level, from the base of the pyramid up, and what I suggest doing about it. The sections that follow explain each one.

Make it possible to admit a problem

The trust at the base of Lencioni's model concerns vulnerability. Can you ask for help, admit an error or acknowledge a gap in your knowledge in front of your colleagues?

As the leader, go first when you have a real example. Explain an assumption you got wrong and what you'll change. Ask someone with better information to help you make the decision. Keep it connected to work the team recognizes.

Then watch how you respond when someone else does the same. If they bring you bad news early, thank them for raising it and work through the implications. You can address a missed standard without making the admission itself the problem.

Amy Edmondson's 1999 study of 51 teams in one manufacturing company found psychological safety associated with learning behavior; the field study supports an association within that setting. It gives you a reason to pay attention to whether your team can discuss mistakes, ask for help and seek feedback.

Give disagreement a useful job

Fear of conflict appears when people withhold a relevant objection. You may hear agreement in the meeting and then discover that several people expected the plan to fail.

Before a consequential decision, ask for the strongest objection and the evidence behind it. Invite the person closest to the work to describe what could go wrong. Give quieter colleagues a way to contribute, including a written view before the meeting when that would help.

Research gives a reason to manage disagreement carefully. Carsten De Dreu and Laurie Weingart's 2003 meta-analysis found negative average associations between both task conflict and relationship conflict and team performance, with differences across task settings. Simply increasing the amount of argument is a poor objective.

I would focus on whether the disagreement improved the decision. Did someone surface a dependency, change an assumption or propose a better option? Keep the discussion specific, stop personal attacks and summarize what you've learned before deciding.

A calm meeting can still be thorough. Check the quality of the challenge and the information considered before you judge the team by how animated the discussion felt.

Finish the decision clearly

Commitment becomes difficult when people leave with different understandings of what was agreed. Before you move on, say what the decision is, who owns it and what happens next.

Give people room to say what they still disagree with. Then explain which trade-off you've chosen and why. Ask whether they can carry out the decision and what would prevent that.

If new evidence should trigger a review, name it. Otherwise, the team can end up debating the same choice whenever someone encounters an inconvenience. A clear review condition lets you distinguish a changed situation from unfinished disagreement.

Check the message that will reach the rest of the organization. Have each executive explain the decision in their own words. Resolve meaningful differences before staff receive competing versions from different departments.

Make accountability possible between colleagues

Accountability needs a clear commitment and a fair way to raise a concern. Ask team members to address a missed handoff with the colleague involved while the problem can still be corrected.

As CEO, make that expectation explicit. You can help with a difficult conversation, and you should intervene when the issue involves misconduct, power or safety. Routine coordination should include direct conversations between the people doing the work.

Look at your own follow-through. If you miss the deadlines you set for everyone else, address it in the same way. Explain the effect, agree the recovery and improve how you manage the commitment.

A shared action list is useful when it records actual decisions, owners and dates. Review the items that affect other people's work. If an item stays incomplete, decide whether to change the plan, provide help or address performance. Carrying it forward without discussion leaves everyone guessing.

Agree what the whole team is trying to achieve

Inattention to results becomes easier when each executive can succeed against their own scorecard while the business struggles. Look at the decisions where one function's apparent success creates extra work or cost elsewhere.

Choose a shared outcome that requires cooperation. For a service business, you might examine the time from a signed agreement to successful delivery, including quality and margin. Ask each leader how their decisions help or hinder that outcome.

Keep the measure close enough to the work that people can act on it. A broad revenue ambition needs choices about clients, capacity, delivery and follow-up. Discuss those choices alongside the number.

Also check what you reward. If you praise one executive for winning work that another department cannot deliver, resolve that conflict in your expectations. A team conversation will have limited value while the incentives keep directing people toward incompatible goals.

Diagnose one recent decision

Try this

Choose a decision that caused avoidable rework or confusion. Walk through it with your team, using the model to organize the discussion.

1. Ask what information arrived late, which objection went unspoken and what each person believed had been agreed. These questions will help:
   • Where did someone need help and hesitate to ask?
   • Which relevant objection did we hear too late?
   • What did we each think the decision meant?
   • Which commitment needed a direct conversation between colleagues?
   • Which departmental goal conflicted with the result we wanted together?
2. Identify the first point where a different action could have helped. You may discover a relationship problem, a process problem or both.
3. Choose one change for the next leadership meeting. You might circulate the decision question in advance, reserve time for objections or finish with a shared account of the commitments.
4. Review how that change affected the next decision, then choose the next improvement from what you observe.

Avoid asking people to disclose personal experiences as a test of trust. Start with the work, let people choose what they share and demonstrate that you can handle a straightforward professional challenge.

Sources

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

  Patrick Lencioni, Jossey-Bass/Wiley, April 2002. Publisher's description and publication record.

• The Five Dysfunctions model

  The Table Group. Undated; checked September 26, 2026.

• Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams

  Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, June 1999. Original article hosted by MIT.

• Task Versus Relationship Conflict, Team Performance, and Team Member Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis

  Carsten K. W. De Dreu and Laurie R. Weingart, Journal of Applied Psychology, August 2003. Original article hosted by MIT.