Walking through our second office at work, I noticed a Patrick Lencioni book on the shelf–5 Dysfunctions of a Team–that I had yet to read. As I read it, a lot of things fell into place for me. I’d read the 5 Temptations of a CEO, and a few others but the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team really hit home for me.

Some of the points that jumped out at me:

• Our job is to make the results that we need to achieve so clear to everyone in this room that no one would even consider doing something purely to enhance his or her individual status or ego. Because that would diminish our ability to achieve our collective goals. We would all lose.
• The key is define our goals, our results, in a way that is simple enough to grasp easily, and specific enough to be actionable…it needs to be more closely related to what we do on a daily basis.
• Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.
• If we don’t trust one another, then we aren’t going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict. And we’ll just continue to preserve a sense of artificial harmony.
• Once we achieve clarity and buy-in, it is then that we have to hold each other accountable for what we sign up to do, for high standards of performance and behavior…most hate to do it because they want to avoid interpersonal discomfort.
• If we cannot learn to engage in productive, ideological conflict during meetings, we are through…our ability to engage in passionate, unfiltered debate about what we need to do to succeed will determine our future as much as any products we develop or partnerships we sign.
• All great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow…teams that engage in productive conflict know that the only purpose is to produce the best possible solution in the shortest period of time.

I’ll have to reflect on these points at a future date.

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