The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Essay Example

1. ATTRIBUTES OF EFFECTIVE TEAM The most important attribute of effective teams is that they have a high level of trust among them. Members pay special attention to not their own success but they want to see other members to succeed as well, because individual success is useless without team success. Members show high level of trust in the experience of other members of the team and feel free to take their comments. Not only do they have belief in each other’s competencies but also on overall team’s competencies. An organization’s departments can’t work in isolation and the performance of each department is critical to organization success. All the departments are dependent on each other and they should exhibit high level of trust on each other. Mikey’s behavior gives a clear picture that she didn’t trust her teammates as she didn’t want to talk about behavioral issues at first. Kathryn explained to the group that teamwork begins with building trust. She focused a lot on this issue as she knows this is the prime reason for the lack of communication between the team members. Kathryn explained to Jeff that from team point of view they are totally broken. Jeff assumed that Mickey has to do the entire thing with Marketing, Martins to develop products, and JR’s to make sales. No one ever shared much information with other. They use to work in isolation, every executive focused on its individual department success. 2. NORMS AT DECISION TECH Employees refer to themselves not as a team but as a staff. There was no team or team work, executives were working as individuals. There was no team effort, each individual was competent, one of the best from the industry but together they were a disaster. This created obstacles for the company in achieving its goals, even though it had best people in the organization but company failed to make them work as a team. Kathryn gave this speech multiple times that they had more experience and talented team than any of their competitors, more cash, better core technology, more powerful board of directors than any of other in the industry. But still they were far behind their two competitors. Each one of them works individually, but not as a team. Jeff usually didn’t give his opinion about what he thought and most of the meetings during his time as CEO were just to get reports. And usually there wasn’t any constructive discussion. Discussions were slow and boring, No one argued with another. Teammates at Decision Tech’s usually didn’t question another and there was no sense of healthy arguments during meeting. People were least interested and there was no culture of feedback among executives. They didn’t consider that their contribution can be fruitful for company. They were all busy in their own departments meeting their individual conflicting targets. Mikey said to Martin, “I came with my PR numbers every week but no one has ever asked about them.” There was no outcome of the time-bounded meetings. Meetings started and ended at a particular time. It didn’t matter whether the team had reached on a conclusion or not, it had to end on time. Because of this company was missing deadline, company took so much time to reach on consensus. During the meetings Martin used to be busy most of the time on his laptop checking mails and didn’t care about what other people were saying unless he was asked for suggestion in some technical matter he didn’t use to pay attention Mikey the Marketing director was a genius but didn’t know how to get along with the team. She used to complain about company a lot and didn’t feel good when someone questioned her idea. She said that she came with her PR numbers every week but no one had ever asked about them. Martin the chief Technology Officer was best in his field but was not at all participative in meetings. He didn’t use to participate in meetings and used to be busy on his laptop checking mails during meetings. JAN the chief financial officer was very competent for the job but used to treat company money as her own money. 3. FOUR STAGES OF TEAM DEVELOPMENT To bring company out of this issue the team had to restructure. The team had to go through all the four stages Forming, Norming, Storming and Performance. Even after the appointment of Kathryn the Board and the Chairman were little reluctant about changes and chairman was a bit more concerned with team going through the reformation stage. But they agreed to Kathryn that there is no choice except to go at first stage of forming team. Katherine first tried to go through forming team, she used a triangle approach coached them about five dysfunctions in a team. The team gets acquainted to each other in a first mild discussion of 45 minutes. Here team gets to know about each other’s past, hometown, no of kids. They started interacting with each other. They started trusting each other except for Mikey who was thinking all of this practice is useless. Norming stage: They went through the exercise other day as well. They discussed their strength and weaknesses which gave them a hint of their differentiating roles in the team. Katherine admitted that she is not a good speaker in front of huge audience and television and she might need help from team in this regard. Kathryn told the team about ultimate dysfunction, team members seek individual success and attention at the expense of results. But success is in collective goals. Storming stage: Team had arguments but these arguments lead them to better solution. Previously they didn’t use to get in to arguments because of trust deficit and if they did, they considered it as a conflict. They debated on the overreaching goal of the year. Everyone had different opinion about it. But this difference of opinion and argument had made them to analyze issue from different angels. They had an unpleasant argument about acquisition of which Nick was in favor, Kathryn was against it and Martin was not interested. Performance stage: Team performance is very much depended on team leader. Kathryn helped Nick to talk about what he felt that he had nothing to do in front of whole team. It was Kathryn support to Nick which made him able to talk about it. Kathryn was a bit upset about the leaks of off-site behavior, so she raised the issue in next off-site tour. The team needed continuous improvement and this insight about executives sharing information about other executives with their juniors need to be improved. Kathryn and her team spent around 3 days each month so that the behavioral issues got resolved and they start working as a team, which went quite successful. The team went from forming to perfuming and is continuously improving. 4. SEVEN TOOLS FOR DEVELOPING CREDIBLITY Kathryn used following tools most effectively Being clear and consistent about what they wanted to achieve. She had made it clear to her team that is consistent about their goals. And she even debated Nick over team goals and personal goals. Nick wanted to acquire the company but team didn’t want to, over there Kathryn helped Nick to draw a clear line between personal goals and team goals; and to select one of it. Building a base of agreement among team members before moving on. At various places she waited for the team to get to the level, clear all their reservations and then move on. She used to convince and debate about every dysfunction before going at another. She didn’t try to teach or discuss everything with them in the first day but went step by step and let them digest it. She initially had a plan not to cover all of the dysfunction in the first off site training but on the request of JR as they had time she explained to them other dysfunction of the team. On multiple occasions she waited for the team to swallow what she was trying to say. She also admitted in front of them when her opinion about politics in the organization was a bit in experienced. Encouraging and coaching team members to help them improve. At various intervals Kathryn coached each one of them individually. She helped Mikey in sorting her trust problem. She used to get a bit uncomfortable when anyone used to question her ideas. She tried her level best to make Mikey a team player. When Mikey, Martin, JR thought its useless to spend days off site and we need to consider more on operational issues, Kathryn stood by decision that team needs to be coached on team dynamics and behavioral issues so that communication between team improves. She also helped Nick accepting his issues regarding nothing to do in front of team. She encouraged them individually and collectively as well. She started each meeting with the same note that what is the reason they are not ahead of their competitors when they have better resources than them. She helped them in finding answers and worked with them to form a better and efficient team 5. ROLES FROM DECISION TECH STAFF Information seeking (facilitating) Nick can fit into the role of information seeker. He used to ask question about things so that whole team get a clearer picture about the idea. He probed when Mikey presented the brochures without consulting sales team. Nick insisted Kathryn to tell more about politics and dysfunction when she tried to close down the topic because it was getting sensitive. Nick inquired Kathryn about the issues of lack of commitment when the topic seemed to get away. Relationship building (supporting) Jeff had supported other team members at multiple events. Jeff tried to appreciate its peers. He even tried to end confrontation between Nick and Mickey by appreciating Mickey work. He supported the team debate with Kathryn about the politics in organization. He clarified Kathryn that she is feeling this because she hasn’t worked in high tech before and their organization is better than many organization he has worked with, where political environment as compared to their company is very high. Resisting (Blocking role) I think Mikey was the one who was blocking or resisting change. She didn’t want to improve. And didn’t change any bit after so many days of coaching. This can be proved by her issue with Nick when Nick questioned her about broachers and the involvement of sales team. She still couldn’t accept that and this became the reason that led her out of the team. She showed little progress in the start but couldn’t sustain it. Bibliography Lencioni, Patrick. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Sans Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2002. Read More