Reaction Paper

The five dysfunctions of a team: a leadership fable, wrote by Patrick Lencioni, is a book about team leading happens in real life of Kathryn, the new comer of DecisionTech, Inc. and a new leader in this team. The biggest difference from other books I have ever read is that it tells a story through the whole book than mentions too many boring theories in leadership.
According to my understanding, through the note, Kathryn wrote on the board during the meeting, the five dysfunctions of a team are "Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, Inattention to Results".(Lencioni, 2002) I have a clear idea on the five dysfunctions and know how to overcome them. And I like the method of writing that Lencioni used in the fable. It seems that I was one of the members in this team and the problem Kathryn mentioned is just the one I have ever been lived through before.

In the following paragraph I will focus on the five dysfunctions and analyze my opinion on them.
The first dysfunction of team is absence of trust. In my mind, it is hard to believe in anyone except your family. Without trust, one cannot do things as good as he thought. Also, without trust, one cannot be rely on when works with others. So it is the core factor in organizing a team. We are used to applying our experience on new tasks or new impression on people. Since we have fixed model of treating people and works, it will decrease the conviction when we work with others. So once we have these kinds of images, it is difficult to overcome. Trusty is a good example to explain this dysfunction of a team. We always think that people will not change no matter when and where. So as soon as we believe that one cannot be relied on, we will not have faith on cooperate with them.
As far as I know, many companies will precede a team building exercise among new members. It is lesson 101 that every employee will experience when they join in a new team. Trust will make sure all the members can cooperate with each other and help the team raise cohesion. Take Kathryn as an example, she is the new comer and with less trust by other members. What she behaves and what she says in the meeting build the trust by her followers. She is not only a good speaker but a good story-teller, just like the author of the book. She is attractive and easy-going leader. In consequence, she won the trust. She told her followers that they lack of trust in the team, and they didn't believe her. Even though she didn’t give out the answer, she still did well in letting her members to understand what trust is by asking them to say others' weakness. In the end, I realize that trust not means without arguments or discusses, it means everyone in the team can accept the judgment from their peers and also put forward with others' weakness without fears. The foundation of judgment is the trust from oneself, so conflict is required sometime.

The Next dysfunction is fear of conflict. Conflict here means the positive discussion among the members for the purpose of the direction of good way. Faked harmonious is not better than fierce debate.
Take me as an example, getting along with my peers in school drives me crazy, since what I did is much more than other members in the team. During the meeting, nobody wanted to share their ideas, sometimes they were doing their own business. Maybe in their mind, in case of avoiding unnecessary conflicts and they just need to do what the leader told them. So they would rather shut their mouths and concentrate on how to work on their own staffs. This made the meeting boring and all of us had no passion.
Once I have joined in a meeting in another organization in my school. There were more people than our team. At first, I thought it would be much more difficult to handle that many members, because more "mouths" in a team would lead to more conflicts. Actually it didn't look like what I thought there. They were holding a rounding table meeting. Each one has to share his suggestion on the case. After the first round of sharing opinions, everyone had their own mind with others' idea. The second round was debate and judgment. It was very effective. During the second round, fierce debate happens among some of the members. It seems that I didn’t use to this kind of situation. In our meeting, we put our efforts on some useless things based on harmonious atmosphere. Indeed it helps less in our team and I switched the way we held a meeting. Everytime when we met together, I would raise some questions to ask my peers and make sure they can devote in the team. Then it comes to the third dysfunction of a team.

Then except the two dysfunctions mentioned above, there is another one—lack of commitment. "Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings." (Lencioni, 2002) There are two aspects of commitment as Lencioni stated in the book: clarify and buy-in (Lencioni, 2002). To clarify the situation will help one recognize current problem and devote to the work. "Buy-in" means employee would love to work for the enterprise. In verse, the company can make sure that employees have a voice in setting goals and expectations.
In order to overcome the lack of commitment in team members, one of the best ways is to set a deadline for the decision, and award them with bonus. Sometime, people will not change their own mind unless one comes up with an incomparable idea. So if other members in the team cannot raise a good ideal solution, please do not deny others'.

What I have different idea in five dysfunctions is the one above the last--avoidance of accountability. I kind of disagree with what the author cited. Because of the short of approval in other members, some members can't reach a consensus in team, and then most of the team members will choose to escape from the responsibility. Another reason is that "without committing to a clear plan of action", even when your peers made a mistake, most of people will not "call their peers on performance or behaviors that might hurt the team". (Lencioni, 2002)
However, I would like to say, in most situations, we would not say something bad to our peers or leader. Once we say it out, we will throw the ball to other peers immediately without hesitate and not saving face for them. Yet different situation will also happen depend on the interest of which side. Sometime it will also happen between team members and leaders.
Here is another example, in the TV reality show of The Apprentice Season 9. All the girls are in the same team. Everyone has her own thought in winning the game and would do anything to avoid losing in the competition. So the pressure goes to the strongest person in the team. Every time when there is a conflict, girls will direct the problem to the manager, which is also the leader. Everyone will respond and follow, to blame the leader on her fault and mistake in the meeting room after finishing the project but not during the processing of it. And when it comes to the problem of them, they will tell judges that it was the project manager's duty to organize everything well and in order. Even when it was really their fault and they would avoid the accountability and defense for themselves.
Therefore, in my mind, the best way to overcome the dysfunction of avoiding the accountability is in managing a project is to say it out. Leaders have to communicate with the members and tell them the goal and expectation of the project. In order to reduce this kind of avoidance, the leader needs to have a good relationship with the members. At the same time, to ask for members' opinions is another method as well. Based on all the dysfunctions presented before, a team cannot be organized perfectly without overcoming the last one.

Last but not least, the fifth dysfunction is inattention to results. All the team’s end is result-oriented. No goal, no motivation. So for the purpose of paying attention to the result, a team has to have a strong mind in working together and focus on the mission of the team. Individual interest should not influence the whole process of projects.
What impressed me in the book is Kathryn raised this dysfunction after the first one. Inattention to results is on the top of pyramid, but it doesn’t represent to the less importance of a team. I believe that it is the easiest to solve. We should not let the egoism hinder the success of teams.
In addition, I see that making profit is a kind of result-oriented, but how much profit should a team made is also essential. Competition can drive people to win, but at the same time, we cannot decide how much the team wins. If we only concentrate around win or lose, it doesn’t account. The result not only refers to the odds, also stands for how much one wins and how much the gap is.

In the end, as I thought, the whole company and the team should go smoothly and everyone will enjoy working together after Kathryn showed them the five dysfunctions. But actually, things always not go as what you thought. Mikey was fired, which surprised me a lot. Even though she is not the one appreciated my most of people, I still think that she has a strong talent that the team needs. Therefore, sometimes we cannot suppose something from our point of view. Treat things as our imagination, unless we are pretty sure. Sometimes we need to make decision to kick off someone who would do harm to the team.
A good quote I liked is what Lencioni's friend has told him, "If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time."(Lencioni, 2002) It is said that keeping a team organized is extremely hard and vital. Additionally, we should not let the dysfunctions become the problems in team working. Transfer it to another way and think it as a good function in team building.