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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable LENCIONI, P. 2002. SAN FRANCISCO: JOSSEY-BASS
So begins Patrick Lencioni in his 2002 New York Times bestselling book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Teams are present in so many areas of our lives: the workplace, school, clubs, church, with children, adults, and everyone in between. This book thus has applicability for nearly everyone.
The Five Dysfunctions is a quick and pleasurable read. In fact, I read this book in the time it takes to fly from Seattle to Minneapolis. The author's style is engaging and friendly. Lencioni structures his book around a "leadership fable"-otherwise known as...a story. He devotes about three-fourths of the book to the tale of a fictitious work team as its members falter and underperform, and of their experiences under the guidance of the consultant brought in to turn things around for them. I don't think I'd be spoiling anything by revealing that despite some losses and some surprises along the way, the team emerged stronger in the end.
Lencioni couches his argument in the supposition that truly effective teamwork is one of the hardest goals for any organization to achieve. Humans are imperfect, with flaws, egos, insecurities, ambitions, baggage, distractions, personalities, pet peeves, and pet hurts. These imperfections make humans vulnerable to what the author calls "the five dysfunctions of a team."
The Five Dysfunctions is clearly fiction. No empirical research was conducted, no double-blind studies were run, no texts were analyzed. Nothing was measured or tested. Rather, Lencioni drew from...