Laws of Software Engineering · Saying
Saying
Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Teams fail in five layered ways: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results.
How to use it. Use it as a diagnostic ladder. The lower dysfunctions enable the higher ones. A team avoiding accountability is usually a team that never really committed, which is usually a team that could not have honest conflict, which is usually a team without trust. Treat the lowest unmet condition.
How it gets misused. Treated as evidence-based. Lencioni's model is intuitive but built on consulting experience rather than systematic research. Use it to prompt honest team conversation. It is not a validated framework.
Related
- Principle Psychological Safety The shared belief that you can speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes, and disagree without being punished or humiliated.
- Principle Hackman's Five Conditions for Effective Teams Teams perform when they are real teams, with compelling direction, enabling structures, supportive context, and expert coaching.
Clusters
- The Culture and Incidents cluster - How organisations learn, or fail to, from what goes wrong.