In his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team author Patrick Lencioni tells the fictional story of a fast-growing startup with a bunch of potential that quickly starts declining in performance because of some pretty significant dysfunctions.
To address those dysfunctions a new CEO is brought in, and after observing the company for a while, she brings the leadership team together and starts to sketch out a model on the whiteboard, a model that captures the five specific dysfunctions that she has observed in her lengthy experience working with organizations.
I’m going to share what those five dysfunctions are, and then I’m going to share a specific visual thinking tool that can address them.
The Five Dysfunctions
At the lowest level of the pyramid, we have the dysfunction of absence of trust. If trust does not exist amongst the members of a team, then you can’t have meaningful conflict.
That’s where the next dysfunction comes in: the fear of conflict. It’s easy to think that conflict in all forms is bad. That’s not true. Teams need to engage in meaningful conflict to make important decisions, but that conflict can only take place when there’s already a level of trust.
But it’s not just about hashing out those conflicts. It’s also about committing to specific actions, which makes lack of commitment the next dysfunction. You need buy in from your team members, and then you need to hold those team members accountable.
It’s the avoidance of accountability that’s the next dysfunction. People need to know what they’re responsible for, and they need to know what good looks like and held to those standards so that as a team, you can achieve meaningful results.
That makes the inattention to results the final dysfunction. Your team exists to achieve a particular outcome. What is that goal? What are those results? And are you actually paying attention to them?
One of the things I appreciate about how this model is sketched out on the board during those off-site retreats is that there’s the additional piece of evidence showing that these dysfunctions are in place.
The piece of evidence that points toward an absence of trust on the team is invulnerability – the lack of willingness of your team members to be vulnerable with each other. If they’re not willing to be vulnerable, none of the other issues can be addressed.
The evidence for a fear of conflict is artificial harmony. Do you pretend to get along and be okay with things, even when there’s something brewing underneath, something that hasn’t been said, a conflict that hasn’t been addressed?
The evidence for lack of commitment is ambiguity. Is there some uncertainty about what needs to be done?
And even if you know what needs to be done, is there clarity around what good looks like, or are there simply low standards in place?
And finally, as you look to what the team is actually trying to achieve as a whole, the evidence of an inattention to specific results is when more attention is placed on individuals’ status and ego.
A Visual Thinking Solution
Now that we’ve seen the five dysfunctions and the evidence for each, let’s look next at a visual thinking technique that you can use to address them.
The shape of that approach happens to be the inverse of the pyramid representing the dysfunctions. It’s a technique that involves moving beyond the typical style of communication with two or more people just talking things out, and instead introduces the third point of a visual artifact that participants build out and reference throughout the conversation.
Similar to how the new CEO sketched out the pyramid on the whiteboard while talking through each of these important issues that the team needed to address, the purpose of this visual thinking technique – which is called 3-Point Communication – is to have better conversations by giving all members a third thing to reference. That keeps everyone on the same page and avoids the stalling or derailing that might arise from interpersonal tensions, so that you can discuss what you actually need to discuss and decide where to go next.
The creation of that common sketched reference point can be kickstarted by the person initiating the conversation, but I think it’s most powerful when every member of the conversation can contribute to it.
When used as a collaborative sense-making tool, 3-Point Communication can address each of the five dysfunctions that we just discussed.
One way to instill trust among team members is simply to capture their contributions so that they know that their input has been heard, and those contributions can be seen on the page or on the whiteboard.
I also view that third point as kind of a neutral ground that makes it easier to argue about the ideas being discussed, not the people behind them, which can reduce the fear of conflict.
Once you have had and documented the argument over those ideas, that will set you up for identifying some clear next steps so that there’s not ambiguity about who needs to do what.
You can assign those tasks to specific people through this common reference point, so that each member can take responsibility for their part in the plan.
And then, finally, through this shared visual reference, you can be explicit about the goals that your team is working towards, goals that the team will achieve, not ones based on individual status and ego.
When you’re able to sketch out the important components of a team discussion (whether you’re defining strategy or doing some annual planning or addressing a pressing challenge within the organization) this mode of visual communication becomes a powerful way to address the five dysfunctions and perhaps even to prevent them from occurring in the first place.
What Next?
This skill of 3-Point Communication might be pretty new to you, and it might feel a bit daunting. One of the goals of my work is to make it less daunting. I want to help you develop your own visual thinking skills – the ability to sketch out simple drawings and diagrams as you’re wrapping your head around complex challenges.
Within my program Sketch Strategy I lead custom workshops for leadership teams to help them build their 3-Point Communication skills and start bringing them into important meetings and conversations, as a way of keeping your team aligned and avoiding five dysfunctions.
After all, you’ve got important work to get to. I want to help you do that work well.
Cheers,
-Doug