How to run the Five Dysfunctions team exercise with your agency's leaders

The model in two minutes

Patrick Lencioni set out the model in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, published by Jossey-Bass in 2002. His firm, the Table Group, draws it as a pyramid with trust at the bottom. Each level depends on the one beneath it, so a team that can't trust each other won't argue honestly, and a team that doesn't argue won't truly commit. The model and its materials are Lencioni's and the Table Group's; Advisor OS isn't connected to either.

The five dysfunctions, in the Table Group's order:

1. Absence of trust: people won't admit mistakes, weaknesses or that they need help, because being open feels unsafe.
2. Fear of conflict: the team keeps an artificial harmony and avoids honest debate about ideas.
3. Lack of commitment: without clarity or buy-in, people don't make decisions they stick to.
4. Avoidance of accountability: people avoid the discomfort of calling a peer on their behaviour or performance.
5. Inattention to results: personal goals and status come before the team's shared result.

What each one looks like in an advisory agency

The model was written about executive teams. In an agency, the leadership team is usually the agency leader and the managers who run units. Here's how each dysfunction tends to show up there, and a question that opens it up in the session.

And the healthy version of each, in the same agency:

• Trust: a manager says in the meeting that their unit is behind, and asks for help before month end.
• Conflict: the disagreement happens in the room, so the side chats have nothing left to carry.
• Commitment: each decision leaves the meeting with an owner and a date, and comes back only with new facts.
• Accountability: managers call each other on a slipping commitment, so the leader isn't the only one who does.
• Results: a manager gives up a lead, a recruit or an afternoon to another unit when that helps the agency's month.

Signs of dysfunction to look for before you book the session

Lencioni's own overview opens with five yes-or-no questions, one per dysfunction. In agency terms they come out like this:

1. Do your managers say what they really think in the meeting, or only afterwards? (trust)
2. Does the weekly meeting settle anything, or does it run through updates? (conflict)
3. Do decisions get made and stay made, or come back next month? (commitment)
4. Will one manager tell another their unit is slipping? (accountability)
5. Does anyone give up something for their unit so the agency's month works? (results)

The overview says that if you answer no to many of them, the team needs work. One no is normal. Three or more is a good reason to book two hours with your managers.

When to run it

Good moments are the start of the planning year, after a new manager joins the leadership team, or after a quarter where the team missed and couldn't agree why. Signs it's overdue:

• The weekly leadership meeting has become a round of updates where nobody disagrees.
• The same decision gets reopened every month.
• Managers talk about each other's units to the leader but not to each other.
• A good manager is quietly looking at other agencies.

Don't run it in the middle of a crisis week, such as the last days before a quarter closes. People need enough room in their heads to talk about how they work together rather than this week's cases.

Before the session

Decide who's in the room

Run it with the team that makes agency-wide decisions together: the agency leader and the managers. Keep the full advisor force out. With 30 people in the room, nobody says anything that matters, and the exercise is about how the leaders work with each other.

Choose a facilitator

The agency leader can facilitate, but it's harder. People hold back when the person scoring the team is also the person who decides their bonus. If you can, ask someone outside the team to run it, and have the leader take part as a member.

Send a pre-read and an anonymous score

A week before, send the Table Group's short summary of the model, or the book if people will read it. Ask everyone to score the team from 1 to 10 on each dysfunction, where 10 means the team is strong on it. Collect the scores anonymously with a simple form so nobody anchors on the leader's numbers.

Set two ground rules

What's said about a person stays in the room. Scores are about the team, never about one person.

The two-hour run sheet

Personal histories, kept light

Keep the questions simple and not too personal: where you grew up, your first job, and one hard thing you dealt with early on. Go round the table and let each person talk for two or three minutes. The point is for managers who've sat in the same meetings for years to learn something about each other. It also makes the next 90 minutes easier.

Reading the scores

Look at the spread before the average. A dysfunction where scores run from 3 to 9 means some managers feel something the others don't. That gap is worth more discussion time than a dysfunction everyone scored 5.

Here is an illustrative set of anonymous scores from a team of six, and where the time would go:

Work the five in order, from trust upward. If trust scores badly, spend most of the time there, even if it means skipping ahead quickly on the others. In the model, each level rests on the one below it.

If the room goes quiet

Silence usually means people are waiting to see if it's safe. Three moves help. Read out the widest spread of scores and ask the people at each end to explain, without naming who gave which score. Ask for an example from the last month, since a real example is easier to talk about than a number. And if the leader is the problem in the example, the leader should say so first.

Picking one thing to change

Two or three behaviours, written in plain words, are better than a long list. Examples from an agency team:

• Trust: each manager brings their unit's weakest number to the weekly meeting before anyone asks for it.
• Conflict: the leader asks each manager for an objection before any decision is final.
• Commitment: each decision is written down at the end of the meeting, with the date it takes effect, and isn't reopened for a quarter.
• Accountability: managers raise a missed commitment with each other directly, in the meeting.
• Results: the agency's monthly number is reported first, before any unit's.

The 30 days after

The session is the easy part. What changes the team is the month after it.

• Within a day, the leader sends the agreed behaviours, owners and dates to everyone who attended.
• Within a week, each manager tells their unit what the leadership team agreed to change.
• Every week, the leadership meeting spends five minutes on the behaviours: kept or not kept, with examples.
• After 90 days, run the anonymous scores again and compare.

If you want a measured starting point instead of a home-made form, the Table Group offers an online Five Dysfunctions team assessment.

Common mistakes

• Running it with the whole agency instead of the leaders.
• The leader defending every low score. Listen first; explain later, if at all.
• Turning it into a review of one manager's performance. That's a one-on-one conversation, held separately.
• Fixing all five at once.
• No follow-up, so the next session six months later finds the same scores.