This is an easy read. The principles are applied within a story. Useful tool to use for improving team moral.

This was a great book, an easy read that was packed with information and suspense. After reading the fictional part of the book, I found the in depth descriptions of each dysfunction at the end of the book very important and informative. Also what makes this book so good is the fact that almost anyone in any team building situation can relate to the book. As a high school senior who is involved in sports, is involved in many activities at my school and who has a weekend job that is focused around teamwork, reading this book has been beneficial and inspirational to me. As I look back at things I have done and been involved with and also ahead to future endeavors, I realize not only the importance of teamwork but how to take the idealistic thought of a perfectly functioning team and turn it into reality. Almost anything that you do has some sort of team aspect. If you can conquer the 5 dysfunctions by taking conflict head on and trusting others while at the same time doing not what is best for you but what is best for the team, I think that you will truly understand and retain the true meaning and importance of this book.

I think I enjoyed the concept of this book more than the actual implementation. Told like a fairy tale, the book tells the story of a team in trouble and a company facing internal failure. A professional "team builder" is hired as CEO to restructure and revitalize the team.

The new CEO struggles to establish a team mentality among her newly acquired executives. Rampant mistrust and confidence issues are paralyzing them. The author chronicles the steps Kathryn takes to overcome these obstacles and begin establishing a self-sufficient group.

In theory, if your team is suffering these sorts of issues, the book should work. This book was required reading for my workplace, and while I found it to be an easy, entertaining, and perhaps even insightful read, I couldn't quite relate to it. Yes, the same sorts of issues are prevalent on my own team at work. However, Kathryn was dealing with eight or nine team members. There are many more on mine. Technically, it should work no matter the size of the team. The problem is convincing everyone on board that this is a good plan.

I would recommend reading the book if for no other reason than to gain more insight into the workings of a team...particularly the ones that aren't working.

We are launching Strategic Planning for the next 5 years...our facilitator of our Strategic Planning suggested that all 16 employees read this book before we launch our planning sessions...it was terrific! Gave everyone a volcabulary and context in which to work as we journey forward to make our own organization totally functional!!!!

just gets the mind going in some good thoughts. a great, quick read to plug some new ideas into one's head. i recommend.

I read a great number of titles on leadership, organizational development, and team building.

This book, told as a fable, is a very quick read and will seem unlike any other book of this sort you've read. As you read it, you'll feel as though the author has been following you through your life at work. It's a very eerie feeling when you realize that each of the characters already works with you at your office.

I particularly enjoyed the focus on organizational alignment, team building, and healthy conflict. These are essential ingredients to the recipe for an excellent team!

I've recommended this book to several other executives where I work and have received 5 star ratings in return.

The Five Dysfunctions of Leadership was given to me at a company leadership course. While the course itself was excellent the book is not the most technical of leadership guides. It uses a fictional premise to guide readers through a corporate teams rebuilding phase. It does a good job of giving the reader some insight concerning the thinking process leaders' face when rebuilding a dysfunctional team of capable individuals. It also does a good job of addressing the patient compassion leaders sometimes need to display when nurturing stubborn but talented team members. It does not, however, have the depth to serve as a legitimate all in one guide for corporate team building. For one, it approaches the subject matter from and elementary view. Relationships will always be complicated and conflict cannot be avoided. It also fails to capture the diversity element most companies face these days. Although it's not completely devoid of helpful information and can be read quickly, I do not recommend buying this book. Because it can be read so quickly, you'd be better served by setting aside a few hours at your local library for reading this book.

One of the strongest books in Patrick Lencioni's growing body of publications, "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" offers a solid Model for the practice of management. Utilizing Lencioni's "fable" storytelling framework, a clear articulation of the Model underlying the fable and the uncommon approach of showing what does *not* contribute to good teamwork (as opposed to what *does* work), this is an interesting and useful book for managers.

Readers with managerial responsibilities should find the Model espoused in this book both useful and straightforward. As in other Lencioni publications, this Model is simple to understand, but difficult to implement. While challenging in that respect, the principles put forth in this book make sense and are well articulated.

Intrigued by an article in the 5.26.08 issue of Fortune magazine, p113-122, I had to read this book. The article was about how Seagate spends $2 million each year for the "lord of all lords" team building exercise for 200 of it's employees (mostly engineers) -- and each day of the week-long journey is based upon one of "The Five Dsyfunctions of a Team." Before employees arrive at the event, they are asked to read the book -- a fast read -- which explains, with an easy-to-relate-to story line, each one of the five:

Absence of trust, which leads to invulnerability of team members
Fear of conflict, which leads to artificial harmony
Lack of commitment, which breeds ambiguity
Avoidance of accountability, which leads to low standards
Inattention to results, which leads to status/ego being all too important

Then all 200 of them are put through the paces at the event in about every way you could imagine to get out of their comfort zone like never before and to really understand, at the cellular level, how to trust others, why conflict is good, how to really commit, how to be both accountable and results-oriented. Each day, they do team building exercises on one of the 5, and then have a team competition at the end of the event.

The article starts out "Everyone here's going to die." The CEO tells them "Yes, everyone in this room will die - at some point ... Are you doing what you want to do in your life? Or are you just blowing through?" Watkins continues. "I'm challenging your life right now. What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?..."

While most of us have been exposed by now to some type of team building event, I doubt there is one that is so life changing as this one. Seagate could have used any one of a number of books or team building programs -- or could have designed their own -- but they chose this one. Great testimony for how powerful it can be if an organization can overcome these team dysfunctions.

Enjoy,

Sally

"A camel is a horse designed by a committee," is one popular business quip. Insert the word "team" for "committee" and you have the attitude that many business people harbor about such groupings. This book, however, suggests that there are five common dysfunctions of teams and offers specific ways to attach each pitfall.

The author presents the lesson in a business fable, using a fictional Silicon Valley company that is struggling. The book closes with some specific prescriptions for overcoming each of the five dysfunctions.

At first, glancing at the book title, I thought it was an indictment of teams.

I was wrong. Rather, it indicts dysfunctional teams and is very BIG on teams as a way to get business done. Teams are "in" in modern business thought, like it or not. Anyone in a work setting who is part of a team (just about anyone, huh?) might benefit from reading his. One caveat is the sheer amount of time consumed by the process. Though we are assured that the time "investment" in team-building will pay off with later gains, it will still be a powerful temptation for harried managers to wonder how they are ever going to get the rest of their :"real work" done while they are stuck hour upon hour in the team meeting process.

Lencioni is not suggesting that everyone sit in a circle, hold hands and sing "Kumbaya." Nor does he endorse other vogue-ish practices such as Outward Bound or falling blindfolded into the arms of waiting teammates to develop trust. Rather, he offers practical ideas to cement effective teams.

I'd love to comment further, but I'm overdue for another ... team meeting!

I can't say anything new that hasn't already been covered here. This is an excellent book, particularly for the business owner, manager, or empowered supervisor. If you hold these positions and follow the guidelines of this book you will have a more responsive workforce. If you are an employee working for a employer who follows the advice in the book, you will gain much insight and useful information as well. However, if you are an employee in a bad group situation, many suggestions covered in this book are merely bandaids for problems that may be unsolvable. If you're working for a person who is authoritarian or insecure there is little in this book that will help you change their approach to management. Perhaps you should focus an equal amount of time in considering a job change. Life is too short to work for team leaders who won't use the good advice in the book.

I had to read this book for a class of mine and fortunately I loved it. The lessons are told through fictional characters; however, it's easy to see how the dysfunctions can apply towards your own teams.

Although this book contains some good ideas, it is not based on research on teams. Some of its suggestions have even been proven wrong. Instead of this book, I highly recommend Richard Hackman's "Leading Teams," which is based on decades of research, is very readable (no academic jargon), immensely practical (especially if you use some of the free tools he offers on his website), and won the best book of the year award from the Academy of Management.

Easy read. Points made in book are easily transferable to your team. Drives home the importance of a functional team.

I highly recommend this fast reading, very interesting and informative book to any managers that have a group struggling to work effectively and together as a team. I have begun addressing and discussing the dysfunctions with my team and have seen results and changes already. Great book!

Just finished reading Lencioni's the other book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Although it is not a sequel to his previous books, it is termed the third in the trilogy which includes The Five Temptations of a CEO and the Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. The thoughts are continuous. One could spot the consistency in Lencioni's theories and also his style in presenting them in fables. Reading through the story, managers could project themselves in the position of the characters, and experience the familiar scene in their own office.

The story is about how a newly appointed CEO tried to re-establish the dysfunctional management team of the company, the ways that teamwork could elude even the most dedicated individuals, and how could it be restored.

In a series of off-site management meetings, the CEO asked the team to examine their interpersonal behaviours and to create healthy conflict and accountability among the group. She tried hard to prevent members from sliding back into old habits, and lost a couple executives in the process.

The five dysfunctions are -

absence of trust,
fear of conflict,
lack of commitment,
avoidance of accountability,
inattention to results.

1. The first dysfunction is an absence of trust among team members. Essentially, this stems from their unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust.

2. This failure to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments.

3. A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team member rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings.

4. Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team.

5. Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.

Members of a truly cohesive teams trust one another, engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas, commit to decisions and plans of actions, hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans and focus on the achievement of collective results.

Trust is the first dysfunction presented in the story. Great teams require members to make themselves vulnerable to one another and be able to expect that their vulnerabilities will not be used against them. It is only when members of a team are comfortable having their colleagues know their weak points that they will be able to work together making their greatest concern the job at hand, not protecting themselves.

The second dysfunction presented is inattention to results, which is the tendency of team members seeking out individual recognition and attention at the expense of the team's collective results. It is like a coach speaking individually to members of a football team during half-time, without them knowing what everyone else was talking about, indicating that such behavior would represent a collection of individuals, not a team.

The third dysfunction identified and explained is the fear of conflict. Meetings are the most important setting for conflict. Meetings are boring because we have adopted a practice of avoiding conflict in meetings and not engaging in dialog to help expand commitment to goals and our understanding of what needs to be done.

The fourth dysfunction in the story is lack of commitment, which is prone to occur when a team has not openly and passionately explored all the options. Team member rarely buy in and commit to decisions even though they may feign agreement during a conflict-less meeting.

The final dysfunction discussed in the story is avoidance of accountability. Since the team has not truly engaged in an open dialog and has not truly committed to an action plan, it is difficult for peers to call one another on actions.

Lencioni aptly summarized the consequential impact of the dysfunctions of a team starting from the absence of trust. Because we need to appear invulnerable, we create an absence of trust. Because we fear conflict, we have artificial harmony on our team. Because we lack commitment, we encourage ambiguity. Because we avoid accountability, we ensure low standards. Because we seek personal status and ego we are inattentive to results of the team.

This book was an excellent reasource for team building. We used it on a couple off site meetings and it really helped get us moving towards working out our issues. It helps put everyone on the same page and eliminates finger pointing. I've loved all of his books so far.

this was one of the best books I've read for teams and it was such an easy read.

If you are in search of a book on teamwork, then I highly recommend The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. I started out reading this book because of a class assignment and turned out really enjoying it. I found the book to be a very easy and interesting read that I could relate to. Patrick Lencioni wrote this book as a fictional story that illustrates the reality of teamwork and the issues teams' experience. In this book, Patrick explains the five dysfunctions of a team and also briefly explains how to overcome the dysfunctions. The suggestions to overcome the dysfunctions are brief, but he did write a book called Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team that goes explains them in more depth. The Five Dysfunctions explained through out this book are set up like a pyramid. They include: Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability and Inattention to Results.
I recently transferred departments at my place of employment and in just the past month and a half I have witnessed a department spiraling out of control. We are without a full-time supervisor and director and I could not pinpoint the exact problem until I read this book. Our team is experiencing every dysfunction that Lencioni explains in his book. I wish I could buy a copy if this book for each of my co-workers because I feel they would benefit just as much as I did from this book and I believe it would open up their eyes to what are department is experiencing and solve many of the issues.
I will be graduating in December with my degree in Health Administration and I already have more confidence that I will be a better team leader because of Lencioni's book. I will keep this book and use it as a tool to help teach my future co-workers about the dysfunctions and the importance of being a team player rather than an individual player out to better their own career and goals. I plan on reading more books written by Patrick Lencioni and highly recommend his work to anyone interested in learning more on teamwork and leadership.

Great business training material that uses leadership interactions so the audience can walk through the dysfunctions of a team and the complexity of improvement.

When I bought this book, due to a friend's recommendation, I was not sure that this was the right book. His recommendation was right on. This book gives an excellent picture of how a team should operate and how 'poison' can ruin good teamwork.

I saw Lencioni locally and received one of the books by attending. The Five Dysfunctions is the best of four but all are great. I'm using the principles at work and with my softball team. In a nutshell results depend on accountability depends on clarity depends on conflict depends on trust. I have always struggled to identify dysfunction. Understanding function causes the dysfunction to stand out clearly! Enjoy this wonderfully written fiction and the critical concepts it reveals! An easy read and difficult to put down.

The Five Dysfunctions is the product of long-term work on teams distilled into a few key bullet points and then expanded again into the fictional story of a team that fell into dysfunction and then recuperated.

The five issues, which are the real take-away from the book, are Absence of Trust (manifested as invulnerability), Fear of Conflict (manifested as artificial harmony), Lack of Commitment (manifested as ambiguity), Avoidance of Accountability (manifested as low standards), and Inattention to Results (manifested as a pursuit of status and ego) (p. 97). These five build upon each other like a pyramid, in that order.

The fictional account of a team discovering and discussing these issues takes up the first 185 pages. Lencioni then, in 40 pages, summarizes them all in the form of what is probably lecture notes, along with practical tips to what a leader and the team must do to address and fix the dysfunctions. For the time it takes, those 40 pages say the same if not more than the story, and are worth the read without the narrative. However, the narrative is of course more entertaining.

Pragmatically, Lencioni has tapped into the behavior patterns that really are the bane of every manager's existence. And while every manager can probably see them intuitively, most of us haven't taken the time to name them and articulate the issues and solutions. So for that, Lencioni has done what a lot of good leadership books do: opened our eyes to the obvious thing that was right in front of us all along. For that, it's a worthwhile read, but again, the shorter second section will suffice for reading the book.

James W. Miller is the author of God Scent

I'm an organizational development consultant and I've used Lencioni's model as the basis for my course in team building in the United States, Italy and South Africa. I find that people all over the world relate to his insights, identify with the dysfunctions described in the book and have some "Ah Ha" moments regarding how to work together better.

Very good service from Amazon to replace an order that had been lost between the USA and Belgium.

Much appreciated.
DL

This book does a fine job of breaking down complex organizational cancers (such as silos and cliques) to reveal both their symptoms and root-causes. In addition to uncovering these issues through story-based lessons, the suggestions at the tail of the book on how to embrace and combat these problems are very helpful. I would recommend this book for new and experienced managers and their team members alike.

If you have problems with your work teams, this is a good read and one I would recommend. It is good to change things up, but I'm just not a fan of "fables." This is part of the reason why I couln't give it five stars - it just makes it difficult when referring back to points you took notes on. Overall one of the better ones. There are a lot of teamwork books out there. Most of them are not worth the money. Maxwell's Law's of Teamwork is a good one and so is The Team Approach: With Teamwork Anything Is Possible. If you're an big basketball fan, you might like The Magic of Teamwork by Pat Williams.

Patrick has amazing insight into leadership teams and how to make it work. Forgot technology and strategy -- start here and read his books, if you get what Patrick is saying, you can develop a good strategy and technology. If you don't, don't bother with either strategy or technology.

One of his best books (along with Four Obsessions...). I purchased a copy for each of my management team and board.

Very surprised how good this book actually was. I couldn't put it down and I'm not a big reader!!! Can't wait to try this out with my team!!

Manager required me to read this book. I was able to read it in about 3 hours and thought it moved at a steady pace. Through the illustrations I was able to learn how teams functions are where things go wrong.
Overall I liked the book and would recommend it to others interested in teh subject.

This book was excellent in both content and approach. I am so tired of all the politcally correct rhetoric surrounding "team building" that it was refreshing to read something that approached the topic from a useful, actionable perspective. In my book Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual: WHAT IT TAKES TO REACH THE C-SUITE AND STAY THERE I also spend time addressing the importance of team building when it is something more than just a buzz word...

I bought this book for a work project, and the book was advertised as being used, with a bent page or two. The book looked flawless when I got it, and the story was very well told, too. An entertaining, informative read that I would recommend for anyone's workgroup.

I am not a novice, and I learned things about executive team management that I did not know before.

The five dysfunctions of a team is a business novel about a small company in silicon valley. The company is not getting the results they expect, so therefore Katerine is hired as a new CEO. After two weeks of observation, she concludes the management does not work as a team and she starts to try to create a team out of the executive group.

She introduces the five dysfunctions of a team to the group. These are:

- Lack of trust
- Lack of conflict
- Lack of commitment
- Lack of accountability
- Lack of focus on results

Going over these one by one and using team building exercises, Katerine builds a team and gets the results she wants.

At the end of the book, the five dysfunctions are summarized and the tools used by Katerine are clarified and explained.

The five dysfunctions is a well written and useful book. The five dysfunctions are clearly visible in teams I worked with myself. Making the book a story makes it very easy to read.

I considered the book to have two major drawbacks. The first one is that is has a strong focus on executive teams. I'd rather hear a story about an operational team. Especially considering that executive teams are rare. The second is the focus on tools for building teams. Several other excellent team literature has strong criticism on these tools. It gives the impression that if you just take the tools, they will solve the dysfunction and voila, a well working team. Of course, it's not that simple (nor does the author day that, but the book does seem to suggest it because of it's focus on tools).

Conclusion. A well written book on teams, fun to read, useful, though not the best.

Another great reading book. My team has benefitted from this well written, interesting fable.