Bringing the best out of your team

February 15, 2011

Avoiding the five dysfunctions of a losing team and encouraging the four distinctions in your teams

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
A few years ago, the whole team at OpenView was introduced to the idea of the five dysfunctions of a team through the book of the same name by Patrick Lencioni. We discussed the ideas at length, and even went through an intensive training session with team building consultants to help us identify symptoms of these dysfunctions within our team and address them. While team building is definitely always a work in progress for all management teams, this one session was instrumental in helping us leap ahead in our ability to work together. So what are the five dysfunctions? They are:
– Lack of Trust – Lack of Open Communication – Lack of Commitment – Lack of Accountability – Lack of Focus/Aspirations to Results

These are self explanatory, but the key idea is that they build upon each other, from Lack of Trust to Lack of Results. A team needs to focus on building mutual trust so that everyone is assured they are in the same boat and have nothing to hold back from each other. This sets the foundation for open communication, the flourishing of straight talk, constructive criticism and healthy debate within a team. This is crucial for a team’s continuous betterment and allows everyone to have their say. With the ability to say what they think, team members are more willing to commit to the team’s goals and action plan, even if they disagree with some parts of it, since it is the team’s consensus that drives these decisions. With commitment on the table, it is then possible to ensure accountability in each team member’s work, so ultimately, the achievement of the goal really just depends solely on the team member’s ability and perseverance, which then contributes to the whole team’s ultimate results.

The Four Distinctions

However, over time, we find that while the team’s positive dynamism achieved through this method is incredibly powerful, it can be made better in several orthogonal aspects, which I shall humbly term the 4 distinctions of a great team. They are:

Innate Agility: This is the trait found in teams using agile development methods. They are structured in a way that maximizes the team’s ability to respond to changing project requirements and capacity, through empowering the team to self-organize and optimize for each new challenge or project

Out of the box element: The most effective team harbors and encourages thinking out of the box. Their agile structure, as discussed, allows them to be flexible enough to accept ground breaking, potentially controversial ideas, while their commitment keeps them focused on the goals.

Discipline: This is almost a “must-have” in order to possess agility, but it is important enough to merit its own mention. Discipline here does not mean the strict adherence to hierarchical structure, which is the antithesis of agility and open communication, rather, it is the discipline to follow the agreed upon methodology, the working rhythm and the team’s chosen organizational setup. Managers are often tempted to abuse their authority in small ways to get their pet things done, and subordinates are also often tempted to find shortcuts to save time and efforts. All of these are violations of disciplines, and causes teams to function like a sputtering steam locomotive – moving in jerks and stops.

Inspiration: This is mentioned last but it is truly the most important. Shooting for a lofty goal will help to gel the team together, as well as urging them to discover all of the principles mentioned above, and encouraging them to try hard to work well together. I do not have to say more – but needless to say, it is easy to be inspired, but very hard to bring inspiration to your team. Thus, building and effectively communicating your inspiration for the team is an essential organizational management technique for all managers, whether they are building a sales team, strengthening a development team, or getting the marketing team to work together.

Chief Business Officer at UserTesting

Tien Anh joined UserTesting in 2015 after extensive financial and strategic experiences at OpenView, where he was an investor and advisor to a global portfolio of fast-growing enterprise SaaS companies. Until 2021, he led the Finance, IT, and Business Intelligence team as CFO of UserTesting. He currently leads initiatives for long term growth investments as Chief Business Officer at UserTesting.