Conquering each of Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for overcoming the next.

• Trust must be present for a team to engage in productive conflict, but it does not guarantee they will do so.
• Conflict is essential for achieving clarity and buy-in, but it does not automatically result in commitment.
• Commitment is required for team members to hold each other accountable, but commitment alone does not ensure they will.
• Accountability is non-negotiable if teams want to achieve their objectives, but neither accountability nor any of the other underlying behaviors are enough.

We have one more step to go. Like each necessary behavior before, its preconditions make it possible, but they do not make it inevitable. It must be actively chosen.

Teams exist to solve problems and achieve specific goals, and none of this matters if they fail to focus on Results.

Achieving the results we want is why we’re here.

The Fifth Dysfunction

The fifth and final dysfunction of a team is inattention to results.

But if the team members are not focused on results, what are they focused on instead?

Without discipline, persistence, and a solid foundation in the first four behaviors, the attention of even otherwise high-functioning teams tends to drift from the collective results they set out to achieve to their own needs.

This is why accountability is a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for maintaining focus on results.

If their teammates do not hold them accountable, team members will prioritize their own advancement, comfort, interests, or needs over the collective goals of the team.

Why? Because they are human. It’s just normal, and it’s why high-performing teams are not normal.

Lencioni proposes that this natural drift comes in two flavors: team status, and individual status.

Team Status

We are social creatures, and it feels good to be part of a group. It’s easy to let being part of the team become an end unto itself.

Sure, given a choice between bad results and good, good results are always desirable. But they might not be enough to make sacrifices, be inconvenienced, or deprioritize personal needs.

Settling for a place on the team can be particularly seductive if the organization has an altruistic or inspiring mission—many non-profits, for example. Just being part of the well-intended effort might feel like enough for some.

Likewise, members of prestigious teams can be susceptible to this trap.

People are hard-wired for hierarchy. We like status, and being part of an exclusive group can satisfy that need, making it easy to overlook or rationalize the fact that nothing is actually getting accomplished.

Individual Status

The second temptation that draws team members’ attention away from results is personal advancement.

It is as natural as the first, for similar reasons. Absent a clearly defined objective, and/or without sufficient accountability, it is normal for our focus to shift toward our own goals and advancement.

Self-preservation and attending to our own needs is as normal as it gets for any species, not just Homo sapiens.

A high-performing team finds ways to make the group's collective results more important than individual goals.

Consequences

Teams that fail to focus on results, and settle for merely surviving or existing—even if that existence is generally positive—eventually suffer consequences that will make things… not so positive.

The consequences of inattention to results are:

• Stagnation and failure to grow (which means eventually becoming obsolete)
• Rarely outperforming the competition; missing important opportunities
• Loss of team members who are highly motivated to achieve real results
• Becoming easily distracted
• Members who spend their time working toward their own goals

This is not unusual. Unfortunately it’s the default state. But it doesn’t have to be.

What We Can Do Instead

To achieve meaningful and important results, one must first define clearly what that result is.

This sounds obvious, but more often than not, the desired result is not crystal clear, or not understood the same way by every member of the team.

We must define what winning looks like.

The goal must be clear and visible. The goal is the reason we worked so hard to build trust and struggle through conflict.

It must be the one thing to which the team is truly committed. Working toward it must be the standard to which team members hold each other accountable.

It’s why the team exists. If they are not passionate, determined, even a little desperate to achieve the result, they probably won’t.

“We’ll do our best” is what we say when we're not really committed to the result.

"We'll do our best" is how we unconsciously—and sometimes consciously—prepare ourselves for failure.

Results-Based Rewards

To focus a team on results, success or failure must be measured against that result. Aligning rewards with the team’s results is one way to do that.

This is easy to say, and hard to do. On the topic of rewards and incentives, it is crucial to remember one thing:

Incentives are a tricky business.

Not everyone is motivated by money or recognition. Well-intended incentives often have unintended consequences, sometimes resulting in the exact opposite of motivation.

How you get there will depend on your team, but collective results are just that. The team must succeed or fail as one.

Designing effective incentives is a topic well beyond the scope of today’s newsletter, but it is a skill leaders must master.

The Role of the Leader

Leaders set the tone for whether results matter or not.

If team members sense that the leader values something other than results, they will take that as permission to do the same.

Hopefully if you have paid any attention to what Retexo is all about, you understand that this is not a way of saying the ends justify any means. 

Quite the opposite.

Leading teams to extraordinary results requires a deep understanding of self and others. It requires emotional intelligence.

It demands that you embrace and honor each individual human being that makes up this thing we call a team.

It asks us to sacrifice our own needs and comfort for the ultimate result, a lifetime of learning and growth.

Pulling It All Together

The Five Behaviors of a High-Performing Team—Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and Results—are not complicated. This does not mean they are easy.

We’ll end with Lencioni’s words:

…the reality remains that teamwork comes down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence.

Ironically, teams succeed because they are exceedingly human. By acknowledging the imperfections of their humanity, members of functional teams overcome the natural tendencies that make trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and a focus on results so elusive.

Don’t overcomplicate it. But do commit to working at it.

These five behaviors are not an intervention. They are a practice. They are a discipline. They are a way of being. The time to start is now.

We can help with a Five Behaviors assessment and workshop.

Until next week,

Greg