Five Dysfunctions: Trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, results
You have the right people, you have a challenging project and a supportive organisational environment, but still there is hesitation. How do you initiate delivery?
J Richard Hackman, professor of social and organisational psychology at Harvard University, shows that developing interpersonal relationships alone has no effect on team performance. Sirota consulting did a massive study that showed that camaraderie, a friendly place to work, was one of three core requirements most people have of their work environment. So how can you resolve these seemingly contrary points?
Here is a model from Patrick Lencione’s “The five dysfunctions of a team”. He has demonstrated the trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, results model very nicely , I sometimes use to help teams build relationships that deliver.
- Trust is the basis of the delivery in teams. Trust is a cornerstone of team effectiveness. Trust is based on predictable and acceptable behaviour. But trust may be developed in teams when members take time to listen and learn more about each other.
- When trust is high in teams, members find it easier to challenge each other’s ideas. This results in conflict. Conflict is prohibitively uncomfortable without relationships based on trust.
- When teams openly challenge each others’ ideas, they not only tend towards better solutions but the process of consensus allows them to develop a high degree of joint commitment to the agreed solutions, goals and actions.
- This commitment provides an environment in which members of the team freely hold each other accountable for delivery. The team in this state can benefit from tools for highlighting accountability.
- When members in teams hold each other accountable they increase their productivity and rate of delivery.
Following this work I will often build an exercise into a strategy or project workshop in which members of the team have an opportunity to build trusting relationships through sharing their stories. I also have exercises to help teams engage in the rough and tumble of high conflict conversations.
