Team Developent

A team can be filled with talented, high-performing leaders and still fall short of its potential. The real test of a cohesive team is not how well each person performs individually, but whether they can bring their strengths together to achieve something none of them could accomplish alone. A talented group of leaders does not automatically become a high-performing leadership team. One of the clearest tests is simple: When priorities compete, do we optimize for our individua

Part 5 - The fourth behavior in a strengths-based exploration of Patrick Lencioni’s Five Cohesive Behaviors When a commitment is missed on your team, who speaks up? If the answer is always the leader, the team may have a bigger opportunity than a missed deadline. Strong teams develop the trust and courage to hold one another accountable through shared ownership of the standards and commitments they have agreed to uphold. Accountability is often associated with difficult conve

Part 4 - The third behavior in a strengths-based exploration of Patrick Lencioni’s Five Cohesive Behaviors Strong leadership teams do not always agree. But they do know how to disagree, decide, and move forward together. In Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage, commitment follows trust and productive conflict. The logic is important: when people trust one another, they are more willing to challenge ideas. When they can engage openly in that deb

Part 3 - The second behavior in a strengths-based exploration of Patrick Lencioni’s Five Cohesive Behaviors What if conflict were not a sign that a team was struggling, but evidence that people cared enough to challenge one another? In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni identifies fear of conflict as a barrier to team effectiveness. His model connects vulnerability-based trust with a team’s ability to engage in productive ideological conflict.

When people are careful about admitting mistakes, reluctant to ask for help, hesitant to challenge an idea, or unsure whether they can rely on one another, a team may not need another process. It may need to strengthen trust. Trust-building is particularly valuable when a team is newly formed, navigating significant change, integrating new leaders or members, experiencing guarded communication, or struggling to have honest conversations. It can also be valuable for an already

What happens when we stop asking, “What is wrong with this team?” and start asking, “What do we want to strengthen?” Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team has given leaders a powerful way to understand what gets in the way of teamwork: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. But Lencioni’s work does not stop at identifying dysfunction. In The Advantage, he places building a cohesive leadersh