From Individual Strengths to Collective Results (Part 6)
Updated: Nov 5
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 individual areas, or for the collective success of the team?
In Patrick Lencioni’s model, the fifth behavior of a cohesive team is achieving collective results. Its opposite, inattention to results, occurs when individual goals and personal status begin to take precedence over collective success. In the model, results sit at the top of a foundation built through trust, productive conflict, commitment, and accountability.
This is particularly important for leadership teams. A group of highly capable functional leaders can each be successful individually while the leadership team itself struggles to deliver what matters most across the organization.
The shift is from“my priorities” to “our results.”
A Strengths-Based Lens on Collective Results
A strengths-based approach does not mean ignoring performance gaps or difficult realities. Rather, it asks a different starting question:
What strengths already exist within this team, and how can we intentionally mobilize them toward our most important shared outcomes?
Research supports the value of this perspective. Meyers, van Woerkom, and Bauwens (2023) studied 136 work teams comprising 925 employees and their leaders. They describe collective strengths use through three dimensions: awareness of individual strengths, credibility or trust in those strengths, and coordination of strengths within the team. Their findings supported a direct positive relationship between collective strengths use and both individual performance and leader-rated team performance.
Gander, Gaitzsch, and Ruch (2020) similarly found that teams in which more positive team roles were represented reported higher performance and teamwork quality, while particular character-strength patterns were also associated with teamwork quality.
The opportunity, then, is not simply to identify everyone's strengths. It is to ask:
What does our team need to accomplish together?
Which strengths can accelerate that outcome?
Where are our strengths complementary?
How will we coordinate them instead of working in functional silos?
What will we hold one another accountable for delivering?
The goal is not a collection of strong individuals. It is strengths in service of a shared result.
When This Becomes Valuable in Team Coaching
In my work as a team coach, I find this focus particularly valuable when a team has done the work to build trust, engage in productive conflict, clarify commitments, and strengthen peer accountability, but still needs to translate those behaviors into measurable collective outcomes.
It can also be valuable when leaders are executing well within their individual areas but are struggling to align around the few outcomes that require leadership-team ownership.
This is where coaching can help turn awareness into coordinated action.
Research on goal setting provides an important bridge. Locke and Latham’s extensive work found that specific, challenging goals are generally associated with better performance than vague goals such as simply asking people to “do their best.” Goals can direct attention and effort, increase persistence, and stimulate the use or development of relevant strategies. They also emphasize that feedback on progress matters, because it allows people to adjust effort or strategy relative to the goal.
Significantly for teams, Locke and Latham also report that when individual goals are aligned with a group goal, group performance can be enhanced, while misaligned personal goals can undermine group performance.
For a team coach, that creates a powerful line of inquiry:
Are individually successful leaders pulling in the same direction?
The Collective Results Map Activity
Here is a short activity leaders can use in a team meeting or coaching conversation.
1. Define the result
Ask the team: “What is one outcome that we must achieve together that no individual function can achieve alone?”
Make it specific enough that everyone will know what success looks like.
2. Map the strengths
Have each person identify one strength they can intentionally contribute to achieving the outcome.
Then ask: “What becomes possible when we combine these strengths?”
The conversation should move beyond describing strengths toward determining how those strengths will actually be deployed.
3. Create the path
Identify three concrete actions that will move the team toward the shared outcome.
For each action, establish:
Owner: Who will lead it?
Support: Which team members and strengths can help?
Evidence: What will show that progress is occurring?
Accountability: When will the team review progress?
4. Close with collective accountability
Finish by asking: “What will we do if one of us prioritizes our functional goal at the expense of this collective result?”
That final question matters. Collective accountability shifts responsibility for results from the team leader alone to the team as a whole.
From Individual Excellence to Collective Impact
The fifth behavior reminds us that cohesion is not the destination. Collective performance is.
Trust makes honest conversation possible. Productive conflict allows the best ideas to emerge. Commitment creates clarity. Accountability protects the agreements the team makes. And a focus on collective results gives all of those behaviors a shared purpose. Lencioni’s framework explicitly positions results above trust, conflict, commitment, and accountability.
From a strengths-based perspective, the question is not simply,“What are we good at?”
It is:
How will we bring the best of who we are, individually and collectively, to the results that matter most?
That is where a collection of strong leaders begins to operate like a truly cohesive team.
References
Gander, F., Gaitzsch, I., & Ruch, W. (2020). The relationships of team role- and character strengths-balance with individual and team-level satisfaction and performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 566222. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.566222.
Lencioni, P. (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. Jossey-Bass. The official Table Group description confirms the model's five layers and defines inattention to results as individual goals and personal status eroding collective success.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717. DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705.
Meyers, M. C., van Woerkom, M., & Bauwens, R. (2023). Stronger together: A multilevel study of collective strengths use and team performance. Journal of Business Research, 159, 113728. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113728.
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