The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Pay attention to the title "A Leadership Fable", it indeed is. It starts with a story of a silicon valley company in trouble. The Board decides to bring in a new CEO, a woman who is a mother, teacher and leader. The story of how she takes this company and rebuilds its team is amazing. The people on her team are realistic: the CTO with his notebook open during meetings or the eager Sales head who wants to make another acquisition to add a feather to his cap. She writes down the five things on a dysfunctional team at their first meeting and how they tackle each of this is what the book is all about. Every team lead or manager can relate to this book very well. At some point or another, most of the teams have been dysfunctional and there is some reality there.

What it tries to convey is cohesive teams :
- trust one another (duh!)
- engage in conflict around ideas (conflict is a good thing after all!)
- commit to decisions and plans of actions (yeah... give me a date when it will be done and how it will be done!)
- hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans (there goes your pay cut!)
- focus on the achievement of results (ta-da!)

Seriously, the pros of this books are many : simple and easy read, morals taught through story (well it is a fable!) and a lot of points just stick. The only con I can see is: A lot of effort/pages have been wasted in describing some unnecessary details like someone frowning or biting nails (I am exaggerating here). Sometimes the effect is lost because of this.

Well, easier said than done, try putting all this to practice. May not be as easy as it was for the fictional Kathryn.