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whiskeytown 's review for:
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
by Patrick Lencioni
I enjoy Patrick Lencioni's style of using a story with characters, a plot, conflict, etc, to bring the reader through the points he is trying to make, rather than simply laying them out in a traditionally dry style.
I read this book first of the nine books I have read by this author, and it was a pretty good introduction to his style. He tends to recycle characters and places between his narratives, which is amusing, and also fun for someone like me who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where all of his narratives take place.
The book describes five dysfunctions, and their impact on a leadership team (in this case, the C-level executives of a struggling company) that has just brought on a new CEO to try to turn the company around. The new CEO, Kathryn, introduces the leadership team to the five dysfunctions and guides them through making changes to overcome these issues.
In a nutshell, they boil down to these five items:
1) Lack of trust
2) Lack of healthy conflict
3) Lack of clarity in decision making
4) Lack of accountability
5) Lack of focus on results
The narrative does not go into deep detail about how overcoming these issues is implemented, as the story focuses on the leadership team itself during its offsite meetings, but it is easy for the reader to fill in the gaps and imagine how it happened, and to lend credence to the story's conclusion that the CEO was in fact able to turn the company around by fixing these issues.
I think this book would be a useful and entertaining read for any leader, including those who, like myself, are not C-level executives, but ordinary managers trying to improve their effectiveness as a team leader.
I read this book first of the nine books I have read by this author, and it was a pretty good introduction to his style. He tends to recycle characters and places between his narratives, which is amusing, and also fun for someone like me who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where all of his narratives take place.
The book describes five dysfunctions, and their impact on a leadership team (in this case, the C-level executives of a struggling company) that has just brought on a new CEO to try to turn the company around. The new CEO, Kathryn, introduces the leadership team to the five dysfunctions and guides them through making changes to overcome these issues.
In a nutshell, they boil down to these five items:
1) Lack of trust
2) Lack of healthy conflict
3) Lack of clarity in decision making
4) Lack of accountability
5) Lack of focus on results
The narrative does not go into deep detail about how overcoming these issues is implemented, as the story focuses on the leadership team itself during its offsite meetings, but it is easy for the reader to fill in the gaps and imagine how it happened, and to lend credence to the story's conclusion that the CEO was in fact able to turn the company around by fixing these issues.
I think this book would be a useful and entertaining read for any leader, including those who, like myself, are not C-level executives, but ordinary managers trying to improve their effectiveness as a team leader.