Overcoming Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results
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Let’s say you have worked through the first four dysfunctions of a team in a linear, chronological manner, addressing each in turn and achieving a relative level of success.
Your team should now be able to display vulnerability-based trust, to engage in healthy conflict, to commit to team decisions with conviction and to hold their colleagues accountable.
In my work with SMEs, I sometimes see organisations achieving all of the above, and still failing to achieve optimum results. This is usually because they have lost sight of the ultimate measure of a great team: results.
Patrick Lencioni asserts that for teams to overcome dysfunction #5, inattention to results, ‘they have to eliminate ambiguity and interpretation when it comes to results’.
Inattention to Results
An inattention to results often stems from team members focusing on their own individual achievements and status within the company at the expense of collective accomplishments.
This can lead to people acting to achieve individual recognition rather than promoting collective goals. While this behaviour is ego-driven, it can also be the consequence of a team not setting out clear metrics to assess results.
Teams that are not focused on collective results often fall into the following traps:
They lose achievement-oriented team members to other organisations
Staff are distracted from collective goals
They fail to develop, grow and prosper
They lose market share and get swallowed up by the competition
Having clear metrics that measure results in a calculated, observable way allows the team to use their already developed skill of peer-to-peer accountability to help drive one another to collective, not individual goals.
Further to this, leaders need to be aware of the possible distractions to group achievement and have measures in place to avoid such pitfalls.
Self-Oriented Distractions
The reality is that human beings are self-oriented and self-interested by nature. To ensure that the people on your team are genuinely committed to collective results ahead of their own needs and desires, leaders should work to keep their teams focused on cumulative, measurable results. Additionally, leadership groups need to understand the four self-oriented distractions that lead to ‘the kind of individualisation that breaks teams apart’.
Distraction #1: The Ego
Ego is the number one killer when it comes to teamwork. This is because, despite how much we may want our teams to win, on a basic, evolutionary level, everyone is driven to succeed as an individual first and foremost. While you can create frameworks to encourage staff to enjoy the benefits of team accomplishments, it is likely there will still be quiet moments when they think to themselves ‘what about me?’. There is nothing wrong with this unless that little voice starts to grow in volume and assertion until it starts to drown out the cry of the team. This is when collective results get set adrift in the wake of the ego, and the entire ship starts to go under.
Strong teams are teams where no one is genuinely happy unless everyone, in every department, is succeeding. That is the only way to achieve collective results and truly keep your business afloat.
Distractions #2 and #3: Career Progression and Money
Even the most altruistic team members will sometimes have a focus on personal career progression and financial requirements. At the end of the day, everyone has bills to pay.
Great teams understand the validity and necessity of these needs without allowing them to get in the way of achieving collective goals.
The key to this is allowing space for individuals to be open and honest about their needs without making them feel selfish for acknowledging these requirements. This comes back to dysfunction #1. If you have established a culture where colleagues trust one another and are able to be vulnerable, then nobody will take discussing a pay rise or the desire for career advancement as a slight to the team. Contrary to this, a team who has overcome the five dysfunctions will be grateful to the team member for putting the issue on the table, so that is can be dealt with, rather than allowing it to fester and create problems down the track.
Distraction #4: My Department
This is perhaps the most subtle, and consequently, the most dangerous of the distractions to group results. Even the most well-intentioned team members succumb to this distraction, as looking after one’s department is seen as a badge of honour in many ways.
Departmental distraction is driven by people’s tendency to place a higher priority on the goals of the team they lead than on the goals of the organisation as a whole.
Many leaders who prioritise the teams they lead over the groups they are members of are doing so because they like being leaders more than they like being followers. While this is understandable, it is ultimately a recipe for team disaster.
Creating a culture where the focus is on collective team results involves team members prioritising the results of the team over their individual or departmental needs.
As an HR specialist with over 18 years experience, Iolanda Hazell utilises cutting edge management strategies to help SMEs overcome the Five Dysfunctions. Contact Iolanda on 0400 489 743 or email iolanda@infinityhr.com.au to learn how you can transform your business for maximum performance, productivity and profitability.
References:
5 Dysfunctions of a Team: What They are and How to Overcome
Lencioni, Patrick, and Kensuke Okabayashi. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: An Illustrated Leadership Fable. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2008.