The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick M. Lencioni Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $12.00 You Save: $12.95 (52%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $8.84 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Book Review: Priceless guidance on a too common problem
Summary: 5 Stars
I have read enough management books to I hope know the good from the bad - the fact that this book is the first one that after having read it I immediately started to read all over again, makes it for me a unique offering. This is due to:
1. The subject is one which applies in so many work situations that its potentially wide application cannot be denied. The comments made by other reviewers as to recognising the many different types of personalities involved and the five individual issues from their own experiences demonstrates the consistency of the problems being identifiable under many different factual scenarios.
2. The book is written in a very easily assimilated style and precise chapters per point plus the use of a fictional parable style story makes it come alive in a way that rarely happens in most management books.
3. The analysis of the five issues having been gone through is then in a summary end piece restated not only as to their individual relevance but also how they inter-relate and practical methods of addressing each is provided - this hands on solution solving makes the book a very powerful basis for personal decision making using the tools provided.
In part the impact of the book on myself may reflect that I read it as I was starting to grapple with one of the most difficult teams I have had to ever lead in over twenty years of management roles. That this book provided me with a number of options to consider and apply in making progress reflects the true value of the lessons it shares.
Book Review: Whose team are you on?
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one in a series of "leadership fables" in which Patrick Lencioni shares his thoughts about the contemporary business world. His characters are fictitious human beings rather than anthropomorphic animals, such as a tortoise that wins a race against a hare or pigs that lead a revolution to overthrow a tyrant and seize control of his farm.
In this instance, Lencioni focuses on "the rarity" of effective teamwork, noting that "teams, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfunctional." Is teamwork therefore doomed to failure? No. According to Lencioni, productive collaboration can be achieved by certain behaviors that are "at once theoretically uncomplicated, but extremely difficult to put into practice day after day." Moreover, the principles that guide and inform these behaviors "apply to more than just teamwork. I fact, I stumbled upon them somewhat by accident in pursuit of a theory about leadership" that he discusses in an earlier work, The Five Temptations of the CEO (1998).
Here's the fictional situation. A new CEO, 57 year-old Kathryn Petersen, has been hired by the board of DecisionTech to replace its co-founder and former CEO, 37-year-old Jeff Shanley, who continues to head the firm's business development. He was (in effect) forced to step down primarily because, although DecisionTech's 150 employees "seemed to like him well enough personally, they couldn't deny that under his leadership the atmosphere within the company had become increasingly troubling. Backstabbing among the executives had become increasingly troubling."
Almost immediately, it becomes obvious that Kathryn "just didn't seem to fit the DecisionTech culture" and that is a key point for reasons best revealed within Lencioni's narrative. She initiates a series of off-site meetings with her senior managers. Their discussions - and what does (and does not) happen between the off-site meetings - allow Lencioni to dramatize both the five "dysfunctions of a team" to which the title of his book refers and the solutions to each that he recommends. He is a brilliant business thinker but he also possesses the skills of a master raconteur, introducing a cast of characters, conflicts between and among them, and then allowing "rising action" build to a climax (i.e. resolution) also best revealed within the narrative.
As is his custom in each of the other volumes in the series of "leadership fables," Lencioni then provides a "Model" section and supplementary material (Pages 185-224) whose value-added benefits will help his reader to make effective application of the lessons learned from the experiences shared by Kathryn and her DecisionTech associates.
Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Patrick Lencioni's other books (especially his Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team) as well as these sources in which their authors share their insights about writing an effective business narrative: Stephen Denning's The Springboard, and his soon-to-be-published The Secret Language of Leadership, Doug Lipman's Improving Your Storytelling, Annette Simmons' The Story Factor and Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins, and Storytelling in Organizations co-authored by John Seely Brown, Denning, Katarina Groh, and Laurence Prusak.
Book Review: Fable-ous.
Summary: 4 Stars
Lencioni tells a leadership fable about a corporate executive team, then lays out five very practical "dysfunctions" (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results), along with a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings.Book Review: Excellent book
Summary: 5 Stars
I found this book tremendously useful. The fable itself is very clear and insightful, soundly based in business practice. At the end of the book, there is a summary of the dysfunctions which helped me specifically to work with my team afterwards.Book Review: Insightful, practical and inspirational leadership guidance
Summary: 5 Stars
Rather than describe how effective this book consider this: I have shared the book with several of my customers and every one of them has thanked me profusely. Many of them they are using the message/story to inspire change within their own teams and seeing results.
It really is that good.