Patrick Lencioni’s work on what it really means to be a team and the steps to take long-term to drive an overly-polite group of political backstabbers and one-uppers to an interdependent, tightly-knit group of performers is powerful and real. I have seen it work. I have been on such a team.

Like all of Lencioni’s stuff - this book is big mojo disguised as a silly story. A fictional narrative that has a moral at the end, Five Dysfunctions tells of a CEO who takes over a new company only to find that the top level officers are not playing very well with each other. They are too polite, they avoid the difficult topics, they disengage when they should be having a heated conversation. In short, they are afraid to be honest with one another because they don’t trust each other.

This is not a quick fix book. It has some pretty heavy duty concepts in it. I think it would be pretty difficult for a single person in an organization to implement alone. But I have seen this book read by an entire team, and I have experienced increased work productivity, improved relationships, and also some really great staff meetings as a result of it.

Yes, I wrote the word “great” in the same sentence as “meeting” without using the word “not” and without vomiting on myself. We picked a topic, and we discussed it and hashed out all of our fears and disagreements. We were not insulting to one another, but we were brutally honest and unafraid. It was quite amazing, and we did some great work together.

What you will learn in Five Dysfunctions:

• The Five Dysfunctions that prevent good teams from happening
• How to address each of the dysfunctions with its antidote

This is a must-read for managers and their teams. I don’t see how just the boss reading the book is going to help anything.

This is not a first-read sort of book. College kids or individual contributors who do not host meetings are going to find it difficult to process without the first-hand experience of trying to run a successful staff meeting only to have it turn into chaotic nonsense week after week. This book might be a little over the heads of we struggling managers as more basic issues present themselves, but before you schedule a weekly staff meeting, read this, and read Lencioni’s other books.

Executives will love this stuff! This is definitely advanced work on relationships and has some amazing principles inside.

Buy a copy of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable from Amazon.com.