“You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate your ideas, it doesn’t matter.” Steve Jobs
This amazing quote from the late, great Steve Jobs relates to so much more than ideas. You can have the greatest plan, greatest ambition, greatest goal and greatest of intentions, but if you can’t communicate them, it doesn’t matter.
The often overlooked part of communication is understanding. We think because we say something in a meeting or on a phone call, or write something in an email or a letter that communication has taken place. Our work here is done.
But what if the recipient does not understand your message? Do you think communication has happened, because you said the words/sent the email? Now think back to the workplace and how important effective two way communication is there.
Imagine a workplace where instructions are unclear, feedback is non-existent, and information silos run rampant. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Unfortunately, this scenario is more common than we’d like to admit. Poor communication not only hinders productivity but also erodes trust, fosters negativity, and ultimately, hurts the bottomline.
My interest in communication and productive team working led me to my latest book purchase, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. If you haven’t read this book, I urge you to. Its a leadership fable, so tells the story of a fictional team with a new CEO. If you, like me are one of those people that understands new concepts through the medium of storytelling, where you can relate to real life scenario’s this is definitely the book for you!
Anyway, I digress! The point is that Patrick Lencioni’s model outlines the five key dysfunctions that can prevent a team from achieving its full potential.
1. Absence of Trust: Team members are unwilling to be vulnerable with each other, fearing criticism or judgment. This lack of trust prevents them from building genuine relationships and collaborating effectively.
2. Fear of Conflict: People avoid healthy, productive conflict due to a desire to maintain artificial harmony. This stifles debate and leads to suboptimal decisions.
3. Lack of Commitment: Without buy-in and clear goals, team members are hesitant to fully commit to decisions, leading to inconsistencies and missed opportunities.
4. Avoidance of Accountability: Holding each other accountable for behaviours and performance feels uncomfortable, creating a culture of mediocrity and hindering individual growth.
5. Inattention to Results: Individual egos or personal agendas take precedence over team goals, leading to a focus on individual achievements rather than collective success.
Now the one thing that struck me as I immersed myself into this great tale of team dysfunction is that all these dysfunctions, an absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results are heavily linked to communication.
The bottom of the pyramid and launchpad for all 5 dysfunctions, is the absence of trust.
Level 1 – Absence of trust This relates to the fear of being vulnerable with others, preventing the building of trust within the team. This results in team members being hesitant to ask for help, they conceal weaknesses and jump to conclusions about the intentions of others, hold grudges and dread meetings and interaction with other team members.
To rid a team of this dysfunction foster open communication and a safe environment for people to speak up. Build a team where people help each other and maximise each others strengths.
Without trust, there can be no (productive) conflict, which leads us nicely on to dysfunction number 2.
Level 2 – Fear of conflict The desire to preserve artificial harmony stifles the occurence of productive ideological conflict. This means people go around problems, they do not confront tough issues. A lack of transparency drives confusion among the team. Fear of conflict leads to boring meetings, office politics and a lack of the level of opinions and perspectives that are more likely to lead to organisational success.
No two people are the same. Each person brings their unique perspective, and today’s workplace is more diverse than ever. Teams now benefit from a variety of perspectives due to differences in age, education, gender, race, among other things. These differences can result in constructive workplace conflict, and that’s a positive thing as it drives innovation.
Once again, communication comes into play here. This starts with the confidence to confront problems and issues quickly. Getting input from all team members and minimising politics.
Level 3 – Lack of commitment The lack of clarity or buy-in prevents team members from making decisions they will stick to. A lack of commitment often stems from a lack of engagement. This is fueled by ambiguous direction and priorities and the same conversations over and over with no progress. A lack of engagement also shows up in higher absenteeism.
Once again, communication is the answer here. Communicating with clarity on direction and priorities and getting buy-in and alignment on objectives creates team members that are highly engaged.
Level 4 – Avoidance of accountability The need to avoid interpersonal discomfort prevents team members from holding one another accountable. In the workplace, dysfunctional teams avoid being held accountable for their goals. A lack of accountability creates resentment among team members, encourages apathy, and results in poor performance. Missed deadlines and key deliverables are common, poor performance is tolerated, which combined create an environment of resentment and hopelessness.
Here communication plays a part as effective handling of difficult conversations and performance management results in poor performers being held accountable. It fosters an environment of fairness, with the same standards applying to everyone.
Level 5 – Inattention to results
The pursuit of individual goals and personal status erodes the focus on collective success.
At the pinnacle of Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team pyramid is level 5 – inattention to results. Organisations that have reached the dizzy heights of level 5 will display poor performance and results and employee turnover will be high.
To get to the top of the dysfunctions pyramid, an organisation will:
- Suffer from an absence of trust
- Operate in an environment that is afraid of conflict
- Be unwilling to commit to common goals
- Refuse to be held accountable for actions and lack of achievement
Dysfunctional organisations with all these challenges tend to stagnate, rarely compete with competitors, and lose good employees. Their existing employees focus on individual goals rather than the organsiations objectives and are easily distracted. In other words, the exact opposite of a team.
In contrast, and unsurprisingly, the five behaviours of a cohesive team are:
The journey to a cohesive team starts with, you guessed it, communication. Building trust, at the foundation level requires your team to really know each other. When team members understand more about what motivates and stresses each other, they are able to develop a culture of trust.
With trust in place, productive conflict that makes best use of a diverse team of individuals will drive innovation. With organisational goals clearly communicated and the team feeling motivated and engaged by a common purpose, commitment will follow. Manager’s that take accountability for their own and their team’s performance will deal with any poor performance.
What follows?
No team can function successfully without effective communication.
If you’ve not read Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a team, I highly recommend it! It has even spurred me on to look into accreditation, to add to my toolkit of solutions for struggling teams.
