Summer 2003 35

Virtually every executive staff I’ve ever come across believes in teamwork. Atleast they say they do. Sadly, a scarce few of them make teamwork a reality intheir organizations; in fact, they often end up creating environments where

political infighting and departmental silos are the norm. And yet they continue totout their belief in teamwork, as if that alone will somehow make it magically appear.I have found that only a small minority of companies truly understand and embraceteamwork, even though, according to their Web sites, more than one in three of theFortune 500 publicly declare it to be a core value.

How can this be? How can intelligent, well-meaning executives who supposedly setout to foster cooperation and collaboration among their peers be left with organiza-tional dynamics that are anything but team-oriented? And why do they go on pro-moting a concept they are so often unable to deliver?

Well, it’s not because they’re secretly plotting to undermine teamwork among theirpeers.That would actually be easier to address.The problem is more straightforward—and more difficult to overcome. Most groups of executives fail to become cohesiveteams because they drastically underestimate both the power teamwork ultimatelyunleashes and the painful steps required to make teamwork a reality. But before ex-ploring those steps, it is important to understand how the compulsory, politically cor-rect nature of teamwork makes all of this more difficult.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, teamwork is not a virtue in itself. It is merely a stra-tegic choice, not unlike adopting a specific sales model or a financial strategy. And cer-tainly,when properly understood and implemented, it is a powerful and beneficial tool.Unfortunately, management theorists and human resources professionals have madeteamwork unconditionally desirable, something akin to being a good corporate citizen.

B Y P A T R I C K M . L E N C I O N I

The Trouble with

Teamwork

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As a result, many of today’s leaders champion teamworkreflexively without really understanding what it entails.Pump them full of truth serum and ask them why, andthey’ll tell you they feel like they have to promote team-work, that anything less would be politically, socially,and organizationally incorrect.“What choice do I have?Imagine me standing up in front of a group of em-ployees and saying that teamwork isn’treally all that important here.”

Ironically, that would be better than whatmany—if not most—leaders do.By preachingteamwork and not demanding that their peo-ple live it, they are creating two big problems.

First, they are inducing a collective sense ofhypocrisy among their staff members, whofeel that teamwork has devolved into noth-ing more than an empty slogan. Second,and more dangerous still, they are confusingthose staff members about how to act inthe best interest of the company, so theywind up trying at once to be pragmaticallyself-interested and ideologically selfless.Thecombination of these factors evokes in-evitable and sometimes paralyzing feelingsof dissonance and guilt.

Executives must understand that there is analternative to teamwork, and it is actuallymore effective than being a faux team.Jeffrey Katzenbach, author of The Wisdom ofTeams, calls it a “working group,” a groupof executives who agree to work indepen-dently with few expectations for collaboration.The ad-vantage of a working group is clarity; members knowexactly what they can, and more important, cannot ex-pect of one another, and so they focus on how to ac-complish goals without the distractions and costs thatteamwork inevitably presents. (For guidance on decid-

ing whether teamwork is right for your organization,see sidebar,“To Be or Not to Be a Team.”)

Of course, none of this is to say that teamwork is not aworthy goal. There is no disputing that it is uniquelypowerful, enabling groups of people to achieve morecollectively than they could have imagined doing apart.

However, the requirements of real team-work cannot be underestimated.

The fact is,building a leadership team is hard.It demands substantial behavioral changesfrom people who are strong-willed and oftenset in their ways,having already accomplishedgreat things in their careers.What follows isa realistic description of what a group of ex-ecutives must be ready to do if they under-take the nontrivial task of becoming a team,something that is not necessarily right forevery group of leaders.

Vulnerability-Based Trust

The first and most important step inbuilding a cohesive and functional team

is the establishment of trust.But not just anykind of trust.Teamwork must be built upona solid foundation of vulnerability-basedtrust.

This means that members of a cohesive, func-tional team must learn to comfortably andquickly acknowledge, without provocation,their mistakes,weaknesses, failures, and needs

for help. They must also readily recognize the strengthsof others, even when those strengths exceed their own.

In theory—or kindergarten—this does not seem terri-bly difficult. But when a leader is faced with a roomfulof accomplished, proud, and talented staff members, get-

Patrick M. Lencioni ispresident of The TableGroup, a managementconsulting and execu-tive coaching firm inthe San Francisco

area. He is the authorof three best-sellingbooks, “The FiveDysfunctions of aTeam,”“The FourObsessions of an

Extraordinary Ex-ecutive,” and “The Five Temptations of a CEO.” He has

worked with hundredsof executive teams andCEOs to strengthen

teamwork.�

Summer 2003 37

ting them to let their guard down and risk loss of posi-tional power is an extremely difficult challenge.And theonly way to initiate it is for the leader to go first.

Showing vulnerability is unnatural for many leaders,whowere raised to project strength and confidence in theface of difficulty. And while that is certainly a noble be-havior in many circumstances, it must be tempered when

it comes to demonstrating vulnerability-based trust tohesitant team members who need their leader to stripnaked and dive into the cold water first. Of course, thisrequires that a leader be confident enough, ironically, toadmit to frailties and make it easy for others to followsuit. One particular CEO I worked with failed to buildtrust among his team and watched the company falteras a result. As it turns out, a big contributing factor was

To Be or Not to BeaTeam

So how do well-intentioned lead-ers go about deciding if teamworkis right for their staffs? They canstart by recognizing that organiza-tional structure is not nearly as im-portant as behavioral willingness.

Most theorists will call for team-work in organizations that arestructured functionally, but may notdo so for those that are organizeddivisionally or geographically.

In other words, if the work can beorganized in departments that op-erate largely independently (withregional territories, distinct prod-uct divisions, or separate subsid-iaries), then the executives at thetop can follow suit and function aswhat Jeffrey Katzenbach, author ofThe Wisdom of Teams, describes as“working units.”These are groupsmade up of individuals who,

though friendly and cooperative attimes, are not expected to makewilling sacrifices to one another toachieve common goals that lead to joint rewards.

However, when executives run anorganization that is made up of de-partments that have structuralinterdependencies, teamwork isusually presented as the only pos-sible approach for the leadershipgroup. But although this is a soundand reasonable theory when allother factors are considered equal,it is not necessarily advisable in themessy and fallible world of realhuman beings. Before decidingthat teamwork is the answer, askthese questions of yourself andyour fellow team members.

• Can we keep our egos in check?

• Are we capable of admitting to mistakes, weaknesses, insuffi-cient knowledge?

• Can we speak up openly whenwe disagree?

• Will we confront behavioralproblems directly?

• Can we put the success of the team or organization overour own?

If the answer to one or more ofthese questions is “probably not,”then a group of executives shouldthink twice about declaring them-selves a team.Why? Because morethan structure, it is the willingnessof executives to change behav-ior—starting with the leader ofthe organization—that should de-termine whether teamwork is theright answer.

Leader to Leader38

his inability to model vulnerability-based trust. As oneof the executives who reported to him later explainedto me, “No one on the team was ever allowed to besmarter than him in any area because he was the CEO.”As a result, team members would not open up to oneanother and admit their own weaknesses or mistakes.

What exactly does vulnerability-based trust look likein practice? It is evident among team members whosay things to one another like “I screwed up,” “I waswrong,”“I need help,”“I’m sorry,” and “You’re betterthan I am at this.” Most important, they only make oneof these statements when theymean it, and especially whenthey really don’t want to.

If all this sounds like mother-hood and apple pie, understandthat there is a very practical rea-son why vulnerability-basedtrust is indispensable. Withoutit, a team will not, and probablyshould not, engage in unfilteredproductive conflict.

Healthy Conflict

One of the greatest inhibi-tors of teamwork among executive teams is the

fear of conflict, which stems from two separate con-cerns. On one hand, many executives go to greatlengths to avoid conflict among their teams becausethey worry that they will lose control of the group andthat someone will have their pride damaged in theprocess. Others do so because they see conflict as awaste of time.They prefer to cut meetings and discus-sions short by jumping to the decision that they be-lieve will ultimately be adopted anyway, leaving moretime for implementation and what they think of as“real work.”

Whatever the case, CEOs who go to great lengths toavoid conflict often do so believing that they are strength-ening their teams by avoiding destructive disagreement.This is ironic, because what they are really doing is sti-fling productive conflict and pushing important issuesthat need to be resolved under the carpet where they willfester. Eventually, those unresolved issues transform intouglier and more personal discord when executives growfrustrated at what they perceive to be repeated problems.

What CEOs and their teams must do is learn to identifyartificial harmony when they see it, and incite produc-

tive conflict in its place.This is amessy process, one that takestime to master. But there is noavoiding it, because to do somakes it next to impossible for ateam to make real commitment.

UnwaveringCommitment

To become a cohesive team,a group of leaders must

learn to commit to decisionswhen there is less than perfectinformation available, and whenno natural consensus develops.

And because perfect information and natural consensusrarely exist, the ability to commit becomes one of themost critical behaviors of a team.

But teams cannot learn to do this if they are not in thepractice of engaging in productive and unguarded con-flict.That’s because it is only after team members pas-sionately and unguardedly debate with one another andspeak their minds that the leader can feel confident ofmaking a decision with the full benefit of the collectivewisdom of the group. A simple example might helpillustrate the costs of failing to truly commit.

�

Becoming a team

is not necessarily

right for every

group of leaders.�

Summer 2003 39

The CEO of a struggling pharmaceutical company de-cided to eliminate business and first class travel to cutcosts. Everyone around the table nodded their heads inagreement, but within weeks, it became apparent thatonly half the room had really committed to the deci-sion. The others merely decided not to challenge thedecision, but rather to ignore it.This created its own setof destructive conflict when angry employees from dif-ferent departments traveled together and found them-selves heading to different parts of the airplane.Needlessto say, the travel policy was on the agenda again at thenext meeting, wasting important time that should havebeen spent righting the com-pany’s financial situation.

Teams that fail to disagree andexchange unfiltered opinions arethe ones that find themselves re-visiting the same issues againand again. All this is ironic, be-cause the teams that appear toan outside observer to be themost dysfunctional (the arguers)are usually the ones that can ar-rive at and stick with a difficultdecision.

It’s worth repeating here thatcommitment and conflict are not possible without trust.If team members are concerned about protecting them-selves from their peers, they will not be able to disagreeand commit. And that presents its own set of problems,not the least of which is the unwillingness to hold oneanother accountable.

Unapologetic Accountability

Great teams do not wait for the leader to remindmembers when they are not pulling their weight.

Because there is no lack of clarity about what they have

committed to do, they are comfortable calling one an-other on actions and behaviors that don’t contribute tothe likelihood of success. Less effective teams typicallyresort to reporting unacceptable behavior to the leaderof the group,or worse yet, to back-channel gossip.Thesebehaviors are not only destructive to the morale of theteam, they are inefficient and allow easily addressableissues to live longer than should be allowed.

Don’t let the simplicity of accountability hide the diffi-culty of making it a reality. It is not easy to teach strongleaders on a team to confront their peers about behav-

ioral issues that hurt the team.But when the goals of the teamhave been clearly delineated, thebehaviors that jeopardize thembecome easier to call out.

Collective Orientationto Results

The ultimate goal of theteam, and the only real

scorecard for measuring its suc-cess, is the achievement of tan-gible collective outcomes. Andwhile most executive teams arecertainly populated with lead-

ers who are driven to succeed, all too often the resultsthey focus on are individual or departmental. Once theinevitable moment of truth comes, when executivesmust choose between the success of the entire teamand their own, many are unable to resist the instinct tolook out for themselves.This is understandable, but it isdeadly to a team.

Leaders committed to building a team must have zerotolerance for individually focused behavior.This is eas-ier said than done when one considers the size of theegos assembled on a given leadership team. Which is

�

Identify artificial

harmony; incite

productive conflict

in its place.�

Leader to Leader40

perhaps why a leader trying to assemble a truly cohe-sive team would do well to select team members withsmall ones.

If all of this sounds obvious, that’s because it is. Theproblem with teamwork is not that it is difficult tounderstand, but rather that it is extremely difficult to achieve when the people involved are strong-willed,

independently successful leaders.The point here is notthat teamwork is not worth the trouble, but rather thatits rewards are both rare and costly. And as for thoseleaders who don’t have the courage to force teammembers to step up to the requirements of teamwork(see Figure 1, above), they would be wiser to avoid theconcept altogether. Of course, that would require a dif-ferent kind of courage; the courage not to be a team. �

FIGURE 1. THE ROLE OF THE LEADER IN BUILDING TEAMS

Inattention toRESULTS

Avoidance ofACCOUNTABILITY

Lack ofCOMMITMENT

Fear ofCONFLICT

Absence ofTRUST

The Role of the Leader

Focus on outcomes.

Confront difficult issues.

Force clarity and closure.

Demand debate.

Be human.

The Five Dysfunctions of Teams