IT Leaders,
A very popular book about leadership is The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, written by Lencioni and Stransky. If you haven’t read it, I think it is one of the best leadership books currently out there. It is also short. It really could be just an article. Over the next few months, I’m going to give you my perspective on this book. As leaders, I think it is important for us to always reflect on ways we can get better.
Management is the organization of work, while leadership is the inspiration to achieve a common goal. A group of individuals is approximately equal to the sum of their talents. A good team is so much more. As leaders, building high-performance teams has to be a priority.
The first dysfunction of a team is lack of trust. Trust is the foundation of our ability to work effectively together. A lack of trust degrades our ability to give and receive feedback. We can’t improve without feedback. We are less likely to lend a helping hand when we are not convinced that help will be reciprocated. We don’t focus on the things we should when we are worried that someone is taking advantage of us. I have a friend who would always remind us to not attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Not only is it more effective to work in an environment where you trust each other, but it is a lot more pleasant too.
We build trust by being transparent and open. We build trust by truly listening and understanding. We build trust by saying what we’ll do and doing what we say. We build trust by accepting negative feedback and acting on it. It takes work and as hard as it is to build trust, it is very easy to lose it.
All of us are members of many teams and we fill different roles in those teams. We should strive to make those teams stronger, and trust is the foundation.