Lessons from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni
Many leadership teams look functional on paper.
Clear roles. Smart people. Good intentions.
Yet beneath the surface, things don’t quite work.
Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team remains one of the clearest frameworks for understanding why leadership teams struggle — and what to do about it.
At Orchard Coaching, Connecting Leaders focuses on three essentials: Structure, Right Roles, and Right People.
Trust: The Real Foundation of Structure
Lencioni’s first dysfunction — absence of trust — isn’t about reliability.
It’s about vulnerability-based trust.
Leadership teams without trust:
- Avoid hard conversations
- Mask uncertainty
- Protect their turf
- Hold back honest opinions
This erodes structure. Meetings become performative instead of productive.
Healthy leadership teams create environments where:
- Leaders can admit mistakes
- Disagreement is safe
- Help can be requested without judgement
Trust doesn’t happen automatically. It must be designed, modelled, and reinforced, starting with the CEO.
Right Roles: Clarity Reduces Conflict
One of the most common issues we see in 15–100 person businesses is role confusion at the leadership level.
When roles aren’t clear:
- Accountability becomes personal
- Decisions get revisited
- Frustration builds quietly
Lencioni highlights that healthy conflict requires clarity — about who owns what, and who decides.
Connecting leaders means:
- Defining roles clearly
- Aligning authority with responsibility
- Removing overlap where possible
Clear roles don’t limit leaders — they liberate them to lead well.
Right People: Commitment and Accountability
Strong teams aren’t built on consensus. They’re built on commitment and accountability.
Lencioni reminds us that:
- Healthy debate leads to better decisions
- Clear commitment prevents second-guessing
- Peer accountability is more powerful than hierarchy
Leadership teams fail when:
- Poor behaviour is tolerated
- Standards are uneven
- Performance issues are avoided for harmony’s sake
- Connecting leaders requires courage — especially when the “right person” is no longer in the right role.
When leaders are aligned, clear, and accountable, the rest of the organisation follows.