Combating Team Dysfunction in Education

I recently had the opportunity to read the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.  As many know, I was in the private business world for many years before entering the business of public education.  Occasionally, I still like to read things about how to improve business. I find them relevant to my methods in my classroom.  This particular book was recommended to me by a friend and colleague of mine so I thought I would give it a shot. While this blog and subsequent blogs regarding the same topic aren’t meant to be book reviews, I do feel that I should say that Mr. Lencioni did a great job of weaving a story and business principles into an entertaining and informative read.  As I was going through the work, I found myself applying his business management principles to the world of education. I was taking the team operations and dynamics of an executive team and applying them to the various teams I see on a daily basis. The fact is, with a few minor alterations, Mr. Lencioni’s ideas can bear fruit in our circle just as they can in the private business circle.

The five dysfunctions of a team according to Patrick Lencioni are: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results.  Over the course of the next few articles, we will delve into each as it applies to the world of education, particularly in its management structures and operations. The discussion points are too large to put all in one article and Mr. Lencioni puts them into a nice visual of a pyramid.  The base of his pyramid is the first of the dysfunctions, absence of trust.

It was no accident that Lencioni placed absence of trust at the base of his pyramid.  When trust is absent from a team, then nothing can stand on firm ground. Decision making is nearly impossible because team members don’t feel they can be honest with their teammates for fear of retribution or reprisal.  Some will stay quiet because they worry word will get out of the group about what was said. It is imperative that trust be built at all levels of the educational team. I find that it is rarely in place even at the lowest levels of the pecking order.  Department members don’t trust one another to execute the curriculum. Education teams question whether a teacher can get the EOC scores up and are unwilling to trust them to do it or even have the hard conversations around the topic, instead opting for quiet head nodding.

I was recently in a planning meeting where a point came up regarding some staffing issues.  When a name was proposed to fill the position, there was some clear concern on the faces of several around the table but nobody was willing to speak up.  When prodded to answer for the facial expressions, cryptic and vague responses were given. Later most of the people around the table came to me with individual concerns about filling the position, none of them especially earth shattering.  If we were all comfortable enough to share in the group what was shared with me in private, the conversation would have been ten minutes long and solved in the meeting instead of being an ongoing issue until the next meeting two weeks later.  When asked why the concerns weren’t voiced in the meeting, the response was simple…they didn’t trust each other enough to air it out with the group. This is the definition of absence of trust.

Now this begs the question of course, how do we build a team that can trust one another?  The first step is honesty. Honestly sharing as a group why there is an absence of trust is a great place to start albeit uncomfortable.  But there will always be a little discomfort when trying to create a stellar team. The understanding of our humanness and forgiveness for it is the next step.  None of us is perfect or invulnerable. Admitting vulnerability and the acceptance of help and opinion will take the team far toward instilling feelings of trust. The final step is recognizing individual strengths and weaknesses within the group.  Once those strengths and weaknesses are recognized and understood within the team, members will start helping one another where needed. Particularly educators want to be helpful to others. Now that the steps for correction have been implemented, the absence of trust will be replaced with trust thus the dysfunction turns into the function.  With the building of trust, the foundation of the pyramid becomes stronger and the team can be ready to move on to the next level of dysfunction. Our goal is to turn the dysfunctions of each level of the pyramid into functions on our way to a productive and effective team.