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Welcome to episode 265 of the Non-Anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. And before we get into today's episode, I want to apologize for the sound quality. It's not quite as good as I would like. However, I am traveling and I forgot my good microphone, so I'm having to make do with what I normally take with me just to do Zoom meetings and watch videos. This week's episode comes from a question that came up in our Friedman's Failure of Nerve Book Study when somebody asked if there were any resources analyzing Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team in terms of Family Systems Theory. I had never seen anything, heard anything, a quick Google search, didn't find anything, and so I felt like this would be a good topic for this episode. Before we get started, I I want to remind you that you can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader. Com. You can subscribe to my Two for Tuesday newsletter, and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Now, without further ado, here is episode 265, A Family System's Take on the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team has been for 15 years now, and the subtitle is a Leadership Fable.

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It is an entertaining and actually pretty brief book that helps you to understand how teams can actually perform less than their best. And though the title tends to focus on the negative, on the dysfunction, the book itself actually helps you to understand how effective teams function. The first dysfunction is is probably the most important, and that is the absence of trust. Trust is everything. Trust is believing that those you're working with have good intentions and they are out for the best for the team and the mission of the team. We are marked of teams that trust each other is when people are willing to be vulnerable, when they can admit their mistakes and their weaknesses and they're willing to ask for help. Self-differentiation, by its very nature, involves vulnerability. It is about putting yourself out there. It's about saying what you believe, even if others might disagree. The important point here is that when you do this and when you give others the freedom to disagree, you build trust. When teams lack trust, people often are afraid to ask for help. That is, they feel some type of surrounding togetherness pressure that tells them that they can't be wrong or they can't show weakness.

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Because of this, they may even hide their mistakes, which again shows a lack of differentiation. It's a lack of taking responsibility for self. When you are growing in self-differentiation, you're willing to admit that you've made a mistake, you're willing to own it because you know that everybody makes mistakes, and this is how you learn and grow. Teams that lack trust also find ways to avoid spending time together. They lack emotional connection, and they avoid going deeper. They avoid trying to foster emotional connection. When you think of it, teams that lack trust actually lack both elements of self-differentiation. They lack the ability to self-define, and they lack the ability to foster deeper emotional connection. Of course, as a leader, you can't make other people trust or be trustworthy. Your role is to be a non-anxious presence, to focus on being trustworthy and trusting others, to focus on your own functioning, and that will help cultivate the ability of others to differentiate and to trust. Lencioni's second dysfunction of a team is fear of conflict. He maintains, and I agree, that an effective team is able to have passionate ideological disagreements because they are trying to do what's best for the mission.

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This is how teams learn from mistakes and ultimately end up taking decisive action because they're able to work through all the options, even when different viewpoints disagree to come up with the best next step, to come up with the best decision. To understand the fear of conflict, it's helpful to understand the three types of conflict. The first is task conflict. This is when people disagree about the best way to do something. Then there's values conflict. This is when people have disagreements over what's right and what's wrong. For example, in the corporate world, some people might believe that money is the most important thing, while others might believe that people are the most important thing. The third type of conflict is relationship conflict. This is when two people don't get along because there is some type of reactivity, adaptivity, immaturity that is getting in the way of effective functioning. The important thing to understand here is that when you have task conflict or values conflict, you can still have passionate conflict for the sake of the mission. People can understand that if they say what they believe and give others the freedom to disagree, you have the best chance of making a decision.

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However, problems occur when there is a relationship conflict because then people are taking things personally, they're getting resentful, they're blaming others, and they confuse these things with actually the tasks and the values. As a leader, when you can recognize that there is relationship conflict, you can get people focused back on the tasks and the values. If people get out of line because they are being immature, you can set boundaries and say, This is not acceptable in our discussions. One sign that there is a fear of conflict in a team is when everyone agrees with everyone else. Most or all of the time. This is hurting. This is this togetherness pressure where people are afraid to disagree. They fear that conflict. One way they do this is by actually avoiding the real issues during the meeting. They don't discuss them, and it makes it easier to find agreement. Even worse, team members that fear conflict often talk about other members of the team behind their backs. They are triangling. They are avoiding the discomfort of dealing with somebody directly, of being mature. Instead, they go to somebody else and talk behind the back of their team member.

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One of the best ways to get out of the triangle, whether you are a team leader or a team member, when somebody is triangling you in that way, is to go to the other team member and say, Do you know what so and so said about you? Now, I'm not saying I agree with them, but I thought you should know. This does two things. First of all, it forces the person who is doing the triangling, the person who is fearing conflict and who's not willing to take responsibility for their own discomfort, it forces them to take responsibility for self, to take ownership of their own discomfort. The second thing it does is it makes it less likely that they are going to triangle in the future. That doesn't mean that they are necessarily going to get better at embracing conflict. But one thing you can do, especially if you're the team leader, is to stay emotionally connected to them, even when you just threw them under the bus. If you can be a non-anxious presence and say something like, Hey, I know you might be upset that I shared this with the other person, but I think it's important that we bring these things out in the open.

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This will make us a better team, and I care about you and how we work together. It might not change things immediately, but it can move things in the right direction. Lencioni's third dysfunction of a team is last lack of commitment. Teams that lack commitment may delay making important decisions, and they may miss opportunities because they are afraid to make a decision, because they have a failure of nerve. They sometimes do this by trying to gather more data, which you would call analysis paralysis, or some team members may be afraid to commit because they want to wait to see which way things are going so they can back the winning side. Again, this is a lack of self-differentiation. It's the fear of putting yourself out there and saying what you believe, even if others disagree. Non-anxious leaders, differentiated leaders, mature leaders, don't mind being wrong or being on the losing side. Lack of commitment can also result from a fear of conflict. When there is not vigorous discussion, people may not feel heard and therefore may not be willing to commit. One important role you have as a non-anxious leader is to help foster emotional connection, to help ensure that people feel heard, even if you decide to go in a different direction.

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When that happens, then people don't commit to the direction that is showing their immaturity, that is showing that they are unwilling to take responsibility for self. Mature, self-differentiated team members will do what is called disagree commit. They will say, I disagree with this decision, but I commit to supporting it. The other downside of a lack of commitment is when there is a failure of nerve, when a decision is not made because discussions keep happening and keep happening and there is not any firm action taken. This leads to Lencioni's fourth dysfunction of a team, which is avoidance of team accountability. This is definitely a result of a lack of trust and a fear of conflict because people aren't willing to challenge one another when they are doing things that hurt the team or the team's ability to achieve the mission. Another way that the avoidance of team accountability surfaces is when people don't question others' ideas or actions. Again, this goes back to trust and a fear of conflict, and they don't hold one another to high standards for the team. The more maturity you you have on a team, the more you have self-differentiated members, the less likely people will avoid accountability, the more likely people will speak up.

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The thing about this is that when there is an avoidance of team accountability, people will actually prefer to let the team fail rather than to step up and be their best to put themselves out there, to self-differentiate and to be vulnerable. In last week's episode, I talked about how avoidance experience is worse than the underlying anxiety. This is a perfect example of how this can destroy the effective functioning of a team. The fifth and final dysfunction of a team, according to Patrick Lencioni, is in attention to team objectives. This sometimes means that people are out for themselves. They care about their own interests as opposed to the team's, or they care more about the team looking good than actually achieving anything. This will likely drive those who are mission-oriented crazy and actually might even cause them to want to leave the team. If you are the leader of a team and you see that there is an inattention to team objectives, it's your responsibility to communicate the mission and the objectives clearly along with why this is important. When you see people who are not paying attention to the objectives, maybe they have their own interests first.

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It is your responsibility responsibility to say, Are you in or are you out? What I have seen happen when the leader does this is that the most anxious, the most resistant, the least mature, try to sabotage. They act up and they make things worse at first. But if the leader remains a non-anxious presence, if the leader stands their ground while remaining connected to the resistance, the resistance either get on board or they leave. At the same time, those who have a tendency towards differentiation, towards maturity, will actually grow in their self-differentiation. They will take better stands, they will articulate themselves more clearly, and they will give others the freedom to do the same. To wrap up, I would say that the five dysfunctions of a team help you to see team dynamics, but in the end, you can't change other people. You can only change yourself. So focus on being a non-anxious presence. Focus on being a non-anxious leader, and you will encourage others to do the same. That's it for episode 265. Remember, you can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com. You can find a transcript of this episode at thenonanxiousleader.com/265, and you can always email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. I love to hear from you. I love your comments. I love your ideas for future episodes. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.

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Thank you for listening. If you found this episode helpful, there are two things you can do to help others find this podcast. First, tap the subscribe button on your podcast app, and second, leave a review. I appreciate your help. Finally, you can find more resources as well as subscribe to my blog at thenonanxiousleader. Com. Now, go be yourself.