Book Review: The Five Dysfunctions of Teams

Recently, I had the opportunity to read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (on O’Reilly ) and wanted to provide my thoughts on it.

The book follows the story of Kathryn, who took the position of CEO at a dying startup tech company. The company can’t ship software effectively and is having internal problems with its C-Suite leadership team. The team itself is highly dysfunctional and cannot come to a single decision in multiple hours of meetings. Kathryn calls a series of retreats where she helps the team understand their faults and each other, allowing them to better function as a team. The reader follows the journey of this team as they evolve and in the end they are successful in turning the company around.

The main focus of the author is the showing the reader, via Kathryn, the five main dysfunctions of a team he identified. They are: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. The author does a very good job of explaining each and using characters as a mechanism for providing specific examples of these dysfunctions.

Overall I found the book to be a very good read. The chapters are relatively short and easily digestible, making it a good candidate to fill the five minute gap between meetings. The characters resonate with the reader, as you can either see yourself in some facets of the characters or know someone who fits the bill for others. The story flows well, there are no deus ex machina moments, no silver bullets. The team has to fight for their success. The book is an easy read as well, being completable in 3-6 hours if you dedicate time to it.

This book will be especially helpful for those coming in to new teams, or those who think something just feels “off” in their team. Symptoms can include the team being excessively quiet, go with whatever someone in power suggests, or don’t seem to understand each other. Once you complete it, you will see parallels in your own team and can work to address these issues to make your team happier, more productive, and closer knit. I highly suggest picking this book up.

TLDR