5 Common Team Dysfunctions (and How the 5 Core Scrum Values Directly Address Them)
I have recently been tasked with establishing a new discipline within IT at a multi-billion dollar company. This particular discipline is nothing new in the IT landscape, although it is experiencing a transformation as a result of increased automation, use of business intelligence tools and metrics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The discipline? Software Quality Assurance (or Quality Engineering). What started as a small IT team has grown exponentially after 20-some-odd mergers and acquisitions. The need is stark; the canvas blank. The tasks? Defining the scope, scale, speed, and timeline of this initiative. Building a team. Evaluating vendor relationships and managed service providers. Establishing a Center of Excellence and every mantra, theory, and philosophy that drives the creation of best practices and playbooks. Evaluating and selecting tool-sets. And then integrating all of this change back into an existing-but-transforming SDLC. All of this is no small task, but one aspect stands out to me above all else: the formation of the team. This rings true whether the individuals that make up the team are FTEs or contractors; outsourced, in-sourced, or co-managed; onshore, nearshore, or offshore. A highly performing, functional team is critical to the success of any initiative. So what are some of the common dysfunctions in a team, and how can we address them?
Five Dysfunctions Found in Teams
In doing research around accelerating team development, I encountered a presentation centered on The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. In full disclosure, I have not yet managed to read this book in its entirety, but it has made its way onto my to-read list. None-the-less, I find the five dysfunctions that Lencioni delineates both fascinating as well as able to be readily addressed by the five core values held in esteem by all practicing Scrum teams. Lencioni identifies the five dysfunctions as follows:
Dysfunction #1: Absence of Trust
Lencioni purports that:
The fear of being vulnerable with team members prevents the building of trust within the team. Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they are doing it because they care about the team.
The concept of trust among team members boils down to vulnerability. It is “the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group.” Teams that lack trust waste inordinate amounts of time and energy managing behaviors and interactions within the group. Lencioni gives the following characteristics to look for in a team:
Members of a team with an absence of trust
- Conceal their weaknesses and mistakes from one another
- Hesitate to ask for help or provide constructive feedback
- Hesitate to offer help outside their own areas of responsibility
- Jump to conclusions about the intentions and aptitudes of others without attempting to clarify them
- Fail to recognize and tap into one another’s skills and experiences
- Hold grudges
- Dread meetings and find reasons to avoid spending time together
Members of trusting teams
- Admit weakness and mistakes
- Ask for help
- Accept questions and input about their areas of responsibility
- Give one another the benefit of the doubt before arriving at a negative conclusion
- Take risks in offering feedback and assistance
- Appreciate and tap into one another’s skills and experiences
- Focus time and energy on important issues, not politics
- Offer and accept apologies without hesitation
- Look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group
Dysfunction #2: Fear of Conflict
In the book, Lencioni posits that:
It is the desire to preserve artificial harmony that stifles the occurrence of productive ideological conflict.
In groups exhibiting this dysfunction, it is impossible to hash out an idea based on its merit alone. It becomes essential to delineate between conceptual conflicts and personal ones. Good conflict avoids politics, insults, and personal comments. Instead, it focuses on passionate, even emotional debate over concepts and ideas. Healthy conflict is the balance between artificial and superficial harmony and mean-spirited personal attacks. Truly great teams do not hold back with one another. These teams are willing to air dirty laundry, admit mistakes and weaknesses, and voice their concerns all without fear of reprisal. Lencioni states: “It’s as simple as this. When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board.” Feathers may be ruffled in the course of heated discussion, but this is often the only way to arrive at the best decisions in moving forward.
Lencioni says:
Teams that fear conflict
- Have boring meetings
- Create environments where back-channel politics and personal attacks thrive
- Ignore controversial topics that are critical to team success
- Fail to tap into all the opinions and perspectives of team members
- Waste time and energy with posturing and interpersonal risk management
Teams that actively engage in conflict
- Have lively, interesting meetings
- Extract and exploit the ideas of all team members
- Solve real problems quickly
- Minimize politics
- Put critical topics on the table for discussion
Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment
The lack of clarity or buy-in prevents team members from making decisions that they will commit to.
Commitment, or the lack-thereof, builds on the first two dysfunctions mentioned above. For a team to produce productive conflict, there must first be trust. Similarly, it is the existence of productive conflict (and the corresponding resolution that follows) that enables team members to commit with clarity and buy-in. Seeking consensus is a natural inclination but typically, if not always, a big mistake. Why do teams seek consensus? Is it for CYA reasons? Does it arise out of analysis paralysis? Some teams simply want to get everyone’s stated, conforming view on record so that blame can be diffused if something goes wrong. Truly great teams accept that consensus is virtually impossible; that dissenting opinions (productive conflict) add value to the team’s direction. These teams take input, work through the productive conflict, and commit to a course of action, even if there is uncertainty involved. Commitment is often the act of buying in even if you don’t agree with the decision. This is different than tacit consensus. Lencioni states that most reasonable people don’t have to get their way in a discussion; they just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to. When people do not feel heard, if a decision fails, will go around saying, “I told you so.” This is politics at its worst. This is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.
Lencioni gives the following characteristics to look for:
A team that fails to commit
- Creates ambiguity among the team about direction and priorities
- Watches windows of opportunity close due to excessive analysis and unnecessary delay
- Breeds lack of confidence and fear of failure
- Revisits discussions and decisions again and again
- Encourages second-guessing among team members
A team that commits
- Creates clarity around direction and priorities
- Aligns the entire team around common objectives
- Develops an ability to learn from mistakes
- Takes advantage of opportunities before competitors do
- Moves forward without hesitation
- Changes direction without hesitation or guilt
Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability
The need to avoid interpersonal discomfort prevents team members from holding one another accountable.
Once there is a clear sense of what is expected (trust allows for productive conflict; conflict and conflict resolution allows for buy-in and commitment), teammates are enabled to hold one another accountable. They have to be able to call peers out on performance or behaviors that may harm or hold-back the team. Holding back on accountability out of a fear of discomfort has the potential to spiral negatively and can create more resentment between team members. This typically doesn’t happen immediately but creeps in over time as standards and expectations slowly decline.
Once we achieve clarity and buy-in, it is then that we have to hold each other accountable for what it is we have signed up to do. This is often where team operating agreements come into play.
Lencioni gives the following characteristics to look for:
A team that avoids accountability
- Creates resentment among team members who have different standards of performance
- Encourages mediocrity
- Misses deadlines and key deliverables
- Places an undue burden on the team leader as the sole source of discipline
A team that holds one another accountable
- Ensures that poor performers feel pressure to improve
- Identifies potential problems quickly by questioning one another’s approaches without hesitation
- Establishes respect among team members who are held to the same high standards
- Avoids excessive bureaucracy around performance management and corrective action
Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results
The pursuit of individual goals and personal status erodes the focus on collective success.
Without accountability, people will gravitate toward their own personal goals at the expense of the collective goals of the team. This is easily identifiable in professional sports. A point guard on the Oklahoma City Thunder may often be thrilled that he earned a triple-double despite his team losing and failing to go deep in the playoffs, for instance. When setting targets and goals and seeking to hold each other accountable, the team should focus on objective rather than subjective goals. Lencioni says teams should “Make the results that we need to achieve so clear that no one would even consider doing something purely to enhance his or her individual status or ego.”
Lencioni gives the following characteristics to look for:
A team that is not focused on results
- Stagnates/fails to grow
- Rarely defeats competitors
- Loses achievement-oriented employees
- Encourages team members to focus on their own careers and individual goals
- Is easily distracted
A team that is collective results-focused
- Retains achievement-oriented employees
- Minimizes individualistic behavior
- Enjoys success and suffers failure acutely
- Benefits from individuals who subjugate their own goals/interests for the good of the team
- Avoids distractions
Understanding Why Dysfunctions Exist
In order to understand why teams typically struggle with these dysfunctions, I find it useful to view them through the lens of Bruce Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development. Tuckman first proposed his now-famous forming-storming-norming-performing model of group development in 1965. Tuckman posited:
All of these phases are necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, face up to challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results.
Bruce Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development
Expressed in the most basic terms, Tuckman’s Forming phase is typically viewed through the prism of ‘Group Purpose’, that is: What is needed to be done, and how will this be accomplished? Why are we here? The team members are characterized by civility, tentativeness, and politeness.
Similarly expressed, the Storming phase centers on actionable issues and begins the pursuit of group goals. Team members might be characterized as participating in arguments and disagreements, posture-taking, clique-forming, and feelings of turmoil, passion, and agitation.
Tuckman’s Norming phase can be described as centering on the benchmarks which drive team development. These take into account both the mission (destination) and the resources (time, people, money). Team members are described as sharing a common destiny, a shared mission, whereby each and every member shares in the benefits and costs associated with the success of the team. Teams begin to coalesce, work cooperatively, and develop ground rules by which they start to abide.
Finally, the Performing phase can be summarized and typified by a motivated and knowledgeable team whose members are competent, autonomous, and able to handle the decision-making process without supervision. Teams often reach unexpectedly high levels of success by focusing on common goals. Dissent is expected, allowed, and even encouraged as long as it is channeled through a means acceptable to the team in accordance to the team’s norms.
Looking at Team Dysfunctions as it Relates to a Team’s Progression through Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development
To understand why a team is experiencing some form of dysfunction, we should take a step back and evaluate that team in an attempt to understand which of the phases of Bruce Tuckman’s model that team is modeling. In a later article, we will dive deeper, examining Myers Briggs personality type indicators as well as cybernetic information processing approaches (discovered utilizing tactics like an Input/Output Processing Template profile). For now, however, we can attempt to understand why a team is exhibiting a dysfunction by understanding its maturation through Tuckman’s development model.
Dysfunction #1: Absence of Trust — The Forming and Storming Phases
A team exhibiting an absence of trust is likely just starting out in the Forming phase or has progressed or is stuck in the Storming phase. According to Tuckman, people are initially overtly polite, keeping thoughts to themselves, having little to no trust while in the Forming phase. Situational leadership theories tend toward styles involving directing/telling in which the leader assumes initial responsibility, reflecting the members low levels of trust. Lencioni focuses on vulnerability-based trust. His approach is to create an environment where members can admit weaknesses, accept input, and offer apologies.
As teams mature into the Storming phase, trust begins to form as cliques form, but that trust is initially absent from a whole-team standpoint.
Dysfunction #2: Fear of Conflict — The Forming and Storming Phases
Tuckman’s Forming phase is typified by a fear of conflict. It is not until a team has progressed to the Storming phase that some team members begin to shed this inhibition and begin posturing or taking self-interested stances (while yet others hang on to this fear of conflict in an effort to keep the peace).
Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment — The Storming Phase
The Norming phase is typified by team values and agreements and the commitment to those values and agreements, so it only follows that a team exhibiting a lack of commitment is likely still ‘stuck’ in the Storming phase. This is a team that lacks buy-in from all team members.
Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability — The Storming and Norming Phases
In the Norming phase, general operational consensus has been achieved, even if dissenting viewpoints exist and have been expressed. A team exhibiting an avoidance of accountability may be straddling the line between Storming and Norming. Team members may pay lip service to agreed upon norms but internally may lack trust or fear conflict, resulting in unexpressed dissenting viewpoints and a lack of buy-in with agreed-upon norms.
Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results — The Performing and Adjourning Phases
I didn’t specifically cover Tuckman’s Adjourning phase earlier, in part because it was not part of Tuckman’s original model set forth in 1965. Tuckman did, however, add this fifth phase approximately 10 years later. A team exhibiting Inattention to Results is likely a Performing team (or previously performing team) that has slowly regressed into something less than what we described earlier as “unexpected levels of high performance”. There are leadership theories that suggest reacting to this by means of reforming or renorming a group, but caught or identified early and proactively enough this dysfunction can be mitigated by recognizing the existence of the Adjourning phase, which is summarized most succinctly as “celebrating a team’s achievements”. Put simply, setting clear goals, celebrating small achievements, and recognizing efforts made can keep a team focused on results.
How the 5 Core Scrum Values Directly Address the 5 Common Dysfunctions
I have long professed that I didn’t particularly care whether a team purported to practice a Waterfall-derived methodology or an Agile-based one. Regardless of where an organization falls on that ideological spectrum, I firmly believe that an organization whose teams profess and practice the 5 core Scrum values throughout every ceremony, meeting, and activity will achieve greater success than one whose teams fail to do so. I have often claimed that I was SDLC-methodology-agnostic. Pepsi? Coke? I don’t care, they’re both colas able to be enjoyed thoroughly. I think that’s changing.
Adopting an Agile methodology, particularly a Scrum-based one, is all but inevitable in almost all cases with regards to software development. Technology is changing ever-more rapidly. Release cycles are accelerating. Automation is everywhere. Machine learning and Artificial intelligence are here and helping us employ business intelligence tools to backfeed into an ever-faster development cycle. The DevOps reality is tacitly and implicitly drawing us all into a more iterative, agile methodology whether we willfully embrace it or not. But how much more-so should we be looking toward a methodology whose very vision sets out to directly answer the most common dysfunctions experienced by all teams?
Although not originally included as part of Scrum officially, these values have been embraced warmly by the Scrum community for some time, and were officially added to the Scrum guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland in a July 2016 Update to the Scrum Guide.
The Five Core Scrum Values
Take a moment and reflect on those five values. If you’ve been reading this article in its entirety, these values should really resonate with you. Each one of these core values addresses directly one of the five common dysfunctions that exist in teams.
Absence of Trust — Respect
Scrum Team members are implored to respect each other as capable, independent (trustworthy) people. In order for the environment to be safe all team members must be known to practice respect.
Fear of Conflict — Courage
Scrum Team members are called on to have the courage to do the right then when called upon. Team members must be able to overcome fear of conflict knowing that trust and respect have been established as a foundational team value.
Lack of Commitment — Commitment
People personally commit to achieving the values of the Scrum Team. These are the norms, the buy-in, the a highly functioning (Norming and Performing) team exhibit.
Avoidance of Accountability — Openness
The Scrum Team and its stakeholders agree to be open about all the work and the challenges performing the work. There is no fear of reprisal; no avoidance of accountability. This is central to Scrum’s Three Pillars of Empiricism: Transparency, Introspection, and Adaptation.
Inattention to Results — Focus
Everyone focuses on the work of the sprint and the goals of the Scrum Team. These clearly-defined goals that have previously been committed to are to be celebrated (one of the reasons why all teams, but particularly a Scrum team, should seek sprint closure by way of a demo and a retrospective) as it is this effort and achievement recognition and reward that stave off the prospect of inattention to results.
In Summary
Scrum has, at its core, attempted to place teams (individuals and interactions) over processes and tools. I don’t know if Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland set out to directly answer these five common team dysfunctions. Regardless, they recognized that existing practices in the software industry were flawed, if not broken, and set out to create a guide that was team-and-results-focused.
The five core values of Scrum provide an overarching compass for decision-making and team dynamics that directly addresses the five most-damaging and frequently encountered dysfunctions in software development teams today. Making a conscious decision to continually profess and practice these five values is a phenomenal guiding light to help teams deliver amazing work, and, oh, by-the-way, create a great place to work along the the way.
Diving Deeper — Understanding Individual Team Members to Accelerate Team Development
In an upcoming article we will dive deeper into the different cybernetic information processing approaches typically employed (often unknowingly) by different team members (a topic covered thoroughly by Dr. Gary Salton, Ph.D.) in an effort to begin to understand, estimate, and even accelerate the growth and development of a team as it progresses through Tuckman’s phases of team development.
