The pyramid of Lencioni and embracing the dark side of leadership
The pyramid of Lencioni offers some interesting insights to think about leadership. We all recognize it is best to lead from a position of trust, but sometimes we need authority. New leadership is about recognizing, embracing, and balancing the light and dark side of the pyramid of Lencioni.
Last week, I discovered the pyramid of Lencioni. Apparently I was late to the game because when I shared this discovery with some people, they already knew. Better late than never. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear, right? Healthy teams is a topic that has captured my interest and I discovered Patrick Lencioni on TikTok because he was talking about that at a conference. When I looked him up, I found his pyramid and it resonated with me. He talks about how all things start with trust and how that breeds creativity and ownership. Being the designer that I am, I redesigned Patrick’s pyramid a litte bit to fit my mental model of the world. I am looking at the world through the principles of Agile. So I added “creative” to conflict, and swapped responsibility for onwership. Minor adjustments to make his pyramid fit the mental model of Agile.
Most drawings I found of Lencioni’s pyramid are actually not pyramids but triangles. :-) For instance this one:
Another thing I don’t like about the pyramid is how it focusses on frustrations. Lencioni described his pyramid in a book called “The five frustrations of teamwork”. It describes those frustrations and what the good version of those frustrations are and how to get there. The goal is to create healthy teams so you get results. The assumption is that unhealthy teams get worse results than healthy teams. My reading of the pyramid is a little different. My experience taught me that unhealthy teams also get results. The health of a team doesn’t necessarily determine the level of the results. A toxic team can get great results. A healthy team can fail. It’s more about the way you get to those results.
The way I see it, there is a dark side and a light side to the pyramid but both sides can get results. For each good thing, there is a bad thing. But the light can only exist when there is dark. Nothing is totally light or dark, it is always some kind of balance. Let me show you how I see the pyramid of Lencioni:
In the absence of trust, you need authority. If there is no trust, conflicts become destructive. If conflicts are destructive and you cannot speak your mind, you become disengaged. You still work under authority so you comply: you do what you are told. And this way of working can yield great results. It’s actually the basis of a hierarchical organization that was invented by Frederick Taylor to optimize factory work. It’s actually the domininant model of the organization of work in the last century. The leader is the boss who tells you what to do and you listen even if you do not agree. If you speak up, the boss uses authority to shut you up. The boss makes the decisions. This side of the pyramid gets results. It’s actually popular because it gets results. When Taylor introduced this model, he was sued for crimes against humanity but his model became the dominant model exactly because it creates great results.
This is the dark side but we should neither ignore nor reject that. We all resonate with the light side. If there is trust and creative conflict, people are engaged and take ownership. But sometimes you need authority. Sometimes you need to step into the dark side. If people don’t know what is good for them, you need to use authority. I have to do that with my kids from time to time. But also if people do not see the bigger picture, if they do not understand the consequences, in situations where you actually know better and the course of action will lead to harm, you have to use authority. This will lead to destructive conflict. If you do not solve that, if you do not recognize that you created damage by using authority, this will lead to disengagement and compliance. But sometimes that is necessary. Luckily this is fixable in most cases.
Whether a team or an organization is healthy or toxic is all about the balance. Even in a toxic team there is some level of trust, some creative conflict, some engagement and ownership. If there is no trust and none of that, it’s slavery. But health is about balance. There are dark patterns we should be aware of but we also should not try to ignore them or judge them.
When we plot leadership on this version of the pyramid, the question is: where do you get your power from as a leader? From the light side or the dark side? The light side is about personal power. The dark side is about hierarchical power. Leadership on the light side has nothing to do with a hierarchical position. Everyone leads to some degree, everyone contributes to the trust to some degree. People who get their power from the dark side need a hierarchical position to lead. You see them change their behavior the moment they attain a hierarchical position. They lack the personal power to lead without hierarchy. Leaders who get their power from within, lead by example, they lead by going first, they lead by inspiring.
So when Simon Sinek says that leadership has nothing to do with a rank, he is talking about the light side of the pyramid. That is true on that side. But on the dark side, leadership is all about rank. To deny that side is to deny what leadership is about. Even the most enlightened leader needs to go to the dark side sometimes. Even the most authoritative leader will generate some level of trust. Its paradoxical and we have a tendency to see things binary but that is a reduction of what leadership is.
The leadership system we grew up in is the dark side. Luckily I see a lot of change towards the light side. New leadership. Warm leadership. Servant leadership. Enlightened leadership. There are all kinds of names going around to name leadership on the light side of the pyramid of results. But we should not dismiss and judge the dark side. There is no light without darkness.
“For instance, there is no light without darkness — and this troubles many of us — but without it, how else would we tell one from the other? We spend half of every day in darkness; surely we should make our peace with this.” — Mark Frost
Of course leadership on the light side is about building trust, co-creation, no hierarchy, no ego and all of that. But to deny the dark side is to deny what we are as humans. We can all make an effort to use more leadership from the light side but we also need to recognize the power of the dark side to get results. Most people talking about New Leadership stress the need to develop personal power and base leadership on that. It’s a journey inward and a journey of unlearning rather than learning. It also includes visiting the dark sides inside of you more than once. Only if we embrace the dark side we can grow in the direction of personal power.
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