Project Team Dysfunctions

Quick reference

• 00:04 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen,
• 00:05 and I'd like to discuss a troubling issue that can occur in a project.
• 00:09 And that's when the project core team, or scrum team becomes dysfunctional.
• 00:14 One way that can start to happen is when there is a continuous and
• 00:17 willful violation of the team ground rules.
• 00:20 Now one thing to keep in mind, the ground rules are an agreement among the members,
• 00:25 not a regulatory requirement of compliance.
• 00:28 So if there's a problem with the ground rules, change them to a set
• 00:31 that is acceptable to the team and supports the project objectives.
• 00:35 Recall that in many cases,
• 00:36 the ground rules were established during the project kickoff meeting.
• 00:40 And some people may have felt it rude or
• 00:42 are discourteous to disagree with others at that point.
• 00:45 But it's okay to have a new kickoff meeting with each new phase and
• 00:49 update the rules.
• 00:51 Another time when ground rules are often set is during a team building session as
• 00:55 a team gets to know each other.
• 00:56 At a time then to update these are the lessons learned session after a phase is
• 01:00 completed with a sprint retrospective on an agile scrum project.
• 01:04 More about those in a later lesson.
• 01:07 Bottom line, the project teams set the rules, so
• 01:10 they can change them if things aren't working well.
• 01:13 With that said some team members appear to like to break the rules just to
• 01:17 break the rules.
• 01:19 This type of rebellion will often begin to undermine trust on the project team.
• 01:23 The other team members no longer believe that that person is working in the best
• 01:28 interest of the team.
• 01:29 When a habit of violation starts to develop,
• 01:32 the project leader needs to confront the individual about the issue.
• 01:36 It may be a temporary problem due to a personal issue or it may
• 01:39 be a more systemic issue, either way once the project leader gets the facts,
• 01:44 they can determine the appropriate course of action.
• 01:48 A challenging issue is when the project leader is the major violator of team
• 01:52 rules.
• 01:53 In that case, the core team needs to come to the leader and confront him or
• 01:57 her about his actions.
• 01:59 Let the leader know that they are hurting the team.
• 02:01 And of course, if necessary, negotiate new ground rules.
• 02:06 At times, the difficulty is more than just breaking ground rules.
• 02:09 The team becomes truly dysfunctional.
• 02:11 I don't mean the team should never debate and debate passionately.
• 02:15 But dysfunctional behavior leads to these characteristics, political infighting
• 02:20 occurs as factions develop and each faction seeks for power over the others.
• 02:25 Often there's poor decision making, as some voices are ignored and
• 02:29 some bad decisions are let stand, so that someone else can save face.
• 02:33 As we saw in our communication lessons, we can get a downward communication
• 02:38 spiral going, that leads to more personal and team dysfunction.
• 02:42 And as all this hits the fan, the project goes off the rails,
• 02:45 milestones are missed, often overruns begin to show up on the project.
• 02:50 And don't think it can't happen to you, high performing teams can develop
• 02:54 into dysfunctional ones when issues are buried and not brought out into the open.
• 02:59 But by the same token, dysfunctional teams can become high performing teams.
• 03:04 There's several models that you can use to help you through this and
• 03:08 we will introduce one of those models on the next slide.
• 03:11 It's the principles from Patrick Lencioni's book,
• 03:14 The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.
• 03:17 Now I could teach an entire course on these dysfunctions and
• 03:20 how to overcome them and in fact, I have taught that course.
• 03:23 So in the remaining minute, let me just introduce you to the principles.
• 03:28 The first principle is the absence of trust.
• 03:30 When that's present, team members won't share their problems or issues,
• 03:34 except that is to throw them over the wall of someone else.
• 03:37 The team members feel that they must maintain an aura of invulnerability.
• 03:42 Another is fear of conflict.
• 03:44 Team members don't disagree with each other and they don't challenge each other.
• 03:47 Team meetings are boring because no one is saying much of anything.
• 03:51 But that also means, the issues do not get resolved and
• 03:55 they often create risk problems for the entire project.
• 03:59 A third dysfunction is lack of commitment, even if they've resolved trust and
• 04:03 communication issues, team members stay in a very vague and surface level.
• 04:07 The thinking is, if the team member doesn't commit,
• 04:10 they can't really be held accountable for a later overrun condition,
• 04:14 because they never agreed to it to begin with.
• 04:17 Next is to avoid accountability.
• 04:20 Recall that accountability is taking ownership for something that has happened.
• 04:25 On the dysfunctional team, no one takes ownership for anything.
• 04:29 If they do take ownership,
• 04:30 it's normally to such a low standard that they essentially can't fail.
• 04:34 The fifth dysfunction is inattention to results.
• 04:38 This is an interesting one.
• 04:39 Teams that have overcome the first four are still susceptible to this one.
• 04:44 The team's focusing on status reports and
• 04:46 complementing each other on progress it's made,
• 04:48 they don't want to deal with a big downer like the output may not be measuring up.
• 04:52 So they continue to celebrate team dynamics instead of project performance.
• 04:57 These five don't always occur in this order, and it's very possible for
• 05:01 a team to be dysfunctional in multiple ways.
• 05:04 However, the model provides not only a means to recognize a dysfunctional team,
• 05:09 it provides guidance on how to overcome those dysfunctions.
• 05:13 Dysfunctional team behavior is a leading indicator for project failure.
• 05:17 It may start as just small things like breaking team rules, but
• 05:21 eventually it leads to major failure to perform project tasks and follow the plan.
• 05:27 It's an area that project leaders should monitor closely.

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