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As you know, Ariat is the official Dirt Talk podcast sponsor and at this point we've talked plenty about their footwear, their workwear. But now it is winter and boy, is it cold. It was 17 degrees this morning. I had to warm the truck up. But just because it's cold does not mean the work stops. So to get the job done, you need the best, warmest work wear possible. And Ariat has a long list of outerwear, amazing jackets, pants and other goods available now. You can shop at their website, ariat.com dirt talk that is ariat.com dirt talk hello, everybody. Monday Dirt Talk Podcast Today we are going to read from a book that we have referenced a lot here at buildwit called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I've had it referenced, suggested to me by many, many people. I finally read it. I put in the COVID of every book I read when I've read it last March 20, 22. So first read it in 2022. Then we read it as a leadership team, have read it as a leadership team since. And I just, I have a call that I do within the company every three to four weeks called Leadership Lagoon. Why is it called Leadership Lagoon? I just made it up. Alliteration. Not very clever alliteration, but all it is is a meeting in which we cover a leadership topic for anybody within the company that wants to join. Usually we've got most of our company attending virtually, which is pretty cool. And the last time we met, I covered this book as well. And so I read to them what I'm about to read to you all because I think it's really extraordinary for anybody involved in a team, which is probably everybody, if not everybody, if you work at a company, no matter where you are, you work with other people within a team. And so this is all very relevant to, to anybody working with others. And it's been a huge, huge help for me as I've worked on teams and as I've contributed to building teams. So that's the book the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. To get into it, a majority of the book is a story to illustrate the five dysfunctions, but in the back is a summary of the five dysfunctions. So I'm just going to read from the summary. The story is good, but if you only read the back of the book, you would probably understand it just fine. And I'm not going to read from all of it. I've just highlighted a few key sections here to demonstrate the key points. The first dysfunction dysfunction 1. Absence of trust in the context of building a team, trust 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. In essence, teammates must get comfortable being vulnerable with one another. The vulnerabilities I'm referring to include weaknesses, skill deficiencies, interpersonal shortcomings, mistakes and requests for help. As soft as all of this might sound, it is only when team members are truly comfortable being exposed to one another that they begin to act without concern for protecting themselves. As a result, they can focus their energy and attention completely on the job at hand, rather than on being strategically disingenuous or political with one another. So the members of trusting teams admit weaknesses and mistakes, ask for help, accept questions and input from 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, and look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group and the suggestions for overcoming dysfunction. One it requires shared experiences over time, multiple instances of follow through and credibility, and an in depth understanding of the unique attributes of team members. The Role of a Leader Here, the most important action that a leader must take to encourage the building of trust on a team to demonstrate vulnerability first, displays of vulnerability on the part of a team leader must be genuine. And this is quite interesting. I've experienced this as a leader. To build trust you have to be trusting first and you have to be vulnerable first. That's the foundation of trust is you have to be vulnerable, you have to depend on others, you have to put yourself out there and you have to lead by example. And you could be on a very untrusting team and frustrated about it, which I've, I've been on. And had I known this, even if I was not quote unquote a leader, I still would have made a diligent effort being vulnerable, putting myself out there first to then build trust with those around me, because it would have made me more effective in the grand scheme of things, even if I wasn't necessarily the foreman superintendent. Whatever it is, no matter your position, you can build trust with others and make the team more effective by going first. So if nothing else, I've thought a lot about this. How do I build trust? How do I be vulnerable so that we can get past the politics that plague a lot of job sites, workplaces, companies and the bigger the company I feel like the worse it gets in a lot of ways. The big companies. Oh boy, the lack of trust and the politics is. Is exhausting. And I'm grateful I don't work in an environment like that because it is. It is just so corrosive. So the dysfunction or the connection is dysfunction too. By building trust, a team makes conflict possible because team members do not hesitate to engage in passionate and sometimes emotional debate, knowing that they will not be punished for saying something that might otherwise be interpreted as destructive or critical. Which leads me to dysfunction. 2. Fear of conflict all great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow. This is true in marriage, parenthood, friendship, and certainly business. But teams that engage in productive conflict know that the only purpose is to produce the best possible solution in the shortest period of time. They discuss and resolve issues more quickly and completely than others. And they emerge from heated debates with no residual feelings or collateral damage, but with an eagerness and readiness to take on the next important issue. Ironically, teams that avoid ideological conflict often do so in order to avoid hurting team members feelings and then end up encouraging dangerous tension as a result. It is also ironic that so many people avoid conflict in the name of efficiency, because healthy conflict is actually a time saver. The Suggestion for Overcoming a Fear Fear of Conflict the first step is acknowledging that conflict is productive and that many teams have a tendency to avoid it. So teams that engage in conflict have lively, interesting meetings, extract and exploit the ideas of all team members, solve real problems quickly, minimize politics, and put critical topics on the table of discussion. The Role of a Leader Here, one of the most difficult challenges that a leader faces in promoting healthy conflict is the desire to protect members from harm. This leads to premature interruption of disagreements and prevents team members from developing coping skills for dealing with conflict themselves. Therefore, it is key that leaders demonstrate restraint when their people engage in conflict and allow resolution to occur naturally. As messy as it can sometimes be, this can be a challenge because many leaders feel that they are somehow failing in their jobs by losing control of the teams during conflict. So when it comes to engaging in conflict, I I've been to a lot of meetings out on job sites, especially over the few years that I've been doing this. And most of them are very similar. One person telling everybody else what to do. But the most effective crews, effective teams, effective projects, effective companies engage in conflict sometimes in those those meetings because everybody has a unique perspective and opinion. And that doesn't mean those opinions are right. But gathering information from as many data as many Perspectives as possible, as many data points as you can get. The better the decision you can make if you are the leader on that project crew, whatever it is. And strong leaders, strong teams seek out that that conflict because they know it's the most effective way they can get to what is potentially the right answer. The connection then to dysfunction 3. By engaging in productive conflict and tapping into team members perspectives and opinions, a team can confidently commit and buy into a decision knowing that they have benefited from from everyone's ideas. Dysfunction 3 then is lack of commitment. In the context of a team, commitment is a function of two things, clarity and buy in. Great teams make clear and timely decisions and move forward with complete buy in from every member of the team, even those who voted against the decision. They leave meetings confident that no one on the team is quietly harboring doubts about whether to support the actions agreed upon. The two greatest causes of the lack of commitment are the desire for consensus and the need for certainty. Consensus. Great teams understand the danger of seeking consensus and find ways to achieve buy in even when complete agreement is impossible. They understand that reasonable human beings do not need to get their way in order to support a decision, but only need to know that their opinions have been heard and considered. And certainty. Great teams also pride themselves on being able to unite behind decisions and commit to clear courses of action even when there is little assurance about whether the decision is correct. That's because they understand the old military axiom of a decision is better than no decision. They also realize that it is better to make a decision boldly and be wrong and then change direction with equal boldness than it is to waffle. Only when everyone has put their opinions and perspectives on the table can the team confidently commit to a decision, knowing that it has tapped into the collective wisdom of the entire group. And this is why trust is so valuable and so important. And the first is function. Because if you don't have trust, even if I voiced my opinion and everybody has agreed, hey, we're actually going to go in another direction. I trust this team, I trust the leader. So I feel heard and I yeah, I'm not getting my way, but I understand that they want what's best for me and the team. And so since I've been able to speak up, since we've engaged in that conflict, I can then say, all right, this may not be the way I wanted to, wanted it to be, but I trust that they understand the position, the position I have. They may see something I don't and I am going to commit to this decision made for the greater good of the team, which will then benefit me as an individual. 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 and changes direction without hesitation or guilt and Some considerations for overcoming dysfunction 3. At the end of a staff meeting or off site, a team member should explicitly review the key decisions made during the meeting and agree on what needs to be communicated to employees or other constituencies about those decisions. Deadlines as simple as it seems, one of the best tools for ensuring commitment is the use of clear deadlines for when decisions will be made and honoring those dates with discipline and rigidity. The worst enemy of a team that is susceptible to this dysfunction is ambiguity, and timing is one of the most critical factors that must be made clear. The Role of a Leader Here more than any other member of the team, the leader must be comfortable with the prospect of making a decision that ultimately turns out to be wrong. I just had quarterly reviews with my immediate team the other day and that was feedback I gave to everyone. I would rather them make decisions and be wrong than not make decisions. I want them to be running and I want to have to pull them back rather than push them. So I as a leader, that's the most valuable thing for me is people that are willing to make decisions even when they're wrong, even when they don't have all the data, because that is the reality of accomplishing anything significant or accomplishing anything new. You will never have all of the data, and so the faster you can commit, execute, and learn from whatever that decision was, right or wrong, the better off you'll be. So then, connection to dysfunction 4. In order for teammates to call each other on their behaviors and actions, they must have a clear sense of what is expected, which is then dysfunction. 4. Avoidance of accountability in the context of teamwork, however, it refers specifically to the willingness of team members to call their peers on performance or behaviors that might hurt the team. The essence of this dysfunction is the unwillingness of team members to tolerate the interpersonal discomfort that accompanies calling a peer on his or her behavior and the more general tendency to avoid difficult conversations. In fact, team members who are particularly close to one another sometimes hesitate to hold one another accountable precisely because they fear jeopardizing a valuable personal relationship. Ironically, this only causes the relationship to deteriorate as team members begin to resent one another for not living up to the expectations and for allowing the standards of the Group to erode. Members of great teams improve their relationships by holding one another accountable, thus demonstrating that they respect each other and have high expectations for one another's performance. 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, and avoids excessive bureaucracy around performance management and corrective action because it's happening as you go. And that again, is the importance of trust. If I'm saying to somebody from a caring standpoint, hey, this, this isn't at our standard and we have that trust. They know that I care about them, they know that I care about the team, they know about I, that I care about the mission. And they, in theory, hopefully can put their ego aside and say, you know what? You're right. I appreciate you calling me out on this. I can do better, I will do better. And you build that mutual sense of respect even further as a result. A good way to make it easier for team members to hold one another accountable is to clarify publicly exactly what the team needs to achieve, who needs to deliver what, and how everyone must behave in order to succeed. The enemy of accountability is ambiguity. And even when a team has initially committed to a plan or a set of behavioral standards, it is important to keep those agreements in the open so that no one can easily ignore them. Team members should regularly communicate with one another, either verbally or in written form, about how they feel their teammates are doing against stated objectives and standards. Relying on them to do so on their own, with no clear expectations or structure, is inviting the potential for the avoidance of accountability. It's huge. It's huge. Huge, huge, huge, huge. It should be happening all the time. The best companies, best teams I've seen along the way, they have constant communication and they hold that standard no matter what. The role of the leader here. Sometimes strong leaders naturally create an accountability vacuum, naturally create an accountability vacuum within the team, leaving themselves as the only source of discipline. This creates an environment where team members assume that the leader is holding others accountable, and so they hold back even when they see something that isn't right. Once a leader has created a culture of accountability on the team, however, he or she must be willing to serve as the ultimate arbiter of discipline when the team itself fails. Connection to dysfunction 5 and before I get get into the connection, I guess this also begins with leadership and vulnerability. I, as a leader, or as somebody on the team, can hold myself accountable and can admit to everybody Hey, I did something and it wasn't at the right standard, so I'm going to redo it and I apologize. I didn't mean to waste everybody's time. I thought I was doing the right thing, but it wasn't at the right standard. Necessary. This is important. Can you help me make sure it is at the at the right standard? And that requires me to put my ego aside, but builds trust with that group, builds respect with that group and shows them that it's okay to do that themselves in an ideal scenario. So the connection here, if teammates are not being held accountable for their contributions, they will be more likely to turn their attention to their own needs and to the advancement of themselves or their departments, which then sets us up for dysfunction. 5. Inattention to results the ultimate dysfunction of a team is the tendency of members to care about something other than the collective goals of the group. An unrelenting focus on specific objectives and clearly defined outcomes. As a requirement for any team that judges itself on performance, a team that focuses on collective results retains achievement oriented people, minimizes individualistic behavior, enjoys success and suffers failure acutely benefits from individuals who subjugate their own goals and interests for the good of the team and avoids distractions. The role of a leader Here, perhaps more than with any of the other dysfunctions, the leader must set the tone for a focus on results. If team members sense that the leader values anything over the results, they will take that as permission to do the same. And to summarize here, success is not a matter of mastering subtle sophisticated theory, but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence. And the fascinating thing is the individualistic behavior when it comes to individuals and departments. I see that all the time. I've seen that all the time. When I was working in construction myself, the common fight on a job site was sometimes equipment department versus operations. And I would watch this unfold. Everybody would have the same hard hat on with the same damn company name on it. We were all on the same team and yet you had two sides fighting over what should have been the same objective to build great work and make money as a result. But they didn't have the trust, they didn't have the necessary conflict. They didn't hear one another's opinions. Take those into account. They didn't get the overall buy in and ultimately they didn't get the results that they desired all the time. So to summarize here, the five dysfunctions. First, absence of trust. And if you did one thing, it is build trust with those around you. And this is something I've recognized within our business. I have a high level of trust with some of the people I work with directly, but I have a low level of trust with others in the organization. And I can complain about it or I can do something about it. And doing something about it requires me to go first as the leader and that's what I'm working on currently. Second then fear of conflict. Third, lack of commitment. If you don't, if you don't have the conflict, you don't hear everybody's opinions, then you can't commit to a decision. If you can't commit to a decision, you can't be accountable, which is dysfunction. 4. Avoidance of accountability and if you're not holding people accountable, you will get an inattention to results and you will get people acting in their best interest or the teams acting in their best interest rather than the overall team, company project, whatever it is. And I see it quite often, I'm sure you all do too. So that is the book, the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It lays it out in such a simple manner. It's really helped me as a young leader as we've built the company that we have over the past few years and continue to build the company that we are. The quality of teams is everything and this is something that, like I said, I struggle with to this day, but I am significantly improving upon thanks to stories like this and others. I hope you I hope you took a lot away if you enjoyed this again. I'm always looking for feedback. Write me anytime. Dirt talkillwit.com I get to see everything. Harrison gets to see everything. We want to hear from you. If you think someone else needs to hear this in your life, feel free to share it. We're always looking to grow the podcast. I appreciate you all listening and sharing. It's a huge, huge help. And with that, we will see you on the next one. Stay dirty everybody.