Coaching practices for Lencioni Five Dysfunctions

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Lencioni Five Dysfunctions, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • My team only ever talks about how we’re working together after something has already blown up
  • On my team nobody will admit they’re stuck or wrong or don’t know something
  • Everyone on my team is quietly playing for their own scoreboard
  • When someone on my team drops the ball, everyone just waits for me to be the one to say something
  • We leave meetings with everyone seemingly on board, and then half the team quietly fails to follow through

Practices that may help

  1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
    Patrick Lencioni’s model describes five compounding failures that undermine teams: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results — each built on the one below. It is a practitioner framework presented as a business fable, not an empirically tested model, but its five dimensions align well with decades of team effectiveness research, making it a useful diagnostic even without controlled-trial support.
  2. Use regular team health checks to surface dysfunction early
    Teams that check in on how they’re working together catch dysfunction before it compounds.
    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
  3. Build vulnerability-based trust
    Teams that can’t admit weakness, mistakes, or ignorance to each other cannot genuinely collaborate.
    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
  4. Align around collective results, not individual status
    Teams fail when members prioritize their own visibility or department’s success over the shared goal.
    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
  5. Create a culture of peer-to-peer accountability
    Teams that only hold each other accountable through the manager haven’t built real accountability at all.
    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
  6. The 6 Types of Working Genius (Patrick Lencioni)
    Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius model describes six activities — Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity — that are required to complete any meaningful work. Each person finds two of these energizing (geniuses), two draining (frustrations), and two neutral (competencies). The model is a practitioner framework; it lacks independent peer-reviewed validation, but it provides a practically useful vocabulary for team role awareness.
  7. Get genuine commitment, not false consensus
    Teams that avoid conflict often confuse silence for agreement — false consensus is catastrophic for execution.
    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
  8. Name frustrations without shame
    Frustrations are not weaknesses — they’re a mismatch signal that the team can act on.
    The 6 Types of Working Genius (Patrick Lencioni)
  9. Engage in productive ideological conflict
    Teams that avoid conflict don’t avoid disagreement — they bury it, where it grows into resentment and bad decisions.
    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
  10. Identify and track your critical numbers
    Find the two or three metrics that, if managed well, predict overall health — and make them visible to everyone.
    The Rockefeller Habits: Scaling Up with Rhythm and Focus

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