The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Rating:
Summary: Good Business Lessons
Review: One of the important take-aways from this book is that for a team to be successful, all persons on the team must be loyal to the team. This is a concept from successful sports teams that us in the business world could learn from. I enjoyed this mentality and feel that if more businesses were loyal to their work-teams we would have successful cross-team communications instead of the push and pull that often exists. I would have liked to have seen more of a story-line with the marketing versus analytical teams, but nonetheless this is a good fable for any manager or team leader.

From the author of The Difference Now, A New Dish, and At the Coffee Shop.


Rating:
Summary: Surprised Again!
Review: I bought this book in an effort to learn more about my least favorite NBA franchise--the Los Angeles Lakers. Unfortunately, the five dysfunctions of the title are not the starting five for the NBA runner-ups. Instead, it's some kind of business leadership book and pretty good, actually. I replaced the cover with a picture of a smiling Kobe Bryant and placed it prominently on my bookshelf next to my favorite James Carlos Blake novel. Another fine mistake.

Rating:
Summary: A powerful and useful book
Review: Lenconi describes fundamental issues that create dysfunctional teams in a gripping tale. The Silicon Valley context provides a lively, interesting context to discuss the shortcomings of such teams. When conflict is feared, trust, commitment, and accountability are absent, and we don't pay enough attention to results, teams and companies experience suboptimal consequences. Lenconi provides a great questionnaire to help us understand the flaws in our own teams and how to overcome them. This is an excellent book. There is an additional factor that needs to be addressed which is described in Dr. Rosalene Glickman's brilliant book, Optimal Thinking: How to Be Your Best Self. She writes "The purpose of a relationship is to be your best self, regardless of the circumstances." When individuals and teams commit to the standard of highest and best with Optimal Thinking, the best results are achieved. Optimal Thinking is unequivocally the mental software to achieve personal and team optimization. I strongly recommend each of these books.

Rating:
Summary: You need to search to find the nuggets
Review: I read this book for my graduate class in orgainizational behavior. The book has some good nuggets that can easily be applied to any inter-personal situation, and is an easy read. My complaint about the book: I didn't like how the author treats the reader as less-than-intelligent. Throughout the book we are told "but that was nothing compared to what happened next." This book isn't exactly a crime novel, so I don't think we need to be told every other page that something unexpected is coming up. Plus, we can determine that for ourselves from the context of the narration. This style of story telling can be very grating, and distracts from the lesson that the story is trying to make.

Rating:
Summary: an excellent fable
Review: This is the first book by lencioni that i read. I loved reading it. It's a very quick read and i have to say i learnt a lot during the 2 hours. (...)
-rav