Tom Szapucki
December 3, 2014
Period 4
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
By: Patrick Lencioni The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a fiction novel of a very typical management challenge. The company in the novel is called DecisionTech, a 150-person software start-up in Silicon Valley. The company, thanks to the work of Jeff (former CEO) is well funded and staffed with top-level employees. However, the company is far behind several competitors and the board has replaced Jeff with Kathryn. As soon as Kathryn becomes the new CEO, she immediately begins a careful review of the situation and determines that the senior management team isn't much of a team at all. Utilizing a series of exercises and off-site meetings, Kathryn begins aggressive team building techniques to make her new employees a team and succeed again. After Kathryn completes teaching her new employees her techniques they start to become a very well bonded team of co-workers and quickly shoot for the top. Kathryn – Eager, Determined, Competitive, Experienced, Successful

In my opinion, the most important passage in the novel was when Kathryn was at her first meeting as CEO of Decision Tech and she explained the fist of the five dysfunctions of a team, “The First of the many dysfunctions of a team is the Absence of Trust” This passage to me is one of the most important lines in the novel. When Kathryn first spoke to her new employees and started off by saying what was wrong with their team they were arrogant and