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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team cover

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

A Leadership Fable

Five interlocking dysfunctions that quietly sink any team.

by Patrick Lencioni

Told as a business fable about a struggling tech company's new CEO, the book lays out a pyramid of five dysfunctions: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. Each builds on the one below it. Lencioni then offers practical ways to overcome each layer.

Startup leadership teams fail more often from internal dysfunction than from market problems. Lencioni gives founders a diagnostic model and a shared language to spot and fix the trust, conflict, and accountability gaps that stall a young executive team.

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