five-dysfunctions-of-a-team

Runs Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team to diagnose why a team underperforms. The five dysfunctions are a hierarchy, not a list: Absence of Trust at the base, then Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, and Inattention to Results at the top. Each layer rests on the one below it, so find the lowest broken layer: everything above it inherits the break.

The pyramid, the hierarchy rule, each layer's tells and interventions, and the classic failure modes live in references/five-dysfunctions.md. Load that file before diagnosing and assess each layer against its tells exactly.

When to use

The user has a real, named team that is conflict-avoidant, political, slow to decide, or not delivering, and wants to know why. The unit of analysis is one working team with a shared goal, not an individual, a whole organization, or a one-off project group. This skill pairs with psychological-safety (which examines the trust base in more depth) and tuckman (which places a team on its forming-storming-norming-performing arc); reach for those when the question is specifically about safety or developmental stage rather than the full dysfunction pyramid.

Language

Conduct the session and write the report in the language the user is writing in. The reference file is English; keep the framework keyed to it regardless of the output language.

Inputs

• TEAM (required): the team to diagnose. Push for one defined working team. If the user describes an individual or a whole company, narrow it to one team with one or two questions first.
• CONTEXT (optional): observable behaviors and symptoms the user has noticed (guarded meetings, missed deadlines, silos, a leader carrying everything), the team's makeup and history, and the decision the diagnosis should inform. This focuses the evidence-gathering, not the layer definitions.