Business management guru Patrick Lencioni knows something about dysfunctional behavior. In his classic book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni lays out the five behaviors that can bring any team to its knees.
The first is an absence of trust, which is fueled by a lack of accountability. The second is fear of conflict. Nobody confronts missed deadlines and outcomes because they don’t want conflict, and everything goes down in flames.
Third is a lack of commitment, and fourth is inattention to results.
But the fifth dysfunction is one of the worst—the avoidance of accountability. This includes ducking the responsibility to call peers on dysfunctional behavior AND refusing to hold yourself accountable for outcomes.
In a very real way, a lack of accountability leads to all four of the other Lencioni dysfunctions. It causes people to mistrust each other, to avoid conflict by “going along to get along,” to withhold commitment, and to let results slide.
It’s every person’s job to make sure that one person doesn’t blow the ship up for the rest. Realize that you are responsible for everything that goes on around you—don’t watch someone failing, then fail to step up to direct, assist, and speak up. And know your own critical drivers, and hold yourself 100 percent responsible to them no matter what.