From Dysfunction to Design: Why Lencioni’s Model No Longer Fits Today’s Teams
For over two decades, Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team has shaped how organizations diagnose and attempt to fix underperformance. Its pyramid—beginning with trust and building toward results—became the cornerstone of countless off-sites, coaching programs, and HR development plans.
But the world has changed.
Today’s organizations operate in permanent volatility. Complexity is constant. Risk is institutional. And speed is no longer optional—it’s existential. In this environment, team failure is rarely a function of personality or emotional dynamics. It is a product of design.
This article outlines why Lencioni’s model is no longer sufficient, illustrates the consequences of misdiagnosis through real-world case studies, and introduces a more effective alternative: the Resilient Disruption Model™—a leadership operating system engineered to embed trust, clarity, and accountability at scale.
The Early Warning Sign — When Leadership Teams Go Quiet
In 2022, a Canadian healthcare agency faced cascading performance failures. Regulatory outcomes were lagging. Attrition was rising. Key transformation initiatives were repeatedly delayed. On paper, the executive team was strong—experienced, values-aligned, and committed to collaboration.
Yet in critical meetings, no one spoke up.
Despite multiple team-building retreats based on Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions, dialogue remained surface-level. Risks were glossed over. Tensions went unspoken.
A diagnostic review revealed the truth: the team was not suffering from interpersonal dysfunction. They were behaving exactly as the system had taught them to—avoid conflict, protect reputations, maintain harmony, and stay safe.
Anonymous feedback confirmed it:
“We all know what’s wrong. We just don’t think it’s safe to say it.”
“You don’t get promoted here for speaking truth. You get promoted for not making waves.”
“It’s not that we don’t trust each other. It’s that we don’t trust the system.”
This wasn’t a trust issue.
It was a design failure—one that no workshop could fix.
The Structural Limits of Lencioni’s Model
Lencioni’s pyramid is widely taught because it’s intuitive. The five dysfunctions are:
Absence of trust
Fear of conflict
Lack of commitment
Avoidance of accountability
Inattention to results
The logic is elegant: build trust first, and performance follows.
But this framework was developed for a different era. It assumes that behavior breakdown is interpersonal and that trust is the root cause of team dysfunction.
That assumption no longer holds.
In modern environments, especially in public sector, regulated, and high-stakes industries, team dysfunction is not personal—it’s systemic.
Three Structural Gaps in the Model:
1. It treats trust as a prerequisite.
But in volatile environments, trust is a result of well-designed systems—not an emotional starting point.
2. It misinterprets conflict avoidance.
Most conflict isn’t avoided due to fear of each other—it’s avoided due to fear of retribution from the system.
3. It personalizes accountability.
But accountability doesn’t scale unless it’s architected into roles, routines, and rewards.
The Five Dysfunctions model assumes the team is the problem. But what if the team is functioning exactly as the system taught them to?
Case Study 1: Financial Services, North America
A global financial institution had a chronic issue: cross-regional initiatives stalled. Despite strong leaders and generous budgets, collaboration was low and execution inconsistent.
The organization had invested in interpersonal solutions—EQ training, conflict resolution workshops, and 360 feedback protocols—all based on the Lencioni model.
Nothing changed.
What We Found:
Leaders were rewarded for harmony, not truth.
Conflict was seen as risky behavior in performance reviews.
Informal power dynamics shaped decisions more than KPIs.
What Changed:
Using the Resilient Disruption Model™, the organization implemented:
Protected dissent protocols in meetings
New performance measures tied to constructive conflict
Publicly visible accountability for commitments across silos
Results in six months:
Decision speed improved by 24%
Collaboration scores rose 37%
Strategy execution time dropped by 31%
The issue was never “personality.”
It was performance architecture.
Case Study 2: Government Agency, Western Canada
A government body responsible for infrastructure approvals was overwhelmed. Deadlines slipped. Backlogs mounted. Frustration spread. The senior team was labeled “dysfunctional.”
An intervention based on Lencioni’s framework was implemented. Leaders were encouraged to be vulnerable and engage in “healthy conflict.”
Still, nothing changed.
What We Found:
Managers avoided decisions not because of fear of peers—but because the system punished errors.
Psychological safety was a stated value but never enforced in policy or practice.
What Changed:
The Resilient Disruption Model™ was introduced with three core shifts:
Clear decision rights and escalation paths
A published dissent policy protecting truth-telling
Consequence alignment tied to behavior, not outcomes alone
Results within nine months:
Approval times accelerated by 3x
Attrition dropped 18%
Leadership trust and communication scores increased by 42%
Again, the problem wasn’t the team.
The problem was what the system had taught them was safe.
The Resilient Disruption Model™ — A System-Level Alternative
Rather than attempt to fix dysfunction with trust exercises and coaching, the Resilient Disruption Model™ addresses the architecture beneath the behavior.
It is based on five performance disciplines that replace legacy interpersonal assumptions with operational design.
1. Institutionalized Truth
Create mechanisms that reward candor and make uncomfortable truths visible.
Goal: Eliminate reputational risk for telling the truth.
2. Normalized Dissent
Build forums, rituals, and protections where disagreement is encouraged.
Goal: Make dissent a driver of alignment—not a threat to it.
3. Operational Trust
Engineer fairness, consistency, and transparency into systems—not personalities.
Goal: Trust emerges from reliability, not vulnerability.
4. Architected Accountability
Tie responsibility to clear expectations, consequences, and visibility.
Goal: Remove ambiguity and eliminate learned helplessness.
5. Adaptive Clarity
Ensure goals, metrics, and priorities evolve in sync with complexity.
Goal: Prevent drift by constantly redefining what matters.
Together, these disciplines don’t depend on chemistry.
They depend on design.
What Got Us Here Won’t Get Us There
Lencioni’s model served a purpose in a slower, simpler time. But today, the core dysfunction is not human frailty—it is organizational design that rewards silence and punishes clarity.
Teams don’t fail because people are broken.
They fail because the system makes self-protection rational.
Leadership in the next decade won’t be defined by who builds the most emotionally intelligent teams.
It will be defined by who builds the clearest, boldest, and most truth-tolerant systems.
If you're still diagnosing dysfunction interpersonally, you're solving the wrong problem.
Explore the Alternative
To discover how to embed trust, dissent, and clarity into your organization’s design—not just its people—join us for our upcoming executive briefing:
