The five dysfunctions of a team.

This book is now required reading for everyone I work with. Not only is the content some of the most important I've ever read, but 80% of the book is written like a novel, making it a VERY easy read.

I loved the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. However, the advice in that book requires the main boss to be fully committed to fixing the dysfunctions and to convince their team to get onboard (or fire them if it’s not possible). Not sure how likely that is in this situation.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni. It's a pretty fast read, I think the thing that stuck with me the most from it was the reassurance that (constructive) conflict on a team is not something to be avoided at all costs.

My favorites so far: High Output Management, Turn the Ship Around, Radical Candor, and the Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

I read "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" a few months ago, it's quite good. The narrative delivery makes it a very easy read, and it has some ideas which are useful in basically every situation where collaboration is necessary.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a perennial classic, though not tech focused. But that's probably okay in combination with more tech-industry focused literature.

> The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

I need to give this a try again. When I originally read it, it was part of a team activity a decade ago and left unmoderated, so it devolved to everyone being at each other's throats by the end of the day.

My recommendation:

1. Learn Scrum/kanban (not a book)

2. Developer Hegemony: The Future of Labor

3. The First-Time Manager by Loren B. Belker

4. Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values

5. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

This was a nice succinct writeup. On the topic, here are some books I'd recommend for ICs making the jump to a manager role (or thinking about it):

1. The Making of a Manager (https://www.amazon.com/Making-Manager-What-Everyone-Looks-eb...)

2. The Manager's Path (https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Grow...)

3. Crucial Conversations (https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...)

4. The Coaching Habit (https://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Habit-Less-Change-Forever-eb...)

5. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Len...)

I'm still due to read High Output Management (https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove-e...) and Extreme Ownership (https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs-eboo...).

There are some great books which may help provide you with some structure on how to manage the team:

Peopleware: Productive Projects & Teams http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-S...

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-P...

Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules http://www.amazon.com/dp/1556159005/?tag=stackoverfl08-20

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable http://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fabl...

Fundamentally, cultivating a healthy team culture is the most important role you can play. Foster open, transparent communication, and avoid falling into the trap of micromanagement. Keep things happy, keep it real. All the best!

As a fellow engineer facing the same problem, I don't believe it's so much in the language, but more the outlook and how you perceive things. As an engineer, we tend to get into a lot of nitty gritty, with a lot of "it might be possible if we first do X, Y and Z, but that assumes A and B don't take place, in which case we need to do..."
I guess the "correct" answer here would be "Yes it should be possible, but give me a couple of days to confirm" - Most people don't care about the details. In their minds that's why they hired you.

But again, the language is only a fraction of it. It's how you handle situations. When you change your approach to problems then your language changes as well. I'd highly recommend reading some books. The two I've read in the past month and really liked where "Extreme Ownership" by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
and "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" and Patrick Lencioni
Both books give examples of how they handled situations, and you begin seeing patterns in the speech they use.

Admittedly, I'm not very well read on literature works at all, 95% of my reading has been things like modern business books. Just practical reading.

There was one book I read that I really enjoyed that was done as a literature work. "The Art of Profitability". Another one was "Five dysfunctions of a team" which I'm not sure if it could be classed as a true literature work or not, not to mention the fact that the ideas hit too close to hoe at the time I was reading it and demanded a serious life change that I wasn't quite able to enjoy the work itself.

I like prose that is a commentary on observations about life, man and business, if you're able to find anything.

I spent about 20 minutes reading through the archives on the lettersofnote website and loved every minute of it. It was the easiest route to a super meditative state I've ever experienced.

Here's one example that I really liked : http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/06/let-us-blaze-new-trails...

But that said, I'm open to varying suggestions.

Thank you so much.

One important cause of Normalization of Deviance is when an organization stays misaligned at the top about what the norms actually are. The effect of this is that:

1. Some folks at the top will shout about the norms being violated and nobody listening to them.

2. Folks underneath them will struggle to get buy-in on initiatives to follow best practices.

3. Folks underneath them at an individual contributor level will struggle to tell the difference between following established best practices (or good practices in a complex adaptive system) and getting distracted.

For an illustrative narrative of this, consider the character John from The Phoenix Project.

Patrick Lencioni writes about this in books like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage. For a quick read on part of this, see: https://hbr.org/2002/07/make-your-values-mean-something

Agree, this can potentially take a long time and a lot of money to go to court. That's why I am considering the possibility that the Internet Archive is effectively trolling them by doing everything legally but talking about it in a way that upsets publishers.

BTW, thank you for the link to the attachment. Some books, like RE0000172597 The Magician's Nephew will likely be too old for statutory damages. Others, like TX0005757057 The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: a Leadership Fable were not registered timely and will likely be blocked from statutory damages due to that. But TX0008865827 The Man Who Solved the Market for example is registered timely, so that one would qualify for statutory damages, if they can prove that this book was willfully infringed.

But the last one - i.e. the only one in my 3 examples that could get statutory damages - looks like it was uploaded by a contributor and the preview page was only viewed a mere 621 times... So that could be a DMCA safe harbor defense, that IA simply didn't notice before that this unpopular contributor-uploaded book wasn't legal.

https://archive.org/details/manwhosolvedmark0000zuck/

BTW, it looks like the IA has now disabled the group pages for suing publishers, which might gently nudge viewers towards other books, potentially driving sales away to their competition.

> how to build an organization where...

Patrick Lencioni has a few great of books on this. If you like narratives or "buisiness parables" then read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. If you prefer a more direct/didactic style, then read The Advantage.

Difficult Conversations from the Harvard Negotiation Project is also a useful read.

Many of today's most popular business books are written in this fashion. I believe the style is called "business parable". A couple popular titles from recent years are "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" and "Who Moved My Cheese". I would not be so worried about the actual source of the story. The principles are still the same. At one point in my life I was very much like this individual but not now...while the story may be fiction my life is not :)

Strong visions can be arrived at collectively -- but it requires trust, not voting. If I have 10 people, and 7 vote A and 3 vote B, then A should be the collective "strong vision". The thing is, those three people that voted for B still think that B was the best approach, because nothing has worked to change their mind post-vote. It's exactly equivalent to your boss coming and telling you to take out the trash, when you hate taking out the trash. You do it anyway, but you definitely don't put your full effort into it, and you might even implement small sabotages. If the trash bag is leaking, maybe you just let it leak as you take it out, instead of rewrapping it to prevent the leak. So now you have an ideological split that will manifest itself throughout implementation of the vision.

The way to fix this is to have honest, open discussion to collectively arrive at a vision. That way, there is no cognitive dissonance between the vision and the team members. The problem is, this is hard and requires a lot of trust. I'd recommend reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team [0] if you really want to dig into this philosophy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Tea...

Before I scan the thread for inspiration, these are mine:

1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; I have no words for this except that it was profound and I was ready for it.

2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team; a classic where history knows better than we do.

3. Special Topics in Calamity Physics; a fictional tale that shows you how damn easy it is to get lost in conspiracy and speculation.

4. House of Leaves; you can't beat a mind-bending horror like that. I live for this stuff.

5. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse;
It's 50 pages long, just read it.

6. Tantra Illuminated;
A well researched and academic study into the history and the beliefs of Tantra

7. The King in Yellow and its derivatives; The Hanged King lore in the SCP universe is obsessively fascinating to me.

There's a lot of books on leadership and team building that I'm eager to read - Difficult Conversations, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Good to Great, Simon Sinek's books, etc. I'm planning on digesting some of those and trying to utilize what I find applicable, iterate as I learn from it.

Communications is another area I'm planning on focusing on. I've very solid written communication skills, so I plan to mainly focus on verbal skills. I've one or two in-person workshops/courses I'm considering for this, as well as potentially joining toastmasters due to their great reputation.

Putting focus on the above areas plus seeking targeted feedback more rigorously should, I believe, help me grow considerably.

Networking is difficult, I have to admit. Not because I'm unapproachable or fear approaching others, but I've found a lot of tech meetups are either very technology specific, or where they're not they're jammed with recruiters, people looking for jobs or people looking to simply sell you something.

Apologies for the delayed reply. What are your thoughts, since you ask?

This is my list for this Summer (Southern hemisphere here):

* [reading] Atomic Habits (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1847941834)

* [reading] So Good They Can't Ignore You (https://www.amazon.com.br/gp/product/1455509124)

* 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1492050903)

* The Manager`s Path (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1491973897)

* The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787960756)

* Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787976377)

* Who: The A Method for Hiring (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345504194)

* Power Score: Your Formula for Leadership Success (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345547357)

I'm not sure I'll get to all of them but I spent quite some time researching them and think this is a good list.

I usually read 2 books simultaneously because I like to read them and let certain things sink in. It provides a nice way to link some insights.

I've found The Five Dysfunctions of a Team useful. It's a clear description of things that go wrong when people work together, even when everyone has good intentions.

I'll second the suggestion to speak with a professional therapist or coach if it's an option. These situations are difficult to navigate and a neutral perspective can be helpful.

Management Books

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - What makes your team not work?

Radical Candor - how to treat people without being a jerk or pushhover

Tech Books

Mythical Man Month - The classic on tech management

Phoenix Project - this book is best described as management porn. But it has a focus on dev ops.

'Business' is a large topic - anything in particular? Marketing? Finance? Customer Development? Management? etc?

Books that I'd recommend: Anything by Peter Drucker, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers, Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne, among others. I'm sure plenty others here will also give you other recommendations that seem more 'start-up' like too.

Here are some books I listened to on Audible in the last year and a half, listing those that I enjoyed the most. Each of these books changed me in some ways, I never thought how much fun it is to listen to biographies and how many lessons there are.

0. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition

1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

2. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

3. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

4. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

5. What Got You Here Won't Get You There

6. The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connection, and Courage

7. The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

8. The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over

9. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

10. Pre-Suasion: Channeling Attention for Change

11. Thinking, Fast and Slow

12. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

13. Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life

14. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

15. Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

16. Sapiens

17. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

18. If you like space: Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery

19. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

20. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

21. Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

22. The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations

Some good books I've found over the years:

Lencioni's "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" is an often cited reference for team psychology. If you read through it (it's not long) it should give you more resources to analyze the current social context.

The second great resource - on personal influence - is Aristotles Rhetoric. Most modern resources try to appear more hip and current by more or less regurgitating what Aristotle already noticed - that personal influence is a matter of ethos, pathos and logos, and that in the general human context you need to take all of them into account.

Third resource that is very relevant to perceiving organizational mechanics is Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion"

Here's the list of books I've been recommending new managers and leaders read:

Small Unit Leadership: A Commonsense Approach
https://www.amazon.com/Small-Unit-Leadership-Commonsense-App...

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0787960756/?coliid=I12MQNI6MIK6JR&...

High Output Management
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679762884/?coliid=I2G1Y1JLPP55SY&...

Measure What Matters
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525536221/?coliid=I1G6EQRC0QYPE1&...

Death by Meeting
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0787968056/?coliid=I38A8AYMZGSLYZ&...

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1455554790/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

The Hard Thing About Hard Things
https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/B...

Start with Why (you can prob skip the book and just watch https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_insp...)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591846447/?coliid=I2Q0IN84LJ230W&...

This is the basis of the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. A dysfunctional team will tear itself apart given run of the place. There's a lot of ground work that has to go into getting a team to the point where they can even enact what's in the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Tea...

There's also a lot of work that goes into maintaining delegations at this level. I really like this article, because this part is actually covered in relatively high detail. Normally it's not addressed at all... "Just delegate!"

fsloth recommended Lencioni's "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team"

I'd second that, and suggest reading his other books, too. Particular 'The Advantage', which provides practical steps to solve the problems highlighted in his other fable/story books.

It's unlikely you will change the culture single-handedly. Maybe try to find others who have similar observations, share with them your ideas (or just buy them a copy of The Advantage) and go from there.