Summary

  • Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team (absence of trust; fear of conflict; lack of commitment; avoidance of accountability; inattention to results) provide a powerful framework to diagnose team problems.
  • Belbin Team Role theory helps address these dysfunctions by offering a behavioural language and structure to support openness, healthy debate, clarity of roles, accountability and results-orientation.
  • Using Team Roles helps people to understand how individuals contribute and where they may need support, thereby enabling stronger team functioning.
  • Applying these ideas is an ongoing process: teams must revisit trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and result-focus regularly as people and situations change.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - A Leadership Fable

In his bestselling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – A Leadership Fable, Patrick Lencioni outlined five key pitfalls that can derail a team’s performance.

In this article, we explore those dysfunctions and show how the Belbin Team Role framework can help teams move past them.

Belbin And Lencioni Trust

1. Absence of trust

Lencioni argues that when a team lacks trust, members are unwilling to be vulnerable with each other: they won’t admit mistakes, ask for help or acknowledge weaknesses.

The Belbin approach helps open that door. By identifying and sharing one’s preferred Team Roles and corresponding "allowable weaknesses”, team members can discuss past errors and behaviours in a safe, positive context.

For example, rather than hiding a slip-up, a team member might say: “In my role I tend to be strongest in X, but I know my weakness is Y, so I appreciate your help when it shows up.”

This process builds psychological safety – which research (such as Project Aristotle at Google) has shown is critical for team success.

Building trust with Belbin reports

Identifying and sharing our Belbin Team Roles – the behaviours we adopt when working with others – helps create a safe, constructive space for discussing preferences, past mistakes and areas for improvement.

Belbin Individual reports outline each person’s unique combination of Team Roles, using input from the individual and their colleagues. They provide practical advice on how to make the most of strengths and manage potential pitfalls.

Each Team Role has its own allowable weaknesses – the flipsides of strengths. These are the trade-offs that come with using a role effectively, and when recognised, can be balanced by others in the team.

Individual data can be combined to create a Belbin Team report, which analyses the team as a whole, showing how members complement one another and where their working styles may differ.

This shared understanding of behavioural contributions helps teams develop, collaborate more effectively and make sense of how colleagues respond when things go wrong.

Belbin Individual Report Team Role Feedback Showcase
Belbin And Lencioni Fear Of Conflict (1)

2. Fear of conflict

Once trust is growing, the next hurdle is conflict. Lencioni views conflict not as a negative, but as healthy debate that leads to better decisions.

Without it, teams may settle for safe but weak consensus.

Belbin helps by making team-behaviour transparent.

For example, a Shaper may thrive on challenge and directness; a Teamworker may avoid confrontation to keep harmony.

If everyone understands these tendencies, they can navigate conflicts productively. For example, the Shaper can push for a decision, and the Teamworker can raise concerns about relationships or morale. 

Recognising these styles allows the team to raise differences without personalising them.

"Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare."

Patrick Lencioni | The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

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3. Lack of commitment

When conflict is avoided, teams often skip real debate and end up with decisions that lack clarity or buy-in.

Lencioni emphasises that while full consensus isn’t always realistic, commitment means everyone being clear about what’s been decided and be willing to support it.

Belbin supports this by helping the team see who brings what to the decision-making process: the Plant can bring new ideas, the Monitor-Evaluator can critique them, the Co-ordinator can steer the discussion, and the Completer-Finisher can raise issues around deadlines or quality.

When team members know how each other contributes, they can engage with decisions more fully and feel part of the commitment rather than passive.

Belbin And Project Teams Finding The Perfect Fit
Belbin And Project Teams Flexibility Is Key

4. Avoidance of accountability

When a team hasn’t got true commitment, it often fails when it comes to holding each other accountable. People avoid difficult conversations or let standards slip.

Lencioni says this is the next dysfunction.

With a Belbin lens, the team has a shared behavioural language.

If someone with a Resource Investigator tendency is slow to follow up on leads (an allowable weakness of that role), the team can gently challenge this, and discuss strategies to manage this within the team.

For example, someone with Implementer or Completer Finisher tendencies can offer to provide structure or attention to detail.

Accountability becomes less about blame and more about role alignment.

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5. Inattention to results

Finally, when accountability is weak, individual priorities overshadow the team’s collective goals.

Lencioni says this leads to inattention to results: the team loses focus on what it must deliver.

Belbin brings a helpful perspective: no one Team Role is better than another; all bring value.

By making contributions visible and aligning roles to the team’s goals, the team can ensure that results matter more than individual egos or hidden agendas.

This clarity helps reinforce that the goal is shared success, not individual recognition.

Team Why And Objective

"Team success depends to a great extent on having members who set team goals above those of personal self-interest."

Dr Meredith Belbin | Management Teams 3rd Edition

A work in progress

Lencioni points out that it is difficult to ‘master’ these five dysfunctions, because a team’s situation is always changing.

With new members, a change in leadership, or new goals, the team may have to begin again with establishing trust.

Perhaps you have a high performing team, but you’re striving for more? Perhaps the team finds itself at breaking-point, ridden with conflict and turmoil? Maybe it is suffering from a little apathy and just needs a boost?

Whatever your situation, the language of Belbin Team Roles meets teams where they are, and provides the tools needed to help it grow.

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