The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

Lencioni opens Chapter 3 by inviting readers to picture two contrasting leadership teams: one built on trust, open debate, and shared commitment, and the other marked by guardedness, artificial agreement, and siloed goals. This sets up his central claim: No organization can be healthy if its leadership team is fractured. Much like a family depends on united parents, companies rely on cohesive leadership to set the tone for the entire culture.

To define what cohesion looks like in practice, Lencioni draws a clear distinction between a true leadership team and a “working group.” Working groups, like golf teams, operate in parallel with little need for collaboration. Leadership teams, by contrast, resemble basketball teams—interdependent and constantly adjusting. Effective leadership teams are small, mutually accountable, and focused on collective outcomes. Lencioni shares client examples, including the breakdown of a bloated 17-member “Noah’s Ark” team, and optional exercises like personal history sharing or personality assessments such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) that help foster trust grounded in vulnerability.

The chapter also revisits Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions model: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results, each illustrated with consulting anecdotes where breakthroughs occurred when leaders embraced vulnerability, allowed healthy conflict, and held peers accountable.