Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Five Dysfunctions of a Team on the Price Writer Podcast Episode 27
19 Plays12 days ago
Join Jeremy Keating and Catrin Townsend as they relaunch the Price Writer Podcast with a fresh new focus on books and their relevance to insurance pricing teams. In this episode, we explore The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and examine how the model applies to technical and data-driven teams in insurance. From the challenge of building trust in large departments to the value of constructive conflict, we discuss practical, real-world insights on managing teams, holding each other accountable, and avoiding the low standards that arise from unresolved tensions. Whether you're leading a pricing function or collaborating across teams, this episode unpacks how a popular business book can offer genuinely useful takeaways, even in the highly regulated world of general insurance. Expect honest reflections, practical examples, and the occasional Monty Python anecdote. PriceWriters is a training and education company focused on insurance pricing. Find out more about our engaging training, graduate schemes and workshops, by visiting 👉 www.pricewriters.com #InsurancePricing #GeneralInsurance #PandCInsurance #PriceWriter
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to PriceWriter Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
ah We just love talking about books. It's all good. I do love talking about books.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to the PriceWriter podcast with Katrin Townsend and me, Jeremy Keating. Join us as we explore the world of insurance related books. We're going to offer our insights, recommendations and also our thoughts on how to apply a wide range of books to insurance pricing roles.
Exploring 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team'
00:00:32
Speaker
So in today's podcast, we are going to talk about the five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lencioni and talk about how these actually manifest in technical teams. So hi, Katrin.
00:00:46
Speaker
Hi, Jeremy. Hello, it's good to see you and welcome to the Relaunch Pricewriter podcast. I say it's relaunch because we have got new branding and we're going to focus solely on books at the moment. So both Katrin and i read a lot of books, so it's a great topic for us to cover. And we think there's lots of insight that we can bring from the wide range of books that we read that's applicable to insurance pricing and the work that people are actually doing dayto day to day.
00:01:16
Speaker
So that's why we think the pricing community will enjoy our new podcast. Yeah, not just enjoy, but hopefully find it really beneficial and and' practical in the day job.
00:01:27
Speaker
I often find, particularly when I'm reading business books, there's all this hype about it. It might be a bestseller or something, but it just doesn't feel applicable to insurance pricing. or or you read it and you think, oh, that would be great if I was in marketing or self-employed.
00:01:44
Speaker
um But how can I apply it to a team where we're very objective, we're very data driven, we're very highly regulated. So ah big part of this podcast is not just recommending books, but also suggesting the application, suggesting the takeaways that you can put into practice, even in insurance.
00:02:09
Speaker
think that's really valid. I have often found the most useful tips, tactics, strategies and so on from very unexpected books, not books you'd necessarily think to yourself, oh, that's going to be useful for insurance pricing.
00:02:26
Speaker
So I have read quite a few of the biographies and autobiographies of the Pythons, so Monty Python, particularly I like Michael Palin and Eric Idle.
00:02:38
Speaker
and Eric Idle tells a brilliant story about when they were making Life of Brian. so He was friends with George Harrison, the Beatle. so George Harrison came out to the shoot to hang out with his friend. and Eric Idle was like, oh I'm finding it really hard, George, because I'm trying to get my material across, but trying to work with this lot, there's so many egos. And George Harrison turned around and looked at Eric Idle and said, you want to try getting in the recording studio with Lennon and McCartney?
00:03:09
Speaker
And I just think that's a wonderful way of learning about how to manage egos and projects as well. So ask yourself, Am I trying more to put my work across or should I step back and let other people do their work?
00:03:23
Speaker
So it's a simple things like that, that you pick up from books that are really unrelated to insurance, but can be really helpful. From stories like this is how I've learned to manage teams. And Katrin, you've recently read the five dysfunctions of a team, which is also about how to manage people and manage teams well.
Understanding the Pyramid of Team Dysfunctions
00:03:40
Speaker
So what's the book about? Yeah, so the key idea is that there are only ever five reasons why teams fail. And to invert that, high performance teams always show these attributes that all build on each other. So it's usually illustrated as a pyramid.
00:04:00
Speaker
The base of the pyramid is trust. rock And in the book, they use this illustration of a diverse team of about eight people and how you can increase trust through team building exercises and talking about your childhood.
00:04:15
Speaker
But realistically, know, if you're in a pricing team of 50 or even 120 people and Jeremy, you've been in big teams before, yeah how can you build trust?
00:04:26
Speaker
It's true. It is hard to build trust in teams. And you you actually almost start with a deficit of trust when you run a big team. So naturally, you've things that you can't share. So you're often privy to private information about the company and the direction of the company or private information about people in your staff and people that work for you that you obviously have to keep personal and olin so on.
00:04:50
Speaker
So it can be quite difficult even to start building trust in that way. I find one of my biggest advice for building trust is actually trying to be open and vulnerable myself and honest about my own struggles.
00:05:05
Speaker
So I've talked about this quite often before, but I found being a department head quite difficult the first time I did it. And I'm usually quite open about that with people that work for me and with the wider team.
00:05:16
Speaker
I like to signal that I do not have all of the answers, even though I am the leader. So, and one of the ways of doing that is by saying, look, I had these problems as well. If you've got these problems as well, that's why.
00:05:30
Speaker
It's quite good to, a ah really good tip for this is about reciprocation. So if somebody comes to you and tells you that they've got a particular problem, It's good, firstly, listen, take it on board and often repeat it back to them in a way that seems like a question. this is a very good sort of tip just for conversation generally.
00:05:52
Speaker
And then lead into a story that reciprocates. So what you don't do is one up them. okay so that's a mistake that people make. So don't one up them. Reciprocate with something that's happened to you and do so emotionally and make sure they know how you felt.
00:06:08
Speaker
about that situation and then they feel more comfortable sharing how they feel as well because often building trust is about aligning emotionally with people as much as it is about the sort of cerebral side.
00:06:23
Speaker
I think one of the things to be careful not to do, be careful not to end up with things like appraisals and one-to-ones just being about dirty laundry as well, it's about building trust with people through vulnerability
00:06:39
Speaker
yeah yeah that's really interesting isn't it a very soft skill um really connecting emotionally there have a bit more practical tips um but I like to build trust by always saying exactly what I'm going to do um and then doing it so so always make sure that that you are doing what you said you're to even if That means you have to under promise, but over deliver.
00:07:11
Speaker
Because I think then people really appreciate that they can trust you to do a job. And also that they trust that you haven't forgotten about them just because you've given them a long wait time to do that task.
00:07:26
Speaker
And I think as well, having a shared goal can really help build team trust. yeah you know If you all say that you want focus on profitability, but then another team over there chases a segment that's really unprofitable because they want to grow, then that does erode trust. do you think, why am i working so hard over here to to gain profitability if they're just going to throw it all away on growth? And so I think making sure you are all aligned, and I know the word aligned gets used quite a lot in companies, but making sure that you really all do have a shared goal and,
00:08:03
Speaker
Actually, that brings us on to the next stage of the pyramid, which is fear of conflict. So if you can't have that real conversation with a person or a team, or at least ah maybe expect your manager to have that conversation for you about why, why didn't that team stick to the profitability goal?
The Impact of Lack of Trust on Teams
00:08:23
Speaker
Why didn't they stick to the shared goal that we all agreed on? Then that issue, that lack of trust is never going to be resolved. And this is what Lenky only calls artificial harmony, where we all know, all know what the real issue is, don't we? But we're going to pretend it's fine because we don't want to be seen as a disruptor. We want to be seen as a troublemaker. We want to be seen as collaborative, but actually by having this artificial harmony that papers over the cracks, all it does is erodes the trust and it means that we're not fully working as a team.
00:09:04
Speaker
I do find having a clear strategy across the team does make sense. So it's something I write about in in my book particularly, but just actually making sure that people understand how they do their job in the same way.
00:09:18
Speaker
And it's frustrating in big companies, I think, because you will see a list of values and probably trust is one of them and there'll be some text next to it. But do people really live that?
00:09:31
Speaker
And and that's that's often a big question for me. How do you really achieve that? And I do think they link together quite nicely. I think it's a really good point talking about the whole fear of conflict because people should be able to disagree.
00:09:44
Speaker
So we are all clever people. We should be able to be able to have conversations in which we say, actually, my opinion's this. It's slightly different to yours and do so in a constructive way.
00:09:56
Speaker
But I actually think where we fall down on this is not... It's not that we don't disagree. It's that people often aren't really very well trained in how to disagree with people in a good way.
00:10:08
Speaker
Most of us spend eight years probably learning maths in some way, ah but we don we don't spend even five minutes being taught. Here are some tips when you disagree with someone, how to get your point across.
00:10:21
Speaker
So actually actually actually just beginning by saying, this this is a really simple tip, just begin when you are about to disagree with someone, just begin by saying,
00:10:33
Speaker
I think differently or anything that signposts that they are about to hear from you something that's different to their own opinion can be quite effective in just opening people up.
00:10:44
Speaker
I mean hopefully they won't go into a defensive mode ah but again you can actually once you get good at these things just even starting with that engaging their reaction gives you a good idea where the conversation is going to go right up front and actually just working and feeding off of how people are reacting and their own emotions.
00:11:06
Speaker
It's something we are not taught to do, but it's something that really makes disagreeing so much so much easier. and If I can use kind of the word, word easier. And over time, you will develop the ability to speak with people more frankly.
00:11:20
Speaker
once Once you get used to it, once you develop a rhythm and you get on and you work out how to do so in a way that's respectful, Typically, you will find that it becomes easier and you can disagree in often quite a frank, but often quite a kind way.
00:11:37
Speaker
What's the next step, Katrin? Yeah, so the pyramid goes on that if you've got this fear of conflict, then that will create a lack of commitment. and And part of that reason is because if you're not actually going to hold each other accountable when you don't do what you said you were going to do,
00:11:55
Speaker
then You're not going to want to be committed to stuff because why should you do your thing if someone else is maybe not going to that thing? And then that in turn then creates an avoidance of accountability.
00:12:08
Speaker
So it becomes more about that you're all right, Jack, rather than a good outcome. And so the top of this bad news pyramid is low standards.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so the idea is is that poorly performing teams have no trust that creates... fear of conflict, which creates lack of commitment, which creates avoidance of accountability, which ultimately drives these low standards.
00:12:34
Speaker
Because no one's really in charge of any one project. No one wants to be in charge because if it all goes wrong, it's going to be dumped at their door. And if there's no trust, then you're going to think everyone's going to use that against you, even if maybe they wouldn't be. But um it's really interesting how this pyramid kind of builds and builds and until you actually get the low results that...
00:12:56
Speaker
that no one wants so always going back to your point about george harrison when the team has more of a focus on ego than results on me being right rather than a good outcome or a political land grab where you don't want that person to have this project for for your own agenda then And that's really difficult.
00:13:23
Speaker
But it starts at this bottom of the pyramid that building trust and having constructive and open conflict or dialogue a challenge, whatever you want to call it.
00:13:35
Speaker
That's so important because Lenkeone says in his book that that's the foundation of everything else. And it really resonates with me in the teams that I've been in historically, you know,
00:13:47
Speaker
when things haven't been going well you see almost this pyramid crumble down to that to that issue i i must admit I think it's quite a good model i I think those five levels make sense to me. i I do try and build trust with people as a foundation. I do think there's sort of upwards from that.
00:14:08
Speaker
You can't really disagree with people in a way that will be well received unless they trust you. So as a saying isn't there that you shouldn't take criticism from people you wouldn't go to for advice. And I think that's fair. If you haven't built trust with people, you probably won't listen to them when they disagree with you.
00:14:27
Speaker
But I do, and I actually see it could be applicable in areas other than just teams and big companies, actually. That's not ah bad way of thinking about other relationships in life um with other people and more widely.
00:14:41
Speaker
So would you recommend it? Do you think I should read it? I'm actually going to say probably not. Okay. Not because idea isn't good, because as I've said, the pyramid really resonates with me.
00:14:53
Speaker
And yeah, when I look back at teams I've been in, I can see that the teams that I've been in that have performed really well, have had all of these attributes and teams that I've been in where things have not gone well.
00:15:07
Speaker
It's, it has all fundamentally come, come down to trust so i do So I do, it does really resonate and I really like it as an idea. But the book, the book is about 200 pages.
00:15:20
Speaker
And honestly, about 180 those are this narrative with this you know fictional eight person team. And I just found the narrative really uninspiring.
00:15:33
Speaker
i thought it was a little bit unrealistic. Like I actually read it and I just thought, No one would really say that. She wouldn't say that. Like if I said that to someone, I'd be laughed at the room, not, not met with like, Oh, what a thoughtful idea. And that was, you know, so I really highly recommend the last 20 pages of the book.
00:15:56
Speaker
Can I say that? okay You know, that's where the actual idea is. But to be honest, save yourself the time from the money i'll just borrow your copy and read the last 20 pages save yourself time because we've talked about the core idea here and yeah you're busy enough okay but it reminds me of um the way you described it reminds me of um who moved my cheese actually because it's like the the underlying concept is just a couple of sentences i didn't need the parable
00:16:29
Speaker
that leads to it, I could i could just happily absorb the actual information. And this five layer pyramid doesn't seem that complicated. It doesn't seem like it requires an entire book.
Critiquing the Book's Narrative
00:16:40
Speaker
It's not that complicated. I mean, he puts a bit more detail on it. Like like I said, he he shows you the inversion of the pyramid. So kind of what it would look like in a high performing team. um He talks about some of the reasons why you might have low trust or fear of conflict. It's one of those things where if your team had good trust levels and you did feel free to disagree and there was commitment, but you weren't high performing, it probably suggests you've got an issue with your top two levels, which is the low standards, the not being result driven and the avoidance accountability. So it is helpful, I guess, in terms of diagnosing what exactly is wrong with the team.
00:17:21
Speaker
But it was just quite long, like you say, it was pretty much a pyramid with some annotation and that would have been adequate for me personally. um i I just think that it's really interesting though, like how do you build trust? and And actually the narrative is all centered around some a CEO coming in and they've got this executive team um who all have their own quite large departments, but aren't working together well.
00:17:48
Speaker
So if you are in that situation, if that's where you are right now, then i you know maybe you would want to read the whole narrative to see how this applies at a higher level. But I think for me, it's that people aren't ever going to want to be accountable if they're not committed, right? I mean, we've all had situations where we actually don't really want to do the first the thing in the first place. So you don't really want your name one on the door, on the ship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everyone's had that situation, right? And and why are people not committed?
00:18:17
Speaker
Well, because... yeah often because they fundamentally disagree with the direction that we're traveling in yeah so and the reason they disagree and it's not that what we're saying that people you have to hash it out and everyone has to be happy and all has to be you know tell democracy or something but it's more everyone feels like their idea has been put forward properly listened to properly really considered and then The idea that is chosen reflects a lot of those views. And even if people don't fully agree with the final decision or they would have preferred something different, people can say, okay, but I do feel like i was listening to the process of the conflict and the challenge has made me feel valued.
00:19:01
Speaker
And I understand why this was chosen. So I'm happy to... you know, to jump on the bandwagon go along with it. And so it's not always about everyone having to agree with you all the time. It's more just how can you come up with something, a final outcome that people can engage with meaningfully.
00:19:22
Speaker
I think you really hit it with the listening though, didn't you? Because um I just i just think that's just one of the best advices you can give to anyone working anywhere. It's all, even in life, it's just listen to people, actively listen, appear to be listening to people.
00:19:39
Speaker
So think particularly in what we do, we tend to get this idea that we're analysing data and we've got firm, concrete answers from it.
00:19:50
Speaker
Here are my answers. So you should do the thing that my answers say that you should do. And the trouble is that what we actually produce are opinions. So we all grow up doing our maths classes and everything has got a definite answer.
00:20:04
Speaker
So we go into work thinking that it's the same in work. So we've analysed data, we've done maths, we've come up with an answer, this is the thing you should do. But it's not, it's opinions, it's a different circumstances. You could come up quite easily with other answers and people will challenge you on the answers you come up with.
00:20:24
Speaker
So I think actually listening to people, And there's no there's no way to indicate more to people that you aren't interested in them than if you don't listen to them. It's really terrible when you can tell in a meeting or a presentation that people aren't listening.
00:20:39
Speaker
And, you know, perhaps some of that is on the presenter to be more interesting and engaging. But when people aren't engaged, it is quite quite insulting. Or if somebody challenges you back and you're just spending that time thinking about how you're going to tell them they're wrong once they've finished answering their question, these are just not good ways to work together with people.
00:21:00
Speaker
So, yeah so I think actually listening, listening to lots of people, that's the best way to indicate you have trust with people and to start building up the rest of the the rest of the pyramid.
00:21:12
Speaker
I just add to that is trust the fundamental thing to engagement. Like, for example, you know, if there are some people in my life who if I was talking to them and they their phone buzzed and they got out and and they were answering it, you know, or they were they were on their phone or in front of me, I'd be like, I wow, this must be really important to you.
00:21:33
Speaker
Like this, you must have something really big going on because I trust that you wouldn't do that. You know, they i i wouldn't necessarily say that out loud, right? Because i would that would be a weird thing to say. But, you know, I have this trust that, like, actually, they would be giving me their full attention unless that thing is really, really season important. And so, yeah yeah, it's not that you always have to be sitting there and go, hmm, yes, I totally agree. You know, that's not what it is about, right? yeah It's about being like, this is important conversation have. So we're going to give a bit, we're going to give the right amount of space to it.
00:22:01
Speaker
We're not going to try and rush it. We're not going to try and cram it in to a five minute meeting slot if if people still have more opinions. But yeah, I think it's also about the, what you do outside of that time as well.
00:22:13
Speaker
Because if you've built up enough of that, I'm going to trust currency. just made that time up. Yeah, I think that's fair. If you always do what you say you're going and you are generally that kind of listening person, then at the times that you can't be, for whatever reason, that happens to everyone, you know.
00:22:34
Speaker
um life happens all right so whenever that can't happen then I think it does give you more grace for for those times when that's not possible so I think yeah it's but it's about setting up that kind of habit in your life I see that trust trust builds up as a currency that you have between people and you can then spend it on conflict I suppose in a way um i' not sure about that all right right Do you know I think it's one of those difficult things, right? Because everyone knows that they should be better at listening.
00:23:08
Speaker
And everyone wants to be a trustworthy person. no one No one thinks of themselves as being an inherently untrustworthy person. So I know we all want to think that we are good listeners as well. So everyone knows this is what they should be doing.
00:23:25
Speaker
And it's almost about how in a and a world where your phone is always buzzing and you've got emails and Teams and endless whatsapp groups and you've got people trying to grab you as you're getting a coffee in the office and you've got all this other stuff how people who make their point in the longest roundabout way possible as well yeah how can you really make sure that you are giving the focus more matters that's a real real challenge It's true, definitely.
00:23:56
Speaker
Well, it's good to know that we are comfortable with selling people not to read a book here on our first episode, especially when it's sold 3 million
Conclusion and Pricing Professionals
00:24:05
Speaker
copies. But if it's not right for pricing professionals, then it's not right.
00:24:09
Speaker
So next time, we'll keep exploring this topic with a very good book that i read recently, which is Rebel Ideas by Matthew Saeed. So I'm really looking forward to talking about this one.
00:24:20
Speaker
But for now, we've got our own rebel idea, which is not to bother with five dysfunctions of a team. So thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time.
00:24:36
Speaker
Pricewriters is a training and education company focused on insurance pricing. Find out more about our engaging training, graduate schemes and workshops by visiting pricewriters.com.
00:24:50
Speaker
That was very good.