Five Dysfunctions of a Team PowerPoint: Facilitator Guide
- Jonno White
- Jan 31, 2019
- 6 min read
Last updated: July 2026
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is Patrick Lencioni's model for diagnosing why teams struggle, arranged as a pyramid: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. A five dysfunctions of a team PowerPoint turns that model into a workshop tool leaders can run with their own staff.
Jump to: The Pyramid · The PowerPoint · Making It Engaging · Trust · Conflict · Accountability and Results · Difficult People · Key Takeaways · FAQ
As of July 2026, global employee engagement sits at just 20 percent, its lowest level since 2020, and Gallup puts the cost of that disengagement at an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity worldwide. Most of that erosion traces back to teams, not individuals: when the people at the top of an org chart cannot resolve their own dysfunction, everyone below inherits it.
I'm a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, certified through Patrick Lencioni's Table Group, and the author of Step Up or Step Out, and what follows comes from real sessions with real teams, not just the theory.
What the Pyramid Actually Says
Lencioni's model stacks five dysfunctions on top of each other, each one built on the failure below it: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. Fixing a team means starting at the base, not skipping straight to the top.
Most leaders I work with want to jump straight to the accountability layer, because that's the one that feels most urgent day to day. It rarely holds, because a team that has not built trust will not tolerate the conflict that real commitment requires.
Download the Five Dysfunctions of a Team PowerPoint
The PowerPoint below breaks Lencioni's pyramid into five slides, one per dysfunction, each paired with the practical result of leaving it unresolved, so a leader can walk a room through the model without building slides from scratch.
Download the Five Dysfunctions of a Team PowerPoint here. It's all Lencioni's own material. I've simply broken it down, one dysfunction and its result per slide, so it's easy to explain the pyramid to a room that has never seen it before.
Make the Dysfunctions Engaging, Not Just Informative
A slide deck on its own tends to read as theory, so pairing each dysfunction with a short interactive moment is what actually gets a room to recognise itself in the model. What I've found genuinely helps in both workshops and keynotes is turning the dysfunctions into something people solve rather than something they're told.
Try a short puzzle or a set of riddles, split the room into small teams, and only reveal which dysfunction the exercise maps to afterward. Ask people to share a time they personally saw the dysfunction play out, then connect what they describe back to the slide. That link between someone's own story and the framework is what makes the pyramid stick.
Absence of Trust Is Where It Actually Starts
Absence of trust sits at the base of the pyramid because it is what everything else depends on: a team that cannot be vulnerable with each other will not risk the conflict, commitment or accountability the higher layers need. As Patrick Lencioni puts it, “the key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage.” I've watched teams that had worked together for a decade still lack this kind of trust, and newer teams build it in a single honest session, because it was never about tenure.
Why Teams Avoid the Conflict They Actually Need
Fear of conflict shows up as artificial harmony: a room that nods along in the meeting and re-litigates every decision in the corridor afterward. Gallup data reported by Forbes in 2026 found that only half of leaders strongly agree they know what their coworkers are actually expected to work on, and fewer than four in ten say their team takes time to reflect on how to improve, both symptoms of a team that has never had the argument it needed to have.
HBR contributing editor Amy Gallo puts it well: “those moments of tension are not only inevitable, but necessary.” In the rooms I run, the goal is never conflict for its own sake. It's getting the real disagreement out in the open before it becomes a decision nobody actually supports.
Turning Reflection Into Weekly Habits
Lack of commitment and avoidance of accountability tend to travel together: a team that never truly committed to a decision has nothing solid to hold each other to. Gallup's 2026 workplace data shows manager engagement has dropped nine points since 2022, from 31 percent to 22 percent, erasing the engagement edge managers used to hold over the people they lead. A struggling manager rarely builds an accountable team underneath them.
The fix I come back to most often is structural rather than motivational: a short, consistent weekly rhythm where the team reports against what it actually committed to, not a status update in disguise. That same weekly rhythm is what catches inattention to results early, because it forces the team back to one shared, visible scoreboard instead of individual status and ego. More on running weekly tactical meetings.
The Hardest Part: Difficult People and Difficult Conversations
The most common challenge I hear from leaders working on building healthier teams is how to deal well with the one person who resists every layer of this pyramid at once. Avoiding that conversation is usually what's actually keeping the team stuck, not the person themselves.
My book, Step Up or Step Out, walks through the process I use: re-clarify or change expectations with that person directly, so there is no ambiguity left for either of you, and give the relationship a defined window to shift. Handled this way, a difficult person typically steps up or steps out within four weeks.
Key Takeaways
1. The five dysfunctions build on each other in order: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, results, so fix the base before the top.
2. A five dysfunctions of a team PowerPoint is only as useful as the discussion it triggers, not the slides themselves.
3. Vulnerability-based trust is built through courage in the room, not through time served together.
4. Weekly, structured reflection is what turns commitment into accountability rather than a one-off workshop moment.
5. A difficult team member is usually a clarity problem first and a character problem second.
FAQ
Is the Five Dysfunctions of a Team PowerPoint free to use?
Yes. The version linked in this guide is a free download built from Lencioni's own model, broken into one slide per dysfunction. I use the same deck in my own keynotes and workshops.
What are the five dysfunctions of a team?
In order from the base of the pyramid: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. Each dysfunction is built on the one below it.
How long does it take to fix a dysfunctional team?
There's no fixed timeline, because it depends on how deep the absence of trust runs. In my own sessions, teams usually see a real shift in how they handle conflict within a few structured sessions, though sustained change takes ongoing weekly habits, not a single workshop.
Do I need to read the book before running the workshop?
No. The PowerPoint is designed to stand on its own for a first session. Reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team afterward deepens the model, but it isn't a prerequisite for using the slides with your team.
How is this different from a Working Genius session?
The Five Dysfunctions model diagnoses what's broken in how a team operates together. Working Genius, which I'm also certified to facilitate through Patrick Lencioni's Table Group, looks at where each person's energy naturally comes from. They're complementary, not competing.
How do I handle a difficult team member during this process?
Start by re-clarifying expectations directly with them rather than avoiding the conversation, which is the approach I set out in Step Up or Step Out. Most of what looks like a character problem is actually an ambiguity problem.
If you'd like an outside facilitator to run this process with your own team rather than doing it solo, that's exactly the kind of session I run for schools, corporates and nonprofits, so reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org.
I'm Jonno White, a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, keynote speaker and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, certified through Patrick Lencioni's Table Group, and the author of Step Up or Step Out, with more than 10,000 copies sold. I host The Leadership Conversations Podcast and work with schools, corporates and nonprofits around the world.
Compiled from Patrick Lencioni's published model, not from a survey.