21 Vital Strategies for Team Results Focus Lencioni

Inattention to results is the fifth and final dysfunction in Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team model. It occurs when team members prioritise their individual goals, departmental interests, career advancement, or ego ahead of the collective results of the team. When this happens, the team exists in name only. It is a collection of individuals pursuing separate agendas rather than a unified group working toward shared outcomes.

Lencioni places results at the top of his pyramid because it is the ultimate purpose of every team. Trust, conflict, commitment, and accountability are not ends in themselves. They are the means by which a team achieves its collective goals. A team that has mastered the first four behaviours but loses focus on results has built a beautiful foundation for nothing.

The challenge is that individual recognition, departmental success, and personal career advancement are powerful motivators that compete with collective results. Leaders who tolerate or even reward individual achievement at the expense of team outcomes create a culture where the team's purpose is secondary. The result is silos, politics, and an organisation that underperforms relative to its talent.

Below are 21 vital strategies for building a results-focused leadership team. If you want help building a results-oriented culture on your team, reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org.

1. Define Results Collectively

The first step in building a results-focused team is agreeing on what results matter. Lencioni argues that the leadership team must identify a small number of specific, measurable outcomes that define success for the entire team, not just individual departments. These collective results become the standard against which every decision and every action is evaluated.

Without collective results, each team member defaults to optimising their own department. Marketing measures marketing metrics. Sales measures revenue. Operations measures efficiency. None of these individual metrics tell the team whether the organisation as a whole is succeeding. Collective results provide a shared scoreboard that unites the team around common outcomes.

2. The First Team Concept

Lencioni introduces the concept of the "first team" in The Advantage. Every leader sits on two teams: the leadership team they belong to and the departmental team they lead. Lencioni argues that leaders must consider the leadership team their first team, prioritising its collective goals over their departmental interests whenever the two conflict.

This is one of the hardest shifts for leaders to make. Most leaders rose through their functional area and identify strongly with their department. Asking them to prioritise the leadership team feels like betraying their people. But without this shift, the leadership team cannot function as a team at all. It becomes a collection of departmental ambassadors negotiating for resources rather than a unified group pursuing collective outcomes. For a deep dive on this concept, see our Advantage summary.

3. Results Require Accountability

In Lencioni's model, results sit directly above accountability. The connection is straightforward: without peer accountability, team members are free to pursue individual goals without consequence. The team may agree on collective results, but if no one holds anyone accountable for contributing to those results, individual priorities will always win.

Building a results-focused team therefore requires building accountability first. The team must be willing to call out behaviour that prioritises individual interests over collective outcomes. This includes the uncomfortable conversation when a leader advocates for their department at the expense of the team's shared goals. For strategies on building this discipline, see our peer accountability guide.

4. Create a Visible Scoreboard

One of Lencioni's most practical recommendations is to create a visible scoreboard that tracks the team's collective results. The scoreboard should be simple, visible, and updated regularly. When the team's results are visible to everyone, it creates natural motivation and accountability. People work harder when they can see how their efforts contribute to the team's progress.

The scoreboard also eliminates ambiguity about what matters. When the team can see at a glance whether they are on track for their collective goals, it becomes much harder to justify prioritising individual or departmental interests. The scoreboard makes the team's priorities tangible and impossible to ignore.

5. Use a Thematic Goal to Focus the Team

Lencioni's thematic goal concept from Silos, Politics and Turf Wars is one of the most powerful tools for focusing a team on collective results. A thematic goal is a single, qualitative, time-bound priority that serves as the team's rallying cry for a defined period. It answers the question, "What is most important right now?" and aligns every member's energy around a shared purpose.

The thematic goal works because it transcends departmental boundaries. It is not a marketing goal or a sales goal or an operations goal. It is the team's goal, and every department contributes to it. This shared ownership of the priority creates the conditions for collective results focus. For a complete breakdown, see our Silos summary.

6. Reward Collective Achievement Over Individual Performance

If the organisation's reward system celebrates individual performance while paying lip service to team results, leaders will rationally prioritise individual achievement. Lencioni argues that reward structures must align with the team's stated values. If collective results are the priority, then recognition, bonuses, and advancement must reflect collective achievement.

This does not mean eliminating individual recognition entirely. It means ensuring that the team's collective results are the primary measure of success. When leaders know that their individual success depends on the team's collective outcomes, they naturally shift from departmental optimisation to cross-functional collaboration.

7. Identify and Eliminate Status as a Distraction

Lencioni identifies individual status as one of the primary distractions from team results. When leaders are more concerned with their personal reputation, career trajectory, or political standing than with the team's outcomes, they make decisions that serve their ego rather than the organisation's needs. Status-driven leaders hoard information, avoid risk, and resist changes that might diminish their influence.

The antidote is a culture where collective results are the primary source of status. When the team celebrates shared achievements and when leaders are evaluated primarily on how they contribute to the team's goals, the pursuit of individual status becomes less attractive and less rewarding. For more on this dynamic, see our Motive summary.

8. Results Must Be Specific and Measurable

Vague goals produce vague results. Lencioni emphasises that collective results must be specific enough that the team can objectively determine whether they have been achieved. "Grow the business" is not a result. "Increase revenue by 15% while maintaining client retention above 90%" is a result. The specificity creates accountability and eliminates the ambiguity that allows individual priorities to dominate.

Specific results also enable honest assessment. When the team can objectively determine whether it has succeeded or failed, there is no room for spin or selective interpretation. This honesty, while sometimes uncomfortable, is essential for a team that wants to learn, improve, and consistently achieve its goals.

9. Address Ego Directly

Ego is the most persistent threat to collective results. Every leader has an ego, and every ego prefers individual recognition over anonymous contribution to team success. Lencioni does not suggest that ego can be eliminated. He suggests that it must be acknowledged and managed. Teams that openly discuss the tension between individual ego and collective results are better equipped to navigate it.

The leader must go first, as with every other behaviour in Lencioni's model. When the leader publicly prioritises the team's results over their own recognition, it gives permission for others to do the same. When the leader takes credit for the team's work or prioritises their personal brand, it signals that ego is the real currency.

10. Eliminate Silos Through Shared Objectives

Silos are the natural consequence of a team that lacks results focus. When each leader optimises their department without regard for the team's collective outcomes, the organisation fragments into competing fiefdoms. Lencioni's solution is to create shared objectives that require cross-functional collaboration, making it impossible for any single department to succeed in isolation.

Shared objectives force leaders to collaborate rather than compete. When the head of marketing and the head of sales share responsibility for revenue growth, they must work together. When the head of operations and the head of product share responsibility for customer satisfaction, they must align. Shared objectives break down silos by making collective results everyone's responsibility.

11. Review Results as a Team

Lencioni recommends that teams review their collective results together regularly, not just through reports but through genuine discussion. What are we achieving? Where are we falling short? What needs to change? These conversations, conducted honestly and without blame, keep the team focused on outcomes and prevent the drift toward individual priorities that happens when results are not regularly examined.

The review should focus on collective outcomes first and individual or departmental performance second. When the team's shared results are the starting point of every review, it reinforces the message that the team succeeds or fails together. Individual performance is relevant only insofar as it contributes to or detracts from the collective outcome.

12. Make Results Time-Bound

Open-ended goals erode urgency. Lencioni emphasises that results must be time-bound: the team should know not just what it is trying to achieve but by when. Quarterly milestones, monthly check-ins, and weekly progress reviews create the cadence of accountability that keeps the team focused and prevents the slow drift toward complacency.

Time-bound results also create natural moments of honest assessment. At the end of each quarter, the team can evaluate its performance against its stated goals and adjust its approach for the next period. Without these natural checkpoints, it is too easy for the team to lose focus and for individual priorities to gradually overtake collective ones.

13. Distinguish Results from Revenue

Not all team results are financial. Lencioni argues that limiting the definition of results to revenue or profit misses the broader picture of organisational health. Results might include employee retention, customer satisfaction, product quality, innovation, culture, or market position. The leadership team must define which outcomes matter most for this season and hold itself accountable to all of them.

This broader definition of results prevents the short-term thinking that comes from focusing exclusively on financial metrics. A team that achieves its revenue target while losing its best people and damaging its culture has not truly succeeded. Holistic results reflect the full picture of organisational health and long-term sustainability.

14. The Leader Must Subordinate Personal Ego

In The Motive, Lencioni argues that the most important distinction in leadership is between leaders who are motivated by the reward of the role (status, power, recognition) and those who are motivated by the responsibility of the role (serving the team, building the organisation, achieving collective goals). Results-focused leaders fall into the second category.

The leader's willingness to subordinate their personal ego to the team's results is the single most powerful driver of a results-focused culture. When the leader gives credit to others, celebrates team achievements over personal wins, and makes decisions that serve the organisation even at personal cost, it creates a culture where collective results are genuinely valued.

15. Link Individual Goals to Team Results

Every individual goal on the leadership team should be explicitly linked to the team's collective results. When a leader's individual objectives are derived from the team's shared priorities, there is no tension between personal success and team success. They become the same thing. This alignment eliminates the competing priorities that cause teams to lose results focus.

The practical step is to derive individual objectives from the team's thematic goal and defining objectives. Each leader should be able to explain exactly how their individual work contributes to the team's collective results. If they cannot, their priorities need to be realigned.

16. Celebrate Collective Wins

How a team celebrates reveals what it truly values. If celebrations focus on individual achievements, the team learns that individual performance is what matters. If celebrations focus on collective milestones, the team learns that shared results are the priority. Lencioni recommends that teams deliberately celebrate collective wins to reinforce the results-focused culture.

Collective celebrations also build the relational bonds that sustain trust, conflict, commitment, and accountability. When the team pauses to acknowledge what it has achieved together, it reinforces the identity of the team as a team, not just a group of individuals who happen to report to the same leader.

17. Address Departmental Bias Openly

Every leader brings a departmental bias to the leadership team. This is natural and not inherently problematic. It becomes problematic when the bias is unacknowledged and unchallenged. Lencioni recommends that teams discuss their departmental biases openly, acknowledging that each leader will naturally advocate for their area while committing to prioritise the team's collective results.

When biases are named, they lose their power. A leader who says, "I know I am biased toward my department here, but I genuinely believe this is the right decision for the team," is demonstrating both self-awareness and commitment to collective results. A leader who advocates for their department without acknowledging the bias is undermining the team's trust and focus.

18. Results Focus Requires Organisational Clarity

In The Advantage, Lencioni identifies six questions of organisational clarity that every leadership team must answer. These questions, which include "Why do we exist?", "How do we behave?", and "What is most important right now?", provide the context within which collective results are defined and pursued. Without this clarity, each leader interprets the team's purpose differently.

Organisational clarity ensures that the team's results are aligned with the organisation's purpose, values, and strategy. When every leader shares the same understanding of why the organisation exists and what it is trying to achieve, collective results become a natural expression of that shared clarity. For the full framework, see our Six Questions of Clarity summary.

19. Avoid the Temptation of Departmental Heroics

Departmental heroics occur when a leader achieves impressive results for their own area while the team's collective results suffer. This is a subtle form of inattention to results because the leader can point to their departmental success as evidence of their contribution. But if the team's shared goals are not being achieved, departmental success is irrelevant at best and actively harmful at worst.

Leaders must be willing to sacrifice departmental results when necessary for collective success. If the team's thematic goal requires reallocating resources from one department to another, the leader whose department gives up resources must support the decision fully. This is the essence of the first team concept and the ultimate test of results focus.

20. Results Focus Compounds Over Time

When a team consistently achieves its collective goals, it builds confidence and momentum. Team members experience the payoff of subordinating individual interests and see that collective focus produces better outcomes for everyone. This positive reinforcement strengthens the team's results orientation over time, creating a virtuous cycle of focus, achievement, and renewed commitment.

Conversely, when a team consistently fails to achieve collective results, individual priorities re-emerge as team members lose faith in the collective approach. Sustained results focus therefore requires not just the right culture but also the right strategy. The team must set goals it can realistically achieve and build from early wins to increasingly ambitious targets.

21. Results Are the Purpose of the Team

Lencioni's entire Five Dysfunctions model exists to serve one purpose: producing collective results. Trust, conflict, commitment, and accountability are not goals in themselves. They are the conditions that enable a group of talented individuals to achieve outcomes that no individual could produce alone. A team that has strong trust but poor results has not yet fulfilled its purpose.

This final insight is both a challenge and a comfort. It is a challenge because it reminds us that relational health without results is incomplete. It is a comfort because it provides a clear and objective measure of team effectiveness. The question is not whether the team likes each other. The question is whether the team achieves what it sets out to achieve, together.

What to Do Next

Identify your team's collective results for this quarter. Make them specific, measurable, and time-bound. Create a visible scoreboard and review it at the start of every team meeting. Ask each leader to explain how their individual objectives contribute to the team's shared goals. These simple disciplines will begin to shift your team from individual focus to collective results focus.

If your team struggles with results focus because the prerequisite behaviours of trust, conflict, commitment, and accountability are not yet in place, start at the foundation and work up. For help building a results-focused leadership team, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does inattention to results mean in Lencioni's model?

Inattention to results occurs when team members prioritise individual goals, departmental interests, career advancement, or ego over the team's collective outcomes. It is the fifth dysfunction in Lencioni's model and represents the ultimate failure of a team to fulfil its purpose.

What is the first team concept?

The first team concept means that leaders prioritise the leadership team they belong to over the departmental team they lead. When collective decisions conflict with departmental interests, the leader supports the leadership team's direction. This shift is essential for collective results focus.

How do you measure collective team results?

Collective results should be specific, measurable, and time-bound outcomes that the entire team shares. They go beyond financial metrics to include employee retention, customer satisfaction, product quality, and other measures of organisational health. A visible scoreboard helps track progress.

What is a thematic goal?

A thematic goal is a single, qualitative, time-bound priority that rallies the entire team around a shared purpose. It transcends departmental boundaries and answers the question "What is most important right now?" Patrick Lencioni introduced this concept in Silos, Politics and Turf Wars.

Why does ego undermine team results?

Ego causes leaders to prioritise personal recognition, career advancement, and departmental success over collective outcomes. When individual status matters more than team results, leaders make decisions that serve themselves rather than the organisation. Lencioni identifies this as a primary obstacle to results focus.

How does results focus connect to the rest of the Five Dysfunctions model?

Results sit at the top of Lencioni's pyramid, supported by accountability, commitment, conflict, and trust. Each behaviour depends on the one below it. Without trust, there is no conflict. Without conflict, no commitment. Without commitment, no accountability. Without accountability, no results. The entire model serves results.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, bestselling author, and Certified Working Genius Facilitator specialising in organisational health. His book, Step Up or Step Out, has sold over 10,000 copies globally and equips leaders with practical strategies for difficult conversations and conflict resolution.

Jonno hosts The Leadership Conversations Podcast, reaching listeners in over 150 countries across 230+ episodes. He works with CEOs, school principals, and executive teams across Australia, the USA, UK, Singapore, Canada, and India, delivering keynotes, workshops, executive team offsites, and facilitated strategic planning sessions using Patrick Lencioni's frameworks.

As a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, Jonno helps teams build both relational health and operational effectiveness. His services include Working Genius facilitation, DISC workshops, StrengthsFinder sessions, executive coaching, and leadership team development. To discuss how Jonno can help your leadership team focus on collective results, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

21 Essential Tips for Peer Accountability Lencioni

Results focus depends on peer accountability. Where this article focuses on collective outcomes, our comprehensive guide to peer accountability covers 21 essential tips for building the discipline that makes results possible.

If your team struggles with results because no one holds each other accountable, start with the accountability guide.

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