One of the most helpful insights into team/cell dynamics is knowing the typical cycle that groups go through. There are various versions, the most popular being ‘forming: storming: norming: peforming’. It certainly helps me to know that ‘storming’ is an important and inevitable part of the process rather than a sign of failure (storming is the honeymoon ends, and we stop become disillusioned, simply because we’re not maintaining the illusion of pretending to be nice to each other all the time.

I’ve also found the Belbin team roles which, I teach on regularly, really useful.

Over the past eighteen months though, I’ve found an even more helpful framework from a gem of a book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. It’s a ‘must read’ for anyone leading a team/cell/missional community.

It’s a management/business book which comes in the form of a simple fictional (and slightly cheesy) story through which he gives a framework for understanding five issues that most often hold teams back. Each ‘dysfunction’ is caused by a failure to address the previous one.

They are
1. Lack of trust: We’re working together but I don’t share anything vulnerable of myself in the process.
2. Lack of conflict: We don’t genuinely say what we think as issues are discussed, feeling free to disagree vigorously.
3. Lack of ownership: Because I didn’t express my reservations, I don’t fully buy into the process and decisions.
4. Lack of accountability: We don’t hold one another accountable to follow through on the things we are each responsible for.
5. Lack of commitment to team results: To use a football analogy (painfully current!) a player finishes a match elated that he scored a hat-trick even though his team lots 4-3.

Lencioni’s writing here and in some of his other books on conflict as something not just good but essential is particularly helpful. (In Death by Meeting for example he reckons that lack of the right sort of conflict is the reason most meetings are boring).

Go buy.