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NM Freemason · Skills & Drills · Chapter 64

Building Teams (and Failing Forward)

Drawn from published Masonic monitor content. See site Credits for source citations.

Vocabulary (10)

Team (as sub-group of the tribe)
A small group inside the tribe that does specific work. The Lodge's tribe is everyone; the teams are the committees, the line, the small clusters formed for a project. Published distinction from the York Rite Leadership 201 curriculum: the tribe holds the team accountable to the tribe's mission; tribal leaders do not lead the team's day-to-day work (that's micromanagement). Tribal leaders set the team's objective, then follow up at agreed intervals.
Five marks of a great team
The published checklist for what makes a team work, from the leadership curriculum: clear objectives, clear roles, flawless communication, cooperation, and individual development within the team. The list is the diagnostic for any team that has gone sideways: ask which of the five is broken, and start there. Teams without clear objectives drift; without clear roles, they argue; without communication, they duplicate; without cooperation, they compete; without development, they stagnate.
Law of the Inner Circle (Maxwell)
Maxwell's eleventh Irrefutable Law: "A leader's potential is determined by those closest to him." The inner circle is the small group a leader keeps closest, the four-to-six people whose judgment he trusts most. The published claim: a great leader with a weak inner circle stays a great leader privately but cannot scale his work; a good leader with a strong inner circle becomes more than he could be alone. Pick the inner circle deliberately; don't drift into it.
Law of Empowerment (Maxwell)
Maxwell's twelfth Irrefutable Law: "Only secure leaders give power to others." Empowerment is delegation done right: select the best person for each job; explain the duties, expectations, and goals; show how the job fits the big picture and why it matters; make sure he has the resources; give responsibility and the authority to carry it out; communicate frequently without watching over his shoulder; praise frequently. Insecure leaders hoard authority. Secure leaders give it away on purpose.
Law of Victory (Maxwell)
Maxwell's fifteenth Irrefutable Law: "Leaders find a way for the team to win." The published note: defeat is not an option in the leader's mind, but "victory" doesn't mean overpowering an enemy; it means finding a path to the outcome the team is working toward, often through cooperation and creativity rather than force. The Craft's brotherly love and relief charges sit underneath this law: a team that wins by burning bridges hasn't actually won.
Five Dysfunctions pyramid (Lencioni)
Patrick Lencioni's published diagnostic from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2002), bottom to top: (1) Absence of Trust — the foundation; without it, nothing above it works. (2) Fear of Conflict — teams without trust avoid productive disagreement and settle for artificial harmony. (3) Lack of Commitment — without genuine debate, no one feels truly committed to the decisions. (4) Avoidance of Accountability — without commitment, no one holds anyone else to their word. (5) Inattention to Results — without accountability, individual goals replace shared ones. Fix from the bottom up.
Tuckman's stages
Bruce Tuckman's published 1965 model of how groups develop, with a fifth stage added in 1977: Forming (polite, getting to know each other, low productivity), Storming (conflict emerges, roles get contested, productivity drops), Norming (the group settles into working agreements), Performing (the group does its actual work well), Adjourning (the group disbands or transitions). Skipping Storming is not possible; suppressing it just delays it. Leaders who recognize the stages stop panicking when the team enters Storming.
Failing Forward (Maxwell)
Maxwell's published frame from Failing Forward (2000): there is no such thing as failure, just information. The team that treats a missed objective as data (what did we learn, what will we adjust) comes back stronger; the team that treats it as a verdict (whose fault, who to blame) comes back smaller. The Craft's published charges call this same posture brotherly love in practice: how the team handles the brother whose part of the work didn't land.
Growth mindset (Dweck)
Carol Dweck's published research (Mindset, 2006). A growth mindset treats ability as developed through effort; a fixed mindset treats it as innate. Teams with a growth-mindset culture treat mistakes as opportunities to learn; teams with a fixed-mindset culture treat mistakes as evidence of who shouldn't be on the team. The same brother in the two cultures will produce different work, because the cost of being honest about a mistake is different.
Monitor and Review
The published practice for keeping a team on track: at regular intervals (weekly or per-project) ask the four questions: What has the team achieved so far? What did we change? What did we learn? What is working well? What aspects of teamwork need improvement? The cadence matters more than the depth; a short weekly review beats an annual deep dive every time. Tuckman's stages tell you what to expect each phase; Monitor and Review checks where the team actually is.

Sequences (4)

Building a team from scratch, the five-mark sequence

Use this when you're standing up a new team (a committee, a project group, a charity drive). Don't skip steps; teams that skip a step come back to fix it later, more expensively.
  1. Clear objectives: name the outcome in one sentence. "Deliver a Past Masters Night for forty brothers by November 15th." The team should be able to recite it.
  2. Clear roles: who owns what? Who's the lead, who's the deputy, who's responsible for food, for ritual, for the announcements? Write it down.
  3. Flawless communication: how does this team talk to each other? Email? Group chat? Weekly call? Pick one channel and a cadence.
  4. Cooperation: name the working agreements. We respond within X hours; we surface problems early; we don't hold grudges; we ask before we assume.
  5. Individual development: each team member gets one thing he's growing through this assignment. Name what; check in on it.

Diagnosing a stuck team via Lencioni's pyramid

When a team has gone sideways, don't argue about the symptoms; diagnose at the lowest level still broken. Fix from the bottom up.
  1. Trust: do team members assume the best about each other's intentions? If no, that's the foundation; nothing above it will hold.
  2. Conflict: when there's disagreement, does it surface and get worked out, or get suppressed into artificial harmony? If suppressed, the team is at risk.
  3. Commitment: after a decision, does everyone genuinely commit, or do some people quietly disagree and drag their feet? Without conflict surfaced, you can't get real commitment.
  4. Accountability: do team members hold each other to their word, or does only the leader hold anyone accountable? Peer accountability is what teams need; leader-only accountability doesn't scale.
  5. Results: does the team focus on the team's results, or do individual goals quietly replace them? If individual goals win, the team isn't a team anymore.

Recovering from a missed objective, the Failing Forward sequence

When (not if) the team misses a deadline, delivers a poor product, or has a public stumble. The sequence matters; the team is watching the leader handle it.
  1. Acknowledge it plainly. Don't soft-pedal, don't blame, don't dramatize. "We didn't deliver what we said by the date we said. Here's what happened."
  2. Ask the four learning questions: What did we change? What did we learn? What's working well? What aspects of teamwork need improvement?
  3. Make one or two concrete adjustments. Not ten. Pick the highest-leverage change and commit to it.
  4. Decide whether to redo, retry, or release. Not every miss needs another attempt. Some are signals to change direction.
  5. Move forward without dragging the failure behind you. The team that processes the data and moves on builds resilience; the team that re-litigates erodes.

The Monitor and Review cadence

The simplest discipline for keeping a team on track. Use it every week, or every cycle of the work, depending on the project's rhythm.
  1. What has the team achieved so far this period? Name two or three specifics.
  2. What did we change? Decisions made, course corrections, role adjustments.
  3. What did we learn? One sentence per team member, if useful.
  4. What's working well? Reinforce the patterns worth keeping.
  5. What aspects of teamwork need improvement? Name one. Pick the most actionable; defer the rest to next week.

Multiple-choice (10)

1. What's the published distinction between a tribe and a team in this chapter's frame?
  1. Tribes are larger; teams are smaller. That's the only difference.
  2. The tribe holds identity; teams do specific work. Tribal leaders set the team's objective and follow up; they don't lead the team's day-to-day (that's micromanagement) ✓
  3. Tribes are formal; teams are informal
  4. Tribes are voluntary; teams are mandatory
2. What are the five published marks of a great team?
  1. Money, talent, equipment, time, luck
  2. Clear objectives, clear roles, flawless communication, cooperation, individual development ✓
  3. Strong leader, weak followers, clear hierarchy, strict deadlines, regular reviews
  4. Trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, results
3. What does Maxwell's Law of the Inner Circle claim, and what's the practical advice?
  1. A leader should isolate from his team
  2. A leader's potential is determined by those closest to him; pick the inner circle deliberately rather than drifting into it ✓
  3. Inner circles are corrupt by definition
  4. Inner circles should be as large as possible
4. What does Maxwell's Law of Empowerment say about who gives power away?
  1. Only weak leaders give power away
  2. Only secure leaders give power to others; insecure leaders hoard authority, secure leaders delegate on purpose ✓
  3. Empowerment is the same as abandonment
  4. Power should be kept at the top
5. In Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions pyramid, what sits at the base — the foundational dysfunction that, if present, makes the others inevitable?
  1. Inattention to results
  2. Absence of trust ✓
  3. Fear of conflict
  4. Avoidance of accountability
6. What's the full ascending order of Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions (bottom to top)?
  1. Inattention to Results, Avoidance of Accountability, Lack of Commitment, Fear of Conflict, Absence of Trust
  2. Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, Inattention to Results ✓
  3. Fear of Conflict, Absence of Trust, Lack of Commitment, Inattention to Results, Avoidance of Accountability
  4. Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, Results
7. What are Tuckman's stages of group development?
  1. Start, Middle, End
  2. Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjourning ✓
  3. Plan, Do, Review, Adjust, Repeat
  4. Recruit, Train, Deploy, Evaluate, Retire
8. Why does the chapter say leaders should stop panicking when a team enters Storming?
  1. Because storming means the team is failing
  2. Because Storming is a normal developmental stage; conflict surfaces, roles get contested, and the team passes through it on the way to Norming and Performing ✓
  3. Because Storming is the productive stage
  4. Because Storming means the team has too many members
9. What does Maxwell's Failing Forward say about a team that misses an objective?
  1. Disband the team
  2. There is no such thing as failure, just information; the team that treats a missed objective as data comes back stronger, the team that treats it as a verdict comes back smaller ✓
  3. Replace the team leader
  4. Try the same approach harder
10. What's Dweck's distinction between growth and fixed mindset, applied to a team?
  1. Growth-mindset teams grow; fixed-mindset teams shrink
  2. A growth-mindset team treats mistakes as opportunities to learn; a fixed-mindset team treats mistakes as evidence of who shouldn't be on the team — same brother, different cultures, different work ✓
  3. Growth-mindset teams are larger
  4. There's no difference