There is a fundamental principle of the United States military that sets us apart from military-headed countries around the world: we have elected civilian leadership at the helm.

President Barack Obama is the duly elected commander-in-chief of that military. He deserves nothing less than the unvarnished truth from his generals behind closed doors, and nothing less than complete and utter respect in public.

That’s where General McChrystal failed, and it would be appropriate for the President to fire him.

But there’s a deeper issue here as well.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Patrick Lencioni’s work on teams, and his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a great read.

In the model Lencioni developed, there are five dysfunctions many teams encounter:

• Absence of trust: if team members don’t trust each other, progress grinds to a halt
• Fear of conflict: good conflict is necessary to test ideas and let the good ones survive
• Lack of commitment: if we don’t care about the success of our team members, the team will fail
• Avoidance of accountability: shifting blame when the results aren’t there
• Inattention to results: caring more about individual success than the team’s results

General McChrystal didn’t exhibit every one of these dysfunctions, but the Rolling Stones article certainly demonstrated several of them.

• It appears that he didn’t trust almost every member of the team, from the President on down. The only fellow team member he appeared to trust was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because she agreed with his point of view.
• It’s interesting to note that Ambassador Eikenberry appears to have engaged in “avoidance of accountability” with the leak of the cable that might allow him to later say “I told you so.” But it was General McChrystal who allowed that breach to fester into an even deeper absence of trust and lack of commitment.
• Finally, it’s pretty clear that there is a strong lack of commitment to the team. A true leader would have been able to say “I may not have fully agreed with that person, but we discussed it extensively and I support the decision the team made.” If he couldn’t say that, the right thing to do was resign and criticize from the outside.

Picture yourself in the shoes of any other member of the team that General McChrystal made those disparaging comments about. Ask yourself if you could trust and be committed to his success after those comments were made about you.

If General McChrystal was the first to decide he needed to resign, then he did the honorable thing. If the President was one who made that decision, I can’t disagree with his call. If we’re going to succeed in Afghanistan, we need a cohesive national security team that works together.