UD4 Upwardly divided L4 teams (most at L4, minority at L5)
Stratum 5 Teams: Reshaping competitive position and business model
In an upwardly divided L4 Team, most team members are self-authorers, while a minority is capable of self-aware meaning making beyond their own status boundaries.
Most team members are acting based on their own idiosyncratic value system, while a minority (which might be a single individual) is aware of, and looking for feedback on, limits of his/her own value system and vision.
The majority is potentially conflicted due to a large number of idiosyncratic value systems coming into play.
A minority of team members is able to set transformational goals and may even exert leadership, but the majority is afraid of “opening the floodgates”, thus resisting leadership as potentially threatening their own status and ideology.
A self-aware leader may use the interpersonal process to advance the task process, but his or her hold on the team is fragile.
Most likely, the leader is in need of (political or moral) support for dealing with majority defenses against transcending “cage of integrity” behavior that is based on fear of self revelation and detachment (lack of intimacy)
Behavioral Indicator
Communication: tends to be dominated by self-serving expression of own values and restrained, or hindered, by fear of being shown the limits of one’s value system and ideology.
Relationship of interpersonal to task process: task process becomes a topic of dialog rather than only discussion, thus entering into balance with interpersonal process
Conflict management: a function of the political (or other) power of self-aware members of the team; humble inquiry.
Need for, and relationship to, power: need for power is mitigated by perception of common ground of what is individually valued; relationship to power is beginning to shift to acceptance where one’s own prevailing is seen as of minor value.
Optimal conditions for team success: overcoming ideological (value-based) divisions within the team due to seeing “the big picture” of the team’s task and consequences of its achievement.
Team Cohesion: a result of conflictual consensus recognizing the legitimacy of differences articulated in a tolerant space of acceptance; limits of rational discussion (logic) seen clearly.
Leadership sharing: possible among the self-aware group, if there is one; otherwise defined by competence sharing in the self- authoring group.
Optimal problem solving and planning methods: arises from a focus on reshaping competitive position and letting go of entrenched personal positions.
Ability to handle risk: risk is defined as risk of letting go of defenses against intimacy in dialog.
Optimal leader: a self-aware individual who is also organizationally powerful and humble in his/her presence, and is able to put asking over telling (and doing)
Team Design Constructs and Behaviors made possible by Otto Laske IDM