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Design of Teams

🌓 The Stratum 4 Team

Accountability: Rethinking profitability and creating breakthroughs.

🌔 The Stratum 5 Team

Accountability: Reshaping competitive position and business model.

Introduction to Team Design Constructs

Every existing team is divided into a majority of higher/lower developed, and a minority of lower/higher developed, team members.

This intrinsic developmental conflict in teams (say, between L2 and L3, instrumental vs. other-dependent) accounts for both their failures and potential successes.

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Embedded in just one of three developmental ranges, each team naturally embodies a peculiar tendency toward mental growth.
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Team Leaders managers and external team coaches who can assess this tendency are better equipped to support and scaffold team development.

The nature of the developmental tendencies found in the three developmental ranges differ:

  • L2 to L3: have a tendency toward other-dependence
  • L3 to L4: are on a search for authenticity
  • L4 to L5: are on a search for transcending own limitations and joining a bigger vision of the world.

Behavioral Prompts for Team Design

Communication: how do people who make different kinds of meaning of the team’s purpose and goals manage to “understand” each other?

Team Cohesion: what holds a team together? How are different accountabilities defined in a team? What is the team’s relationship to other teams in the organization, seen as “them” versus “us”?

Relationship of interpersonal to task process: is team members’ relationship issues trumping the furtherance of tasks and goals in the team, or vice versa?

Optimal problem solving and planning methods: relative to the team’s specific universe of discourse (focus of attention), what are the most effective planning and problem solving procedures?

Conflict management: what is the root of the conflict in a team, and how is it managed?

Optimal conditions for team success: under what conditions do developmental differences in the team contribute to the team’s success?

Need for, and relationship to, power: do those more highly developed also have more political power? How do those less developed relate to team members in power?

Leadership sharing: does team consensus enable sharing of responsibility and leadership?

Optimal leader: given that developmental diversity in the team is high, what person in what role can be considered the team’s virtual or actual leader?

Ability to handle risk: can taking personal risks be expected from team members, and what scaffolding for taking risks is needed from a coach?

Team Design Constructs and Behaviors made possible by Otto Laske IDM

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