DD4 Downwardly divided L4 teams (most at L4, minority at L3)
Stratum 4 Teams: Rethinking profitability and creating breakthroughs
In a downwardly divided L4 team, most team members reside at self-authoring level, while a minority remains other-dependent.
A majority of members is acting from their own self- authoring principles and value systems, while a smaller number of individuals still follow others’ expectations.
This team tends to have a hierarchical profile where those who define strategy beyond member consensus are seen as authorities to follow or as obstacles to shared action.
Other-dependent members of the team tend to subordinate their ideas as well as themselves to those they appoint to positions of power, abdicating leadership.
Due to a self-authoring majority, the task process (focusing on goals to be accomplished) moves closer to coming into balance with interpersonal processes.
Leadership tends to be exerted by team members seen as “experts”, morally or in terms of task-related competences.
Behavioral Indicator
Communication: characterized by the struggle to subordinate inter-personal process to task process, and “get to work”.
Relationship of interpersonal to task process: consensus-based inter-personal process tends to hinder visionary task process (regression).
Conflict management: focal conflict between business as usual (L3) and creating breakthroughs (L4).
Need for, and relationship to, power: self-authoring minority will grab power masked as “consensus” if distribution of political power permits.
Optimal conditions for team success: task process (goal pursuit) winning out over interpersonal process.
Team cohesion: focussed on the future of the business (mission) as envisioned by majority
Leadership sharing: based on distribution of required competences.
Optimal problem solving and planning methods: developing and testing alternative strategies empirically.
Ability to handle risk: depends on ability to see “the big picture” in order to weigh the severity of potential failure.
Optimal leader: the person with the highest level of fluidity of dialectical thinking who can model for team members a world in transformation
Team Design Constructs and Behaviors made possible by Otto Laske IDM