Eight people in a room.
Something is wrong.
No one in the room sees it.
You might.
A nonprofit. Youth workforce development. Quarterly strategy session.
Before anyone speaks, look at the room:
Rachel and Marcus have never sat together before.
"Before anyone speaks, I already know."
Rachel is sitting with her hands clasped behind her head. Elbows out. Leaning back.
The posture. The seating. Before anyone speaks.
Hands behind head, elbows out—dominance display. CEOs sit like that. A program director sitting like that?
Structural information.
Two people who've never sat together are now side by side. Alliances form before they're announced.
Margaret begins outlining the operational plan. Three minutes in:
A power negotiation. Rachel won.
Watch the sequence:
The message to the room: Rachel can stop the COO. Rachel can redirect the meeting.
Twenty minutes later. Margaret proposes shifting program budget to operations.
Rachel frowns. Before she speaks, Marcus leans forward:
Rachel nods. "Exactly."
They exchange a brief look. Margaret's proposal dies without a vote.
Strategic alliance. Coordinated. Tactical.
Alliances form for a reason: to accumulate power against something.
The question is: against what?
I know. You won't see it until Level 5.Here's what you don't know:
Last quarter, Rachel was deeply involved in strategic planning. Her fingerprints on every decision.
This quarter, leadership restructured. Rachel was excluded. No announcement. It just happened.
This is the first meeting since that shift.
Two dynamics. Identical behaviors. Different structures.
Dynamic 1: Reactive combativeness. She lost her platform. Restore it, she calms down.
Dynamic 2: Empire building. She's constructing a parallel power structure. Won't stop.
The behaviors look identical. You can't know which is dominant by watching.
You can only know by testing.
The next four levels go deeper.
The patterns get harder to see.