50% of business people are at what Tribal Leadership calls Stage 3: "I'm Great, You're Not". You must lead people to an Epiphany to break through.
I'm a fan of Michael Hyatt. He had a blog post quite some time ago about a book called Tribal Leadership. I was thinking it had to do with some of the buzz around Seth Godin's version of Tribes so I entered a draw to win it. I don't win many things but I'm sure glad I won this book.
It ended up being very different than what I thought. What Seth Godin calls tribes is what Michael Hyatt calls a Platform: a group of people who have similar interests and want to hear what you have to say. It turns out Tribal Leadership isn't about those types of tribes at all (although there could be cross over). This book is all about the culture within teams and organizations - how people interact with one another.
On my third reading of this fantastic book, I thought I'd put together a little review and a "Colin's notes" edition.
Funny enough I couldn't stand doing book reports in school and now, as I find they might be useful, need to be good at writing them. The teachers were right - who knew. So, much to your dismay, this may not have all the makings of an "A"-worthy paper.
Tribal Leadership (Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization) is written by Dave Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright. Dave and John are founders and Partners of CultureSync while Halee is a former Partner. CultureSync is a Management Consulting firm specializing in Cultural change and strategy.
The book is broken down into six parts.
Part I
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The Tribal Leadership System explains Corporate Tribes, as well as the Five Tribal Stages and the Navigation System.
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Part II
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Your Journey as a Leader: Leading Others Through the Stages breaks down the Tribal Stages One through Three, the Epiphany and resulting Stage Four.
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Part III
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Owning Tribal Leadership: Stabilizing Stage Four speaks to core values and noble causes, triads and networking and the Tribal Leader's Guide to Strategy. Understanding triads is best done by reading the book. Overly simplified, we're talking about higher level stages recognizing the limited effect of dyadic (one to one) relationships and embracing triadic (one to one to one) as most valuable to all parties.
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Part IV
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Toward Vital Work Communities (Stage Five) goes into details about the stage every company would love to be in where the statement is "Life Is Great".
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Afterword
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what's new with Tribal Leadership
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Appendices A, B, C
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A Tribal Leader's Cheat Sheet, the Story of their research and how to reach them respectively.
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Throughout the book, many people are interviewed at different levels in their tribal journey. Some of whom you get to see their mindset and language at multiple levels. These stories are fantastic illustrations and very helpful in painting the picture. Specifically in helping the reader identify themselves and their peers more vividly.
This book really explained so many things I see in day to day leadership. In a sense, labeling what's happening. At the same time, however, it also teaches leaders how to "unstick the conveyor belt" to allow people to move up through the stages.
Looking around at the people I work with, go to church with and even those in my family, I'm able to hear the language they use and effectively open their opportunities to grow and allow them to see greater success in their lives.
For a fun homework assignment, read the book then go and watch Office Space. It's referenced in the book and the characters in the movie are very clearly illustrated examples of the Tribal levels.
Along with books like "Good To Great" by Jim Collins, this is one of the must read books for anyone wanting to lead people successfully.
I would also suggest tuning in to CultureSync for some free tools and what I would consider some revolutionary thinking around corporate culture.
Go, buy this book, you and your team will be grateful you had.
Rating: 4/5
Have you have read it, what did you think?