Podcast - Episode 0069 - Tribal Leadership

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In this episode Joel and Antonia talk about having Dave Logan at TEDxSinCity and his book Tribal Leadership. It is a great model for building businesses “on purpose.”

In this podcast on Tribal Leadership you’ll find:

• Have you ever been in a company where people seem to be very alive? Or maybe on a company where morale is low?
• Company culture is important because it can make or break your company.
• How do you get that desired culture and make sure that everyone else is onboard with morale?
• How do you bring everyone to the same level?
• Tribal leadership is one of the best leadership models to not only figure out but also have an action plan to bring people to higher levels.
• In business, it’s really important that your people are empowered at their jobs/roles.
• We love creating tribes as people. Whether it’s at the workplace or a small group, we just love tribes.
• In the book (Tribal Leadership), a tribe is described as a group of people comprising about 20 and 100 people. If it’s less than 20 people, they call it a team. If it’s over 150 people the tribe divides into two different tribes. This is because 150 people are too many to handle and manage.
• You can tell what makes a tribe successful based on its culture.
• Tribes are almost always powerful than leadership.
• If you want to change the culture, you alter the language or the words that are used in the culture.
• The culture of the tribe is all about stories and narratives, like how we believe we’re communicating with each other within the tribe.
• The 5 stages of culture levels.
• Tribal 1. Behavior is undermining. The language being used at this level is “Life Sucks”. Only 2% of the population is at level 1. Anything new that’s introduced will be dealt with suspicion. People in this level will assume that more will come. There’s a sense of undermining anything that can possibly be positive.
  • One the best ways to help move people from level 1 to 2 is to alter the language being used. Reinforce the concept that other people’s lives don’t suck. Introduce the idea that other people are having an awesome time at work. This will help them realize and reframe their mentality. Help them understand that there’s positivity happening elsewhere. Encourage them to join group meetings and have people articulate success and great positive stories. Keep the negative language at a minimum. Encourage them (people at 1s) to no longer hangout with other
• Tribal 2. Instead of the universe sucks and seeing the world as a terrible place, people of this level thinks that their life sucks and everybody else is having a great time. Instead of being aggressively undermining, it’s more of a victim mentality. Instead of being alienated from the team, it’s more of separation. 25% of people are at this level.
  • To get a 2 up to 3, it’s a matter of changing the language and then really helping them understand that they do bring something to the table. Encourage them to establish those 1-1 relationships. Assign them projects that will give them quick success. Give them the emotion of empowerment.
• Tribal 3. This has the highest level of population at 49%, nearly half of everybody. “I’m great, everybody else sucks”. It’s the idea of “you’re awesome and everybody else sucks”. The behavior is described as a “lone warrior”. This can be seen in many types of cultures. Everybody wants to be the expert. You can see this in the professional world like doctors, lawyers and architects. People in level 3 have this mentality because there is no actual goal that the community is working toward. Since there’s no bigger goal to accomplish and you can only see competition.
  • In most cases, you will see 3s organically level up to 4s as they grow older. It’s the language of making everyone feel that they’re all awesome. Have bigger ideals that everyone is working towards. The ideals does not have to be corporate missions. It could just be core values. Core values create a language and story amongst the tribe.
• Tribal 4. “We’re Awesome” and the other tribe sucks. At this level, the importance of relationships is understood in a deeper level. Access to resources are done triads. The resource is able to expand his networking reach. The idea is about being awesome and how we’re all great as a tribe. Tribal 4 is a bit idealistic. Example: professional American football.
  • When 4s work on a project, that’s when they level up to 5. When the project is over, they shift over to 4 and check in what the competition is doing.
• Tribal 5. This group only has 2% of the population. “Life is great”, “The universe is great and everyone is wonderful”. There’s a lot of infrastructure alteration in order to attain 5 and you need to go through all these levels to get there.
• 5 is not the end goal. 4 is the sweet spot and they just become 5 from time to time when they are working on a project.
• This model doesn’t only help figure out where we’re at, it also helps us understand our narratives and figure out how we can move to the next phase.
• So what tribal level are you in? Can you be a leader in the tribe? Can you be somebody who encourages people to get to the next level? What is the healthier level you can go to in order to increase positivity? What environment are you looking for to plug yourself into if you want to get to the next level? Let us know on the comments section.

Dave Logan at TEDxSinCity 2011 Talking About Tribal Leadership

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