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This book points to a fact that is so ubiquitous it’s invisible: human beings form tribes.
Every organization is really a set of small towns.
We call these small towns tribes, and they form so naturally it’s as though our tribe is part of our genetic code. Tribes helped humans survive the last ice age, build farming communities, and, later, cities. Birds flock, fish school, people “tribe.”
A tribe is a group between 20 and 150 people. Here’s the test for whether someone is in one of your tribes: if you saw her walking down the street, you’d stop and say “hello.”
Can you have a tribe of less than 20 people?
people. If we look into what Washington actually did, he built a single identity (measurable by what people said) to a series of networked tribes.
that has the structural integrity of the skyscraper but with Persian rugs, cherrywood tables, floor-to-ceiling windows, perhaps even a stone fireplace or two. In short, you’ll be reading about people, but with the assurance that the principles behind the stories are based on research.
The point of the interesting comparison between business books and log cabins or 1970s skyscrapers.
Every tribe has a dominant culture, which we can peg on a one-to-five scale, with the goal being stability at Stage Four, and on occasion leaps to Stage Five.
(Stage Five is unstable but can produce history-making innovation.) People and groups move only one stage at a time, and the actions that advance people from Stage One to Stage Two are different from those that advance them from Two to Three.
The mood that results from Stage Two’s theme, “my life sucks,” is a cluster of apathetic victims.
The theme of Stage Three, the dominant culture in 49 percent of workplace tribes in the United States, is “I’m great.” Or, more fully, “I’m great, and you’re not.”
The mood that results is a collection of “lone warriors,” wanting help and support and being continually disappointed that others don’t have their ambition or skill.
TECHNICAL NOTE: At each cultural stage, there is a specific “fingerprint” made up of language that people use and observable behavior toward others in the tribe. These two almost always correlate perfectly.
People trained in Tribal Leadership—and you are on your way to being one of them—can detect this mood within a few minutes of walking into a work group.
The gulf between “I’m great” (Stage Three) and “we’re great” (Stage Four) is huge, Grand Canyon huge.
A “we’re great” tribe always has an adversary—the need for it is hardwired into the DNA of this cultural stage.
Tribal Leadership for us means Stage Four, a culture based on a “we’re great” language screen emphasizing shared core values and interdependent strategies.
Most companies we’ve seen have tribes that are mixtures of Stages Two, Three, and Four, with most people hovering around the dividing line between “my life sucks” (Stage Two) and “I’m great” (Stage Three). Here’s what results: A battle ensues between the personal agenda-driven people at Stage Three and the vision-driven people who talk Stage Four, with those at Stage Two largely sitting back to see who wins.
The way to move the entire tribe’s performance to the next level is to move the critical mass to the next stage.
Tribal Leadership focuses on two things, and only two things: the words people use and the types of relationships they form.
our research stems from an ancient way of understanding people: that they—we—create our reality with language.
when a person looks out at the world, he sees it filtered through a screen of his words, and this process is as invisible to him as water is to fish.
slowly. Children usually start school at Stage Two on that first day of kindergarten—disconnected, trapped, and wanting to go home. In short, their lives suck, and that’s what they say.
Most formal education, by design, keeps people at Stage Three all the way through graduate school, with each course showing them what they don’t know (often bumping them back to Stage Two for a time), imparting knowledge, and allowing them to prove they have learned it through exams and papers. Depending on their grade and how much they care, they graduate somewhere in the Two to Three range.
Professionals usually cap out at Stage Three. Attorneys, accountants, physicians, brokers, salespeople, professors, and even the clergy are evaluated by what they know and do, and these measuring points are the hallmarks of Stage Three. “Teams” at this point mean a star and a supporting cast—
People start the climb to Stage Four in one of two ways. The first is that they have an epiphany that Stage Three won’t get them the success they crave, and then they seek out a stronger community. The second, common in high technology and the sciences, is that they join a technical project that is bigger than one person can take on. The group that forms is much closer to a real team—more than the “star and support cast” of Stage Three.
About three-quarters of workplace tribes have a cultural Stage Three or below. The goal of this book is for you to upgrade your tribes to Stage Four.
The key in locating your tribes is to listen for how most people talk, to notice how most people structure their work relationships. You’ll see elements of many cultural stages in your tribes, so look for what is most common.
Remember that Tribal Leadership is not about changing ideas or gaining knowledge; it is about changing language and relationships. It’s not about intellectualizations; it’s about actions.
You will find many free tools and resources on our Web site, www.triballeadership.net.
People at Stage One don’t believe life sucks because for them it does suck. They think they are reporting the way it is. In fact, their view of life is a direct consequence of the language they use.
As the prosecutors told us, people at Stage One don’t feel that they’ve chosen this way of living; rather, they have recognized life as it really is.
COACHING TIP: Emphasize choice.
One of the addictions people surrender to is that they’re special.
COACHING TIP: Set the boundaries, but never give up.
There are two ways to move from Stage One to Stage Two. First, the person has to substitute “life sucks” with “my life sucks”—the mantra of Stage Two.
Second, the person can move to a tribe where the offending behavior is not tolerated.
We conclude with the principle that runs throughout this book: give everyone a choice, and then work with the living; don’t try to raise the dead.
The essence of Stage Two is “my life sucks,” and it accounts for 25 percent of workplace cultures. People at this stage feel they are victims of circumstance and that there’s no way to get traction for their ideas or ambition.
Doing something about Stage Two is difficult. Most managers are trained to utilize techniques that not only don’t advance people but hold them at this zone of apathy. As a result, Stage Two is the second most common we find in organizations, after Stage Three.
Someone who works for a boss like Todd, who is typical of Stage Three (“I’m great and you’re not”), has a choice: fight the boss or give in. The person who fights it moves to Stage Three, and the battle for supremacy begins, like dogs fighting for alpha status.
The choice Roger made, as he told us, was to “suck it up.” Although still intelligent and ambitious, he temporarily became a lap-dog (his words) to get what he wanted. In the meantime, he disconnected from his passion and put up with the nonsense.
As long as people are in Stage Two, they believe their destiny is not their own. As a result they avoid accountability. People tend to use phrases like “I’ll try,” “I can’t promise,” “I’m not sure what my boss will say about that,” “That’s not possible,” “We can’t do that,” “It’s against policy,” and “I can’t make someone else do their job.”
The language system of Stage Two also deflects core values. When we asked people at this stage what principles guide their lives, we heard a sort of pseudo-wisdom. In the words of one manager at a public utility, “I thought values were important once, too, but I came to see that sort of talk just disappoints you in the end.” Stage Two has an ineffective relationship with values that comes across as cynicism, sarcasm, or resignation.
COACHING TIP: Have zero tolerance for Stage One behavior. The key to stabilizing people at Stage Two is to stay in the midst of others who don’t tolerate Stage One behavior. If they withdraw, people should go after them, attempting to bring them back into the tribe.
In a sense, Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, has become the spokesperson for people whose lives suck because, in their view, they work for an ass. Dilbert, a cartoonish parody, is uncomfortably accurate for what 25 percent of professionals in the United States experience in their everyday workplace.
While Stage Two often forms in response to evil bosses, it forms for lots of other reasons as well. In our research, people blamed lack of education, poor social networks, lack of political skill, an inability to think strategically, or an unsupportive spouse who wouldn’t let them work the extra hours required for success.
The fact is that Stage Two wants to avoid accountability at all costs and will invent reasons to remain disconnected and disengaged.
In our public seminars, we’ve developed a method to show people how quickly Stage Two can form. “I’ll tell you why my life sucks, and then you have to do the same,” we’ll say, often to groups of a hundred or more. We start, “My life sucks because I have to be here with all of you.”
This is funny--worth rereading, dare you to try it out in class! But how does one resolve the mess?
COACHING TIP: Upgrade the culture; don’t attack conspiracy theories.
