Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

by Seth Godin

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.

Generous and authentic leadership will always defeat the selfish efforts of someone doing it just because she can.

Consumers have decided, instead, to spend time and money on fashion, on stories, on things that matter, and on things they believe in.

Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.

The best thing is that you don’t need to wait until you’ve got exactly the right job or built the right organization or moved up three rungs on the corporate ladder. You can start right now.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change that you believe in.

Movements have leaders and movements make things happen.

Leaders have followers. Managers have employees. Managers make widgets. Leaders make change.

Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread.

Leaders make a ruckus.

The skeptical among us look at the idea of leadership and we hesitate. We hesitate because it feels like something we need to be ordained to do. That without authority, we can’t lead.

Leadership doesn’t always start at the top, but it always manages to affect the folks at the top. In fact, most organizations are waiting for someone like you to lead them.

Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate. They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow them.

Improving a Tribe As we saw earlier, it takes only two things to turn a group of people into a tribe: • A shared interest • A way to communicate The communication can be one of four kinds: • Leader to tribe • Tribe to leader • Tribe member to tribe member • Tribe member to outsider So a leader can help increase the effectiveness of the tribe and its members by • transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change; • providing tools to allow members to tighten their communications; and • leveraging the tribe to allow it to grow and gain new members.

Tribes, though, aren’t about stuff. They’re about connection.

They wanted to be part of something that mattered.

Everything I did was for us, not for me. I didn’t manage; I led.

Most organizations spend their time marketing to the crowd. Smart organizations assemble the tribe.

If you want us to follow you, don’t be boring.

“Good enough” stopped being good enough a long time ago. So why not be great?

Fans, true fans, are hard to find and precious. Just a few can change everything. What they demand, though, is generosity and bravery.

Whatever the status quo is, changing it gives you the opportunity to be remarkable.

Look around. You’ll see that the marketplace (every marketplace) rewards innovation: things that are fresh, stylish, remarkable, and new.

Interesting side effect: creating products and services that are remarkable is fun. Doing work that’s fun is engaging. So not surprisingly, making things that are successful is a great way to spend your time.

Part of us wants stability. We want the absence of responsibility that a factory job can give us.

What you won’t find in a factory is a motivated tribe making a difference.

I believe you can talk over the fear, laying out a game plan that makes the fear obsolete.

The only thing holding you back is your own fear.

When you are leading a tribe, a tribe that you belong to, the benefits increase, the work gets easier, and the results are more obvious. That’s the best reason to overcome the fear.

What people are afraid of isn’t failure. It’s blame. Criticism.

We choose not to be remarkable because we’re worried about criticism.

One bad review doesn’t ruin my day because I realize what a badge of honor it is to get a bit of criticism at all. It means that I confounded expectations—that I didn’t deliver the sequel or the simple, practical guide that some expected. It means that, in fact, I did something worth remarking on.

It’s nice to get paid. It’s essential to believe.

Great leaders are able to reflect the light onto their teams, their tribes.

Great leaders don’t want the attention, but they use it. They use it to unite the tribe and to reinforce its sense of purpose.

The first thing a leader can focus on is the act of tightening the tribe.

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable.

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers. It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail. It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo. It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.

Leadership is a choice. It’s the choice to not do nothing. Lean in, back off, but don’t do nothing.

a motivated, connected tribe in the midst of a movement is far more powerful than a larger group could ever be.

You’re not going to be able to grow your career or your business or feed the tribe by going after most people.

Almost all the growth that’s available to you exists when you aren’t like most people and when you work hard to appeal to folks who aren’t most people.

Nobody is going to listen to your idea for change, sagely shake his head, and say, “Sure, go do that.” No one anoints you as leader.

Change isn’t made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.

the only thing holding you back from becoming the kind of person who changes things is this: lack of faith. Faith that you can do it. Faith that it’s worth doing. Faith that failure won’t destroy you.

Faith leads to hope, and it overcomes fear.

without faith, the leap never works.

Faith is critical to all innovation. Without faith, it’s suicidal to be a leader, to act like a heretic.

Changing things—pushing the envelope and creating a future that doesn’t exist yet (at the same time you’re criticized by everyone else)—requires bravery.