Tribal Leadership

Tribal Leadership explains the various roles people take on in organizations, showing you how to navigate, connect, and lead change across the five different stages of your company’s “tribal society.”

No matter how prehistoric the word “tribe” may sound to you, it is still the basic social structure today. This is just how humans are wired. We need others not only to survive but also to learn, thrive emotionally, and pursue projects that would be impossible to complete alone.

In his book Sapiens, Y. N. Harari argues that an average person can maintain personal connections with up to 150 acquaintances. This is roughly how big a tribe can get before it starts splitting into groups. Usually, a tribe consists of somewhere between 20 and 150 people. This was true for our ancestors 40,000 years ago, and hasn’t changed much since.

You are a part of several tribes throughout your life. Some of these groups include your family, school, local fishing club, and workplace.

Where you work is a perfect example, because it illustrates the main purpose for a tribe’s existence: working individually on different tasks, while contributing to a common goal. This ensures that everybody plays a part and has a chance to build something bigger than themselves.

A tribe fulfills it’s purpose most effectively when progression reaches stage four or five. But how do you define those stages?

Within a company, a tribe is typically bigger than a team but smaller than the organization as a whole. All members of the tribe know of each other’s existence, but the degree to which they interact varies. The interactions and relationships between individuals determine the overall culture. We cannot overestimate the importance of human connections, and this is not just Logan’s theory, either. In his best-selling book Tribes, Seth Godin also argues that powerful links between people are the biggest advantage the group can ever have. So, what kind of connections do we mean here? First of all, they need to stem from the sense of security each individual has about their own position. People must feel safe enough to put collaboration over competition. This personal sense of safety is what the leader needs to foster at stage three. When people feel safe, tribal interactions begin to focus on collective goals and unite around shared values. At this point, people start forming groups of three instead of two, or triadic relationships rather than dyadic. Triadic relationships facilitate collective growth. In the words of Logan: “Triads lead to a blurring of roles between client, service provider, friend, mentor, and coach. Once the triad is established, all the roles merge and morph, requiring each person to contribute to, and receive contributions from, the…