Tribal Leadership (Logan, King, Fischer-Wright)

I picked up this book Thanks to a tweet from an agile friend. Lately I've been hearing the term tribal leadership in different contexts, so I decided to find out what all the fuzz is about.

The first impression is positive, as the authors set the scene by explaining the vast amount of research (10 yrs, 25000 subjects) that forms the base for this work. Still, the languge is easy on the brain, and it is clear that a substantial effort has been invested in making the book accessible to a wide audience.

The authors describe five stages that organizations and individuals may go through. Each of the stages are summarized as a t-shirt slogan that a person in that stage may wear. Of course the stages are described in detail as well, but I found the slogan to be especially helpful as a memory tool. Each of the stages are illustrated using real case examples from various fields, starting with criminals for stage one and ranging to extremely productive medical research companies for stage five. The picture below is a screenshot of my notes of the overview of the five stages, with the t-shirt slogans in the shaded ovals.

For each of the stages, the reader is given a list of signals to look for when identifying the stage of a given group of people as well as hands-on advice on how to coach people on their journey through the stages. Interestingly enough, the authors claim that we all have to go through all the stages in order to hopefully advance to the highest, fifth stage. That helps remove the element of judgement in the model. A group in stage three, for instance, is not a bad group; they just happen to be at that stage of their journey at this moment.

Tribal leadership is certainly one of the more inspiring books I've read lately. The five-stage model helped me better understand situations I've found myself in during my professional life. This is the kind of book that has the potential to make the world a little better.

www.triballeadership.net