...given that every organisation is a microcosm of tribes!
'why is it that you go into some companies and leaders seem to do everything wrong and yet that company does well and you go into sother companies and leaders seem to do evrything right and yet and nothing good happens?The question and answer posed by Dave Logan to an interview with Stuart Varney on Fox, is that, 'it's cultural and has to do with these naturally occurring groups that happen within organisations'.
The book titled, 'Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright'explores organizational echo systems that are made up and run by tribes consisting of between 20 to 150 people.
Tribes coallesce into groups through shared mind-sets and worldviews about work, life and the cymbiotic relationship that culminates in work ethos or lack there of. And this is reflected in the language indivduals use to describe their current experience.
The heart of Tribal Leadership -on the level..erm, stage
Logan, King and Fischer-Wright designate the mind set stages as follows: "Stage 5," or the "Life is great" stage, is a plateau beyond "We are great" (Stage 4) and even further up on the scale of cultural improvement than "I'm great" (Stage 3), "My life sucks" (Stage 2), and "Life sucks" (Stage 1).
The goal as tribal leaders is to create more effective organisations and climates that nurture teams and individuals and to achieve this you've got to get them to stages 4 and 5.
Stages 4-5 are where real team-work whose fundamental foundation is shared values and these are based on triadic-relationships that releases individuals from the confines of 'lone ranger' hero roles that require so much energy and are typical of stage 3. At stage five you no longer consider competitors, but the possibility of how far can you go.
Stage 3 heroics, and you can read between these lines and imagine the mind sets and corresponding baggage that forms part of the make up of typical stage three archetypes. The main challenge is to demonstrate to this tribe that channeling their efforts collaboratively will reduce burn-out, nurture relationships and achieve even greater results. But they need to see this with a different mind-set.
Being a Multilingual Tribal leader who has been through the stages helps...
A tribal leader needs to be multilingual, and can only therfore coax and coach people into higher stages by understanding what behaviours need to be tansformed and what corresponding activities need to be undertaken within those mind sets including relationship building.
An organisation that consistently outperfomrs others as though it is on steroids, according to the authors and their research, are those that nurture and promote the majority of the invididuals within an organisation into stages 4 and 5.
The authors have created the tribal working model based on a study 24,000 people in over two dozen organization over an eleven year period.
But there are chances for tribal member to relapse into lower stages...
Tribal Leadership acknowledges the fact that negative external circumstances within organisations can trigger relapses that will spiral people down into lower stages. They authors provide examples of 'dot coms' that exprienced problems, went down the tubes and so did invididual with their corresponding behavioural responses to the crisis. The authors stated that they didn't know how to remedy this situation.
According to the book called 'Afluenza', by oliver james, he exaplains that extrinsic drivers are the very malady that propels people to depression and negative behaviour (this books quotes, tons, and tons of research). Individuals driven by extrinsic values define themselves by their title, achievement, bank account, CV, mortage, holidays, etc. As soon as circumstnaces arise that will shatter the status of this external driven because those very things that define him wil be taken away, then they will spiral ino lower stages.
As a leader within an organisation you have to understand each mindset, the corresponding language, the triggers and the leverage points that will propel people into higher stages of effectiveness.
This book is a definite must read ;-) I thoroughly recommend it.
Related books, articles & references...
Author's intervieved on fox business news - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybxMVkTH2A
How to Succeed? Make Employees Happy (Time Magazine)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1818183,00.html
Guiding leaders to advance firms' tribes to higher values
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/books/20080224_Guiding_leaders_to_advance_firms_tribes_to_higher_values.html
Tribal Leadership website
http://www.triballeadership.net
Cornell University School of Hotel Administration (US)
This niche site has some interesing research related to 'job satisfaction and well being'
You have to go through the search results to pick out the gems
http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/search/search.html?query=%22job+satisfaction%22
Google Scholar also produced some results that need to be filtered when loking a the terms Stress and profitability
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=stress%2Bprofitability&hl=en&lr=
Afluenza by Oliver James (Paperback - 27 Dec 2007) (link to my amazon)
Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Pete Sanders and Tim Sanders (link to my amazon)
Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (link to my amazon)
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter... by Daniel Goleman (link to my amazon)
