Tribal Leadership – What level of leadership are you at?
There are many perspectives about what leadership is and how it should be done. Contrary to many recipe books on this topic, Tribal Leadership is a useful tool to assess the stage of your personal leadership style and evaluate the impact and the consequences of each stage. Although the backdrop of the book is that a higher leadership stage is better, the real value for me was as a tool to understand the culture and more importantly the people we deal with as part of Agile transitions.
While the majority of leaders in the work place are at stages 2 and 3, Tribal Leadership shares tools and insights to help individuals and organizations break through to the next evolutionary stages – which are usually much easier for a transition.
To help you get a gist of where you may stand as a leader and possibly help you determine at what level people you work with are, the authors provided on their web site a quick map (below).
As Agile coaches, we must often work with teams and their leaders. Understanding the behaviours of the leaders and their motivation is extremely useful. As such, the book presents a model allowing the transformation of Level 1 leaders to higher levels – granted most people start at level 2 or 3.
The book provides rich insights into human behaviour, group dynamics and individual motivation. Overall, it provides a good framework to understand people’s behaviors and with some clear thinking, can lead into actionable strategies to help support an agile transition.
Tribal Leadership is available in audio book [285 Mb zipped file] and in a traditional book format (Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization).
See Dave Logan’s presentation at TED.
HI,
I have something to share…. about triads – Tribal Leadership
A bit about me:
I have been Strategist for 13 years (consultant and exec), and before that a software architect/engineer (wrote the trading program for the Swiss Stock Exchange) and national bridge champion. I have been an Introduction Leader for Landmark Eduction and love the Wisdom area, the concepts of discourses in culture, families, organisations really are at the source of the persistence of much with human beings.
I am an Aussie. living in Sydney who spent some time in Silicon Valley as a VP at Phoenix Tech. In 2008 I listen to Dave Logan’s keynote at the Conference From Global Transformation. Dave produced some powerpoint slides that mapped the “Business Terministic Screen” and the “Transformation Terministic screen” to demonstrate the world apartness … the concerns of the world that is, and the concerns of a world worth living in.
In Phoenix Tech I hired two Landmark senior graduates and created a triad “all for one and one for all” lived… we had one of the worlds top trainers as a coach. In addition to our day jobs, we delivered an impossible project, an e-commerce launch at CES in just 35 days with 200 people involved and were acknowledged by the CFO as :”creating a space of good vibes and volunteerism” – from tribal leadership, agile approaches… and our training as Landmark Introduction Leaders. We got fired in the second rounds of downsizing during the GFC.
I occasionally talk to Dave Logan on Skype and he shared that transformation doesn’t last… e.g. when Brad Mills left Lonmin Mining… what was created for 500,000 lives began to disappear. There are too too few leaders…..
I got the idea for a bottom up approach,,, with one of the guys from Phoenix we are engaging the market from the transformation terministic screen… the commercials contain triads as the way we operate and restructure operating units/management team in businesses …. We expect to close the first assignment in a small FX retail trading firm this week….. both of us lead assignments for different firms (I lead stuff for 3 different advisory companies) …. so already we have transcended something…
Rather than the doing/processes/outputs of strategy and planning making a difference … in the last two years in customer management teams and boards … I have been effective from the ontological realm… dealing with fears and inauthenticity…. … only then can advice be heard.
“Listen for, and reliably deliver, that which makes a real difference to what people are dealing with and what they really care about”
Will let you know what gets created ….
Cheers
John