book report: tribal leadership by dan logan
This first book report is a book I recommend to everyone I know who works as a people manager!! It’s required reading for anyone who wants to improve team performance and the individual job satisfaction of their reports.
For me personally, I’ve led two high-powered remote engineering teams at very large organizations (~900 and 5,000 employees respectively) since adopting this book’s practices.
At both organizations my team responses were well above organizational averages for nearly every employee engagement survey metric.
They both delivered first of their kind applications for their respective organizations, regularly outperforming expectations.
In midst of all this, 64% of my reports were promoted!
"Tribal Leadership" is a theory of leadership that emphasizes how leaders can cultivate a high-performing team of leaders, and it’s not just the usual stuff. It’s pointed, actionable, and one doesn’t need to read every chapter to begin putting it to work.
There are five stages, or head spaces, that people vacillate between throughout their lives. Each stage can be identified not only by people’s actions, but the words people use to communicate. Tribal Leadership teaches us to focus on this language and team behaviors to trouble shoot issues as you seek to turn a group of disjointed individuals into a cohesive high performing team.
5 Key Takeaways
People don’t use their words, they are used by their words.
Upgrade the culture. Tribal Leadership focuses on language and behavior to upgrade the culture.
Together is better. We start to overcome Stage Three by recognizing that there is no legacy in going at it alone.
Values come first. Wildly successful organizations talk about values even when it appeared they could least afford to do so.
Be great at something, world class if possible.
