After a 10-year study of over 24,000 employees across multinational corporations, our team came to a startling conclusion about leadership: the more you develop yourself as a leader, the less of a leader you are.
How could this be? We ourselves were dumbfounded when we asked the leaders of Fortune 500 companies for the key to their success. They each had the same answer: “Don’t ask me. I didn’t do anything!”
Finally, however, the answer became very clear: the leader does not shape the organization. It’s the culture.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast, any day of the week. So the successful leaders were the ones who stopped focusing on themselves, and created a world class culture. This made their leadership appear “effortless” to both them and everyone around them because they leveraged the strength of the entire group, or as we say, “tribe.”
This leads to a very important finding: if you are empowering yourself instead of your tribe, you are hurting your company.
So it doesn’t matter how many books you read, it doesn’t matter how much training you’ve had, it doesn’t even matter if you are strong at execution. You could be checking off to-do’s left and right with efficiency that would make David Allen cry, and yet still you would not create a thriving organization.
Tribal Culture
We now know the key to having a world class organization is to develop a world class culture. But what is culture exactly? And where can it be seen?
A better question is actually where can culture be heard, because culture lives in language. If you think about it, most of our work is made up of communication…emails, meetings, documents, proposals, instructions… they all live in the domain of language.
After 10 years of study we realized there are 5 stages of language that determine the culture of the tribe:
Stage 1 – “Life sucks”
Here, people say life is unfair, and to survive, anything is permissible. Stage 1 runs the show in criminal clusters, like gangs and prisons, where the theme is “life sucks,” and people act out in despairingly hostile ways. In a corporate sense, this could be seen in the Post Office during the early 90’s.
Stage 2 - “MY life sucks.”
People in this stage are passively antagonistic, crossing their arms in judgment yet never getting interested enough to spark any passion. Their laughter is quietly sarcastic, resigned. Their speech deflects accountability, instead placing blame for their situation on others.
Stage 3 - “I’m great”
“I’m great” or, more fully, “I’m great, and you’re not.” People at this stage have to win, and winning is personal. They’ll out-work, think, and manoeuvre their competitors. The mood that results is a collection of “lone warriors,” wanting help and support and being disappointed that others don’t have their ambition or skill. Most every sentence includes “I,” “me,” or “my,” as in: “I work harder than anyone else,” “I try harder,” and “I’m really good at my job.”
Stage 4 - “We’re great.”
Stage 4 is the zone of Tribal Leaders who focus people on their aspirations, and define measurable ways to make a worldwide impact. At Stage Four, people use “we” language, and the basis of comparison is shared values. For example, you’ll hear: “We’re doing important work,” “we work harder for our customers,” and “we win because we’re more dedicated.” Stage 4 is by all accounts a superior culture. However there is one higher stage, the upper echelon of organizations that is rarely achieved. This is where the language shifts from “we’re better” to “we can make a global impact.”
Stage 5 - “Life is great.”
Teams at Stage 5 have produced miraculous innovations. The team that produced the first Macintosh was Stage 5, and we’ve seen this mood at Amgen. At Stage 5, values and vision are the only compass—not relative benchmarks against a competitive group. You’ll hear “we’re pioneers—no one has been here before,” “our mission is all that matters,” and “if we didn’t have our values, we wouldn’t know who we are.” The ultimate goal is for a tribe to arrive at Stage 5. It is the place where organizations stand to change the world.
As a leader, you may want to go directly to Stage 5. However, once you understand the culture of your organization, it is only possible to go from one stage to the next. In other words, if you are working with people at Stage 2 who believe their life sucks (you can hear it in phrases as simple as “I have way too much to work to do.”) your role as a Tribal Leader it to advance them to Stage 3 where they realize they’re great. Only then can they advance to Stage 4 as a team player.
Now that you know the language cues, listen for them in your own company, and hear how the tribal culture and the success of the company go hand in hand.
Dave Logan is the author of Tribal Leadership, the new book from Harper Collins that is breaking the mould on how to lead and manage companies. You can learn how to upgrade your tribe by joining the Tribal Coaching Community.
Photo: istockphoto
Great article, Dave! It’s like they say in Success Built to Last: “There is no greater feeling in life or freedom in the world than to know that you can be yourself and part of a group that is engaged in a cause that is greater than you are.”
Nice article and a great reminder that the community is greater than the individual.
Outstanding and thought provoking! I have a few lingering questions:
If those “successful” Fortune 500 companies were led by highly individualistic or even authoritarian leaders, do you believe the companies would be successful or be able to maintain that success?
Do you not believe that a “Stage 4″ company’s success is at least partly attributable to a visionary leader?
What percentage of those Fortune 500 companies were led by CEO’s who were there from the inception of the company?
I highly agree that the employees ultimately create the success of a business but a truly great or truly poor leader can make or break it as well…
I know a brief blog post is not sufficient to get your larger point across. Perhaps I should read your book to answer my questions!
Thanks for insight and thoughts…
On Collins, actually, our major finding challenges his research. Our findings show that “built to last” is a myth (quoting Tom Peters here). A tribal leader can propel a tribe to stage 4 in a matter of weeks, and the resulting enthusiasm and focus can get the momentum going quickly. No need for a flywheel. Different tribes within the same company can also take on different strategies—violating (with success) the hedgehog principle.
What brings a tear to my eye, literally, is going back to companies we studied in the mid to late 90s that were stage 4-5. Today, several have fallen to the entrenched mediocrity of stage 2. The causal factor, as far as we can tell, is that the politics of stage 3 displaced the connection to a noble cause, and then the companies began adding bureaucracy. Although well intentioned, these additions told people they weren’t trusted, and the culture began muttering “our lives suck.”
Let’s step back. Ken Wilber (and before him, Don Beck) describes research in four quadrants: inner-hidden, inner-observable, collective-hidden, and collective-observable. Collins focuses on inner-observable (his levels of leadership) and collective-observable (systems). Maslow focuses on inner-hidden (the hierarchy of needs). We focus on inner-hidden (culture), using the language people use, and how they naturally organize, as evidence for what is unseen.
According to Wilber (and others in the integral movement), progress happens as a spiral through all four quadrants. Self-actualized leaders (Maslow) tend to behave as Level V individuals (Collins), producing systems (Collins, and many others, such as Larry Greiner’s organizational evolution work) that focus on results, and create cultures in that say “life is great” (Tribal Leadership).
One quadrant can lead the way—and one using only Collins will focus on systems and observable leadership. The other quadrants will then become limitations on how far success can go.
Until this study, we didn’t have a solid, stage development model for how groups of people work together.
Without an understanding of all four quadrants, our ability to really make change is limited. That’s why we believe Tribal Leadership is so important.
Excellent post. As a leader in an organization, I can certainly see that we have been through some of this – I can recognize bits of each stage from different segments of the organization.
http://effortless-wealth.blogspot.com
It sounds interesting, but like the others I would like to know more about the research beyond the hypothesis. It sounds like a Good To Great type of theory, and some of those are just derivative of Jim Collins’ already great work.
But of course, you could be on to something as well. Thanks for sharing.
Wow. Great questions, and thank you!
First, if the companies were led by authoritarian people, would they be able to maintain that level of success? Yes, for a while, but only in pockets. Imagine a Stage 3 manager–managing with dyadic relationships, thinking knowledge is power (rather than relationships are power), using information and misinformation to maintain control. Within that structure, it is possible for “bubbles” to form of Stage 4, often with one or two key people keeping the disruptive influences away. Keep in mind, this is the case in MOST corporations in our study. A great question we asked in the research was “what culture stage best expresses the actions of senior leaders (intentionally vague).” Depending on the industry, 30-90% said Stage 3.
Can Stage 4’s success be attributed to a visionary leader? In part. A Stage 4 leader doesn’t “cast a vision” and get others to “buy in.” Rather, he or she builds the tribe to Stage 4, and then the tribe recognizes that person as the leader. Think George Washington. He wasn’t the smartest person, or the most articulate. But he acted as a conduit so that the tribes–Virginia landowners, militia officers, fellow representatives in the Continental Congress–formed a common purpose around shared values. At that time, people recognized him as the leader.
What percentage of Fortune 500 companies were led by CEOs who were there from the inception. Very few. Some time, let’s get on rant about “professional management.” Usually not worth much, except for the $100 million they get paid.
Thank you. Insightful questions are the greatest gift.
Leaders merely set the tone for the culture in a company.
I discovered this while interviewing 80 highly successful people for my upcoming book filled with success stories.
I saw it over and over and over. A good leader simply sets a tone where virtually everyone in the company believes that life is great. From that point on, everyone thrives.
If a leader can make the workplace “fun”, then it ceases to be work and it becomes play . . . Even adults love to play.
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Stanley F. Bronstein
Attorney, CPA, Author and Professional Motivational Speaker
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What a great post! Thank you for sharing these findings. Do you know if there’s a questionnaire or some sort of personality test that allows you to discover the stage of language of an applicant you’re considering?
Maya
Great article, and very thought provoking. Are the results of your study published somewhere so that other can view them?