We all belong to something more significant no matter if we realize it or not. The same is valid for work. Furthermore, we need to belong to something, because belonging gives us confidence, a sense of safety, and security. If you are building a team, department, or company, you need to find a way to create a sense of belonging and integrate people. A sense of belonging increases people’s engagement, and motivation and brings a different attitude to the work. It sounds common sense to me and in the past when I had to scale from a team to multiple teams on multiple locations, I thought wouldn’t be that hard, but I was wrong.

There are many things you can do to help people feel part of something bigger and for some people, this becomes natural, but for others, you need to put in more effort. There are small things that are mandatory to achieve the goal and I’ve tried most or even all of them: 

• open and honest communication
• building a safe space environment where people can be authentic without conflict with company policies
• help create relationships with each other or between teams
• recognize the effort and collaborative teamwork and achievements
• small personalized gifts with company or team logo
• team bonding initiatives where relationships move a bit more on a personal level
• engage in important activities such as “set a shared vision”, “define a shared mission”

Many of these things you can see as examples around you from other leaders or managers. You can read it in almost every blog post or book on the topic, but I’ve asked myself, why this helps? What stands behind it? Because many of these things gave some results, but in the end, it was very chaotic and non-systematic. If you know me, you will know that I am a very analytical and systematic thinking person so I’ve started looking for the pattern and the deeper background of why these things suppose and actually works. 

I found my answers in so-called tribal leadership and theory. My manager and mentor back at the time recommended me a book called “Great Boss, Dead Boss” by Ray Immelman. I’ve read it in one breath. I liked it so much, I have re-read it several times since then. I’ve recommended it to some other colleagues, and managers, but not everyone finds it as fascinating as I did. I suppose this is so because at that time I struggle to understand the dynamics and psychology which stay behind all these actions above and how they change people’s perceptions of things and this book explains it very well in very practical examples. 

So what about tribal theory and tribal leadership? Don’t get me wrong, the book above is not the only book. I’ve read some others on this topic later on,  “Tribal leadership” by Dave Logan and John King and “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us” by Seth Godin, so you can read any of these and I think you won’t regret if you are interested in this topic. The fundamental thing in tribal theory is that same as in ancient times, nowadays in the modern world, we are all part of tribes. Some of them are very informal like a family or supporters of a sports team, while others are very much formal such as school, company, nationality, etc. We belong to many of these and this gives us security. Each one of us has some position in this tribe or if you like community and with this status feel a certain level of security. Security that it is not alone, that it is a part of something bigger contributing to something greater. 

But, how do all of the actions above support the tribal theory? Here are some examples:

• A strong tribe must have a common enemy – this in our context competitors of a company or rival sports team
• A strong tribe must have clearly defined symbols – these in our context are company logo, sports team emblems, school uniform
• In a strong tribe criteria for tribal membership are clear and credible – this could be membership in a fan club, being part of a certain school, or employee in a company
• A strong tribe has clearly defined roles, responsibilities, power structure, etc. – this is a company organization, school hierarchy, etc. 
• A strong tribe celebrates and cares for the skills, tools, and implements required for its prosperity – company development plans, recognition, and open communication, school exam valuations, etc.
• A strong tribe develops its own unique language – there are always special terms and abbreviations wherever I worked or studied so far, and often one and the same doesn’t mean different things in different places.

So these and many more were explained in the “Great Boss, Dead Boss” book together with some parameters which affect individual feelings and sense of belonging. In the book, these are:

• Individual Security (IS): Individuals act to reinforce their security when under threat.
• Individual Value (IV): Individuals act to reinforce their self-worth when their security is not under threat.
• Tribal Security (TS): Tribes act to secure their self-preservation if their security is under threat.
• Tribal Value (TV): Tribes act to reinforce their self-worth when their security is not under threat.

You can call them differently but if you draw coordinate systems like these below, you want your team members to be always at the top right corner:

  

The important thing is to be able to identify what is the current status of each attribute of every person in your tribe (company, team, etc.) when you deal with them because depending on the “coordinate” they act differently and different approaches can affect their position on the coordinate system and behavior.

The last thing I found very useful and fascinating is the fact that similar to the different roles in a tribe, same in the company employees have different behavior and attitude toward different organizational roles. So you can make a parallel between each person’s position and how it is seen by the tribe. In the general case, according to the book CEO is the chief of the tribe, the Human resource person is a caregiver, and the salesperson is the hunter (hunting for new clients).  

Ok, this already sounds a lot like advertising for the book, but it is not, as I said I am very much influenced by it. What I am trying to say? Leadership is a lot more than helping people and showing them the direction. It requires observation and understanding of others, finding ways to give them security and a place in a community or tribe. This creates a sense of belonging which leads to high engagement, motivation, the purpose of work, and long-term integration into the team or the company.

If you get a deep understanding of the tribal theory and human dynamics within tribes, you can be a very successful leader while helping people achieve more and feel confident and secure. Make them feel part of a big family.

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