Tribal Leadership is the result of a ten-year study of 24,000 people working in the public and private sectors. The co-authors, who led the study, found that organizational culture is determined by groups of 20 to 150 people, where everyone knows everyone else (or at least knows of everyone else). They termed these groups “tribes.”
All organizations, if they are large enough, are tribes. As a small organization grows, it will eventually split into two tribes. Groups larger than 150 people are made up of a network of tribes.
The co-authors of Tribal Leadership found that every tribe exists somewhere in the spectrum of Stage One (least desirable) to Stage Five (most desirable). The stages are defined by the attitudes, beliefs, and habits shared by the members of a tribe.
The core insights of Tribal Leadership centre around the importance of tribal leaders in elevating a tribe to a higher stage - and the path to actually achieving this goal.
Tribal Leadership was published in 2008 to immediate acclaim from publications and leaders in business, government, academia and the not-for-profit sector.
The book attracted particular notice in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, with well-known technology entrepreneurs such as Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) and Tony Hsieh (Zappos, LinkExchange) offering praise. Mr. Hsieh would go on to write the introduction to the paperback edition, published in 2011, which went to #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List.
To date, Tribal Leadership has sold over 200,000 copies, and has been translated into several languages around the world.
John King & Partners is a values-based organization. We believe tribal leaders can elevate culture, and that elevated culture is the key to providing greater meaning and empowerment for millions of working people.
