What's your tribe?

Or rather, what are your tribes? Because we are all members of several tribes, may be we just do not think about it in that way.

I came in touch on several occasion with the concept of ‘tribes’, got to like it a lot and therefore I would like to write a bit about it today. As far as I know the term was first coined by Seth Godin in his book Tribe (you can google him, he is a really famous blogger) or by David Logan - see the video bellow.

A tribe is a social group with certain attitudes, opinions and more or less well defines membership criteria. We are all members of at least couple tribes. A tribe can be our close friends, our colleagues, a sports team or an NGO we are part of. Our tribes and the people in them define us, shape us and in my opinion they to a large extend predict where we will be going in the future.

How do they influence us? Each tribe has certain attitudes and mindsets that shape thinking of its tribal members. And I think that the right mindset is the most powerful asset one can have. It defines our personality, our ambitions and the impact we want to have.

David Logan distinguished five main types (stages) of tribes according to the attitudes of their membership.

1. “Life Sucks”
2. “My Life Sucks”
3. “I’m Great (But You Aren’t)”
4. “We’re Great”
5. “Life is Great”

Have a look at this video:




I thought couple questions would help to debrief on the video. Here they are:

1. What tribes am I part of?

2. How are my tribes influencing me? What kind of attitudes am I getting, what am I learning, what is the impact they are allowing me to have?

3. What is my impact on my tribes? How am I contributing to them, how am I adding value to my tribes / would they be any different without me?

4. What tribes do I want to be part of? Where do I want to go and what tribes will help me get there?