Lead a tribe, fail, then try again
Tribes- We need you to lead us is set to be released in a couple of months. According to Seth,
Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have.
The new opportunity is that it’s easier than ever to find, organize, and lead a tribe. The Web has enabled an explosion of all kinds of tribes — and created shortage of people to lead them. This is the growth industry of our time.
Tribes (the book) will help you understand exactly what’s at stake, and why YOU can and should lead a tribe of your own.
Interestingly enough, this summer the four in-house interns got a chance to practice leading a tribe. This tribe was made up of at least one hundred virtual interns from Australia, America, Japan, India, England, China, Germany and Kenya. The interns were given a summer project, and we were in charge of output, morale and handing out virtual mint-and-chocolate-chip M and M’s. It was hard, but we did it and I’m enormously proud of us. In just a few words, here’s what I learned.
- It’s scary, but worth it.
- Leadership can be learned. Try and try again.
- The world has amazing people out there who would be willing to follow you. Go find them.
- Tribes are full of people who have ideas. Tribes are also full of people who won’t implement those ideas.
- Having a hidden chocolate cupboard is essential for the general well-being of a tribe.
- Finding a way to enable your tribe of fans to talk to each other and to potentially new ones is extremely mandatory to your future.
- Whoever is leading the tribe with you matters a lot. A whole lot.
- If the growth of your tribe is scalable, then in ten years you’ll have enough time to take a year-long vacation.
- It takes a lot of courage and self-confidence to learn how to follow when most of what you’re used to is leading.
- Read the book.
Do it. Fail. Let people down. Scrape yourself off the sidewalk and get up. Find more people who believe in you and then repeat the process.