Tribal Leadership: Stage 1 Tribes

Stage One Tribes: In this stage (fortunately only 2% of all groups), Logan says, people describe their world as “life sucks.” People stuck in this stage are often in a gang culture or even a prison culture. It would be only the most toxic, truly dysfunctional company in which such a culture would exist. At this stage, the language to listen for is one of desperation, retribution, and survival. Truly, for these people, life does suck—for everyone. Therefore, whatever they do is justified, no matter who seems to be affected. Leveraging action to move these people to stage two would be to encourage them to connect one on one and to cut their affiliations with people who use hopeless, negative language. A key indicator of progress moving them is that the person will start referring to his/her own life rather than everyone’s hopelessness. Such a person begins to look at why his/her life is so bad and gets on the path to diagnosing what’s wrong and how to change—thus offering hope to move to the next level.