What is our tribe mentality, and how is it one of the foundations of how people operate at work? It comes down to the particular way we use that instinct, and what makes us not need to be replicas of men.
Let’s face it, we all know that it is tough out there. We experience far greater recognition and opportunity then we ever have before, and while we are not there yet, we are closer to equality in the workplace.
Someone once said “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition”. This has always made me laugh a little. Equality is a serious issue, but I understand where the statement is coming from… Women are different to men, not better than, not less than, just different. We have different skills, drivers and capacity, and are pretty awesome, as long as we are brave enough to get in touch with our true power.
What the quote means is: why try to be a replica man, when we are already this amazingly awesome WOMAN. In my book Lipstick & Leadership, I go into great detail about the powers of the feminine, what they are and how we can use them to achieve the success we are looking for and to do it in a way they ensures we maintain our sanity and do not end up burnt out.
One of the greatest advantages women have in the workforce is our ability to CREATE – whether that is creating a relationship or creating an environment that develops and nurtures or creating a kick butt plan for how we are going to change the world. It’s biological, and having spent 25 plus years in a corporate world in predominantly male work environments, I can tell you – “we do it differently to men”
What makes how we create so rocking awesome? Like I said it is biological – we can often see “into the future”, so to speak, of our project and see to the heart of what needs to occur. Yet that is not the main reason we are so great at creating.
Our tribe mentality
The main reason is because we are biologically inclined to look at everything we do from a “tribe” mentality. We look for what will be best for the long term of the group, the community or the country, what will help make it grow and develop…
There is some speculation that this comes from our vulnerability back in the day of cave people and sabre-toothed tigers, when women relied on each other to help get out of the way of the beastie, especially if we had a brood or were with child.
So we learned a very valuable skill of identifying what people needed and we helped to ensure we all looked out for each other, partly because we understood that our tribe would soon be lost if we didn’t stick together and partly because our need to connect meant that we never had to do anything on our own. Some say this is where the almost habitual need to go to the ladies room in pairs came from, but I’m pretty sure that is just speculation.
The tribe mentality in its positive form is great for building teams and building a sound and sustainable strategy which has a “good for more” focus and therefore would be more widely accepted.
Using tribe mentality to bond teams
Autonomy is the best way to reward your team. We live in a connected and empowered society, where employees want to have their own space to carry out their responsibilities. However, that strong desire for power that managers usually have stops the possibility of giving autonomy as they see the team as developing a tribe mentality — and mistakenly think this is undesirable.
Daniel Pink in his book Drive explains that we must focus on three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Our brains are wired to “self-direct”, that is, we do not want others to tell us how to do things because we like to feel control and autonomy over our tasks, time, equipment and the technique that seems most successful.
Autonomy and responsibility are not opposing forces that must be balanced. Promoting autonomy through the tribe mentality encourages people to be more responsible to themselves and to others in the team. Create a virtuous cycle with the tribe mentality to see the team bond and collaborate.
According to Forbes, 48% of bosses like to be seen as experts and authority figures, and therefore micromanage . To this desire for power, other factors can be added that make you question giving your team more autonomy, such as the ego. There are leaders who often start their careers expert in their individual role, are known for doing brilliant work, and are later promoted to supervisory work. Distrust comes into play here: they fear that the work is not as well done by the team as if they had done it themselves.
And another of the many reasons bosses may experience this fear of offering more freedom is because they fear a loss of control. If you’re a manager and something goes wrong, you can’t just fix it yourself. If you supervise a team, your responsibility is to convince them to fix the problem. It is one of the great ironies of having managerial authority; your title makes you bigger, but your personal control gets smaller.
What happens then? That there is a tendency to delegate tasks, but not to give authority. Teams have projects, but they always need final approval from their superior in order to move forward. And this translates into a high cost and loss of time, and with it, they lose enthusiasm and commitment in the process.
What is ‘too much tribe’
As with anything, too much of a good thing has a detrimental effect – so what do you think too much tribe means? For some it means giving too much and not having our own needs met, often resulting in frustration, overwhelm and burn out. For others it means “Over Nurturing” or being ON – when a women is ON, she can often appear to be motherly and overbearing – this creates conflict in the workplace because no one wants to be mothered at work do they? There are ways in which to identify if you are ON too much and we cover that in the book and in our Embracing the Feminine Power for Success Workshops.
