Dave Logan

I had more time to think about the Pew research study on religion than most people. One of their pollsters phoned me when I was home sick, and since I had nothing better to do, answered what seemed like an hour of questions about my past religious activities, and my beliefs today. What I didn’t know then was that millions of other Americans made the same transition I had just described to the researcher: I left the religion of my childhood.

Like many, what I transitioned to wasn’t religion, it was to a workplace community.

As a child, I pitied people without religion in their lives, thinking they must be empty. Ironically, all those years later, I was sick with a cold because I had pushed myself too hard finishing last-minute edits on a book about workplace communities. After doing research on 24,000 people with my colleagues John King and Halee Fischer-Wright, we had come to a conclusion that still rocks our world: today, people many find their spiritual expression at work, but only if they’re lucky enough to work in a great company.

My memories of going to church are mostly about the community that formed there. We didn’t talk about the sermon—we talked about our lives, filtered through the prism of values that bound us together. There were funny people, mixed together with zealots, down-on-their luck folk, people with new families and empty-nesters. It was what I and my colleagues came to term a tribe.

Today, my life still has community based on values, and strong tribes, but none involve religion. There is a tribe of professors of students and the university where I teach, all aligned on the values of learning and growth. There is the tribe of consultants and clients in the business where I work, all focused on the values of effectiveness and creativity. As a consultant, I have visitor status in a number of tribes, in financial services, commercial real estate, and high technology. Most of those are also vibrant tribes, focused on values like family, success, and even love.

75% of business workplaces have cultures that weren’t like what I experienced as a kid going to church, that don’t see themselves as tribes. No shared values, no strong feeling of being a community. Instead, 2% resemble gangs and prisons, with a mood of despairing hostility, what we call Stage One cultures. What we call Stage Two is the 25% of cultures that resemble the Department of Motor Vehicles, where people do the minimum to not get fired or hassled. Stage Three is the 48% of workplaces that resemble the wild, wild west with people having to be the sharpest draw, or in modern parlance, the smartest person in the room; the compete with each other from dawn to dusk, and the measure of a good day is when they came out on top.

The remaining 25% of U.S. workplaces—Stages Four and Five–see themselves as tribes, where care of tribal members, and for the tribe itself, is the key to competing on the business front. These top performing workplaces are also fun, exciting and nurturing.

To be clear, religion and spirituality don’t come up much in workplace conversations that we studied. People don’t talk about doctrine, metaphysical beliefs, or what happens after death and what is the nature of God. For me, there is a void on those subjects. But the questions of how we should live, what we want our lives to stand for, the people we care for, are increasingly answered at work. Even more to the point, who we are at our deepest core—our values—finds its way into competitive advantage for those companies wise enough to tap its power. When values unite a group, at church or work, you get a Stage Four tribe.

In reading the Pew study, I realized that I’m one of the lucky ones: when my own religion no longer worked for me, I found a new set of tribes: cultures at Stage Four.

There are many good reasons why corporate leaders need to pay attention to workplace cultures, not the least of which is that great tribes outperform dysfunctional groups, create wealth for shareholders, and better products and services for customers. We can now add another reason to the list of why culture matters: workplaces are becoming places of spiritual expression.

Several years ago, I had dinner with a David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. His picture is on the cover of his book, and his company is named after him, the David Allen Company. He’s a spiritual guy, a Stage Four leader—clearly not interested in the ego boost building a business empire. “Why did you do that?” I asked, “why make it all about you?” 

“Simple—the market demands it,” was his answer. 

He seemed at ease with the decision in a way I would not have been. Tribal Leadership was nearing the final phase, and John’s and my hope (we hadn’t yet joined forced with Halee) was that it would be a Stage Four book presented in a Stage Four manner—written from a tribe, about tribes. (Stage Three is the zone of personal accomplishment, where people say, “I’m great and you’re not.” It’s where people spar, each kicking the others down and self-promote. It’s like the wild, wild west. The biggest problem with American business is that this zone runs business, with most MBAs using Donald Trump-style management to get ahead at the expense of others. Stage Four is based on shared values, where people express a “we’re great” adage, and network together in tight social structures.) 

I think a lot about that dinner now that Tribal’s out. The media wants us to do the Stage Three thing, often doesn’t know what to do with us when we don’t pretend we’re on a reality TV show. One radio host asked me, “so which leading person, you know, that we’ve heard of, is just full of crap?” The real answer is: no one. We’re all trying to do the same thing, just using different words and different approaches. 

Our publisher paused when we wanted to add Halee as an author, because books are extensions of individuals, not teams. (To their credit, they eventually embraced the idea.) 

An interviewer asked Halee what five companies she could name that were screwed up, what exactly she did to save each one, and how each is doing today. Anyone who would answer that question has no business writing a book on leadership. (To do so would be to say—look at me—I’m the best consultant you’ve ever seen.) Halee didn’t answer it, and the interview never ran. 

Last week, I did a live segment on Fox Business. Stuart Varney, the host, did his best to win an Emmy for “biggest jackass on television” award. He spent most of the five minutes making fun of the “make nice, nice” approach in the book. (Note to future interviewers: at least know what the book is about.) At one point, he asked me what I did before writing the book. He latched onto the USC connection and said, in a sarcastic tone, “oh, an academic!” This went on until I felt the hairs on the back of my neck (sign a Stage Three outburst is forming in your brain), and said: “you want the down side of a system in which you crawl your way to the top, I got two words for: Elliot Spitzer.” The woman next to him in the studio said “woo!”, implying that I’d won that point. And the game was on. At the end of the interview, he repeated his objection to the book and I said: “You’re totally wrong, Stuart, but I appreciate your point of view.” He laughed in a way that seemed to say I’d surprised him by not being a complete idiot. 

What was that? It had nothing to do with making people leaders. It was about ratings, pure and simple. It was the CNBC version of Survivor. I knew I’d fallen to Stage Three. It was fun, but I felt I needed a shower to wash away the bits of ego juice I’d sweated out. 

Stage Three is fun to watch. Two people, both think they’re better, self-promoting and trying to kick the other in their…credibility. We (the audience) take sides. We say “ouch!” and “she won that point!” as we sit back and eat our popcorn. 

But in the industry of writing leadership books? Stage Three created sub-prime, when charlatan sales reps sold middle America mortgages they couldn’t afford, while executives looked the other way and reaped short-term profits that morphed into long-term bankruptcies. The market cap of Wall Street would double—and that’s conservative—if Stage Four became the center of gravity of U.S. corporations. 

We’re supposed to get that message out while throwing insults, saying we did it, and look at me—I’m the smartest author you’ve ever seen? 

Einstein said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We can’t solve the problem of Stage Three by staying in Stage Three. 

Maybe my friend David Allen is right—maybe it’s better to give the market what it wants and wait for evolution to run its course. Until we get to that point, we’re going to keep hammering away at the message of Tribal Leadership—from our tribe to yours.