Step 7 Up the Tribe Triangle: Shared Mission Hunting Big Game Together Makes Heroes
Everything of significance comes from the active collaboration of people working together on a shared mission. This does not negate the celebration of individual accomplishments.
In fact, collective challenges augment the prestige of individual accomplishment because it provides a shared platform on which individuals can distinguish themselves and be celebrated.
We only achieve personal glory by being witnessed and lionized by our tribe in the context of achievements made in the pursuit of service to the tribe. Individual triumphs that are not shared are actually dismissed by the group which ends up denying the individual the recognition that all people value and many people demand.
Acknowledgment by the group is one of the most potent drivers for individual engagement and retention. This is even more true when the acknowledgment comes from you, Tribe Leader. Give praise liberally because it is probably the one form of currency in your budget that you have an endless amount of. Be generous!
A shared mission in an honor-based culture is the root of heroism and greatness.
People will always do more for others within their kinship systems than for themselves. Who would you truly sacrifice something of great value for? Whom would you sacrifice your life for? This is an easy answer for men and women who are or have been in an honor-based culture.
Athletes in dedicated team sports report being willing to sacrifice their individual health for their team. This is especially true when the collective mission at stake is significant such as a championship game where everyone plays hurt if need be. Championships are literally hunting Big Game.
Mothers and fathers also regularly make unfathomable sacrifices of time, resources and even their personal dreams and literal lives for their children. These are heroic acts that us parents would never make for our co-workers. Soldiers too, are willing to sacrifice their personal well-being and lives in the service of their brothers and sisters. Once you have experienced a culture of aligned collective mission that activates heroic behavior the rest of the world begins to look very shallow. Is it any wonder that only 27% of Americans report being fully engaged in their jobs? We are designed to be so much more but this can only be activated in a Tribe Culture.
So, not only does a shared mission open up the scope and scale of the projects and prey we can hunt, but it also actually makes the individuals within the tribe operate at higher levels. We are literally better wolves when we are embedded in an aligned pack and hunting collective big game together. If you want to live at hero level and raise others to that level as well, find or create a tribe and serve!
Collective success is built on individuals being successful. Conversely, individuals can only be sustainably successful on a successful team. This is true in sports, business, the military and in your family. Again, Ubuntu which will be an endless, ancient mantra repeated on the path of creating and maintaining Tribe.
I am because we are, and we are because I am. They are as connected as the two sides of the same coin.
The strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack. Without the pack there is no opportunity for big game glory and therefor no opportunity for individual accomplishment. Lone wolves ingloriously hunt rabbits and scavenge.
No one remembers who won the Oscar for best actor, but they know the movies.
No one remembers the richest people in the world, but they know the companies.
No one remembers the scoring leader in any year, but they remember the team who wins the championship.
A shared mission in an honor-based culture drives engagement, competitiveness and retention because it unlocks significance and meaning. Set your north star of vision then set your course of shared mission goals towards that promised land.
Let’s build a rocket.
Let’s go to space.
Let’s go to mars.
Let’s go get mars.
The Roadmap of Tribe Triangle Alignment
A map is a symbol for objects or ideas in the real world that are too big or too complex to fully grasp or share. For example, globes are maps of our vast planet that is too big to fully grasp. Calendars schedules and clocks are maps of time which is too complex to fully understand. Shared maps enable us to collaborate on big, complex game we may not fully grasp or understand but still need to engage with. Maps are a hidden superpower of humanity.
The Tribe Triangle is the map of culture creation and your time-tested roadmap for gathering the lone wolves into an aligned pack capable of hunting Big Game and thriving.
Using any map successfully involves two things: navigation and route-finding. Successfully implementing group missions involve the same two components.
Navigation is the big picture, 20,000-foot overview of the terrain.
Navigating on our map is the shared vision for the future. It is the direction or azimuth of where we are going. This is the Big Game we are ultimately hunting and without this we are lost and unable to navigate our long-term journey. Big game should be aspirational which makes it inspirational.
When we chunk down our big, hairy, audacious vision into manageable targets they are called goals.
Goals are also Big Game but achievable ones. Goals are the successive bridges we cross on the endless path toward our vision. This is the act of route-finding which is actually walking the path. This is where we spend most of our time.
We pull the map of vision out to navigate when we start our day and end our day to make sure we are on the right path. We might need to return to our shared vision more often when the path is obscured but remember, the map is not the real world. We must walk that journey in real time with real projects and real people. Those people and projects are our shared mission and both need to be seen and appreciated.
Click here To watch the video of Step 7: Shared Mission Hunting Big Game Together Makes Heroes
Leaders must write and speak
Answer these questions in your journal by really writing them down. Discuss them with at least one of your most important people and really listen to their response.
Who are 3 important members of your tribe that would shine with more praise or appreciation from you, Tribe Leader?
1
2
3
What is a heroic behavior of personal sacrifice (however small or great) that you demonstrate that comes from the service to something greater than yourself?
Who are the people that heroic behavior serves?
What is an important larger shared mission that you can have your team recommit to that will bring forth more of their heroic behavior?
Ubuntu,
Philip Folsom