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A Review of Seth Godin's "Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us"
Seth Godin is a remarkable guy. In 2006 he set up squidoo.com. Prior to that he published several bestselling books on Internet marketing, such as the 1999 bestseller, "Permission Marketing" and the 2003 bestseller, "Purple Cow".
His most recent book, Tribes, published in 2008, is the result of his thoughts about what leadership
means in a modern world of fast pace of technological change and the growth of the Internet.
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However, he does not lose sight of the fact that leadership is ultimately about character and will, not technology:
"You don't need a keyboard to lead... you only need the desire to make something happen!" - p. 6.
Leadership is something that comes from within, and harnesses modern technology in order to find or build or gather around itself a "tribe" of like-minded people, who are all driven by something that is ultimately larger than themselves.
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That leadership is a quality which emerges from the pursuit of something beyond one's self, gives it an almost religious quality. It is no surprise then that good in devotes the heart of the book to a discussion of faith and belief. As good in sees it faces good, or more correctly, dogma is bad, with a capital B!
So, if established dogmas are bad, heretics become heroes. They are willing to stand up and come front of the dogmas of the day. Although they will inevitably face resistance, they have the advantage of being more in tune with changing times.
"Stability is an illusion", (p. 16) , writes Godin. "Today's market place rewards heretics." (p. 11).
Not only does today's market place rewards heretics, but the development of new communication technologies has given everybody the opportunity to become a heretic or a leader, Godin argues.
There is a problem, however which is that there are far too few people who are willing to take upon themselves the role of leadership because they fear to be seen acting differently from the crowd.
Godin calls these people "sheepwalkers".
In comparison with "sheepwalkers" there are the members of a "tribe". A tribe is a group that shares strongly held beliefs or aims and forms around a leader.
Godin suggests that it is more important that a tribe be tightly knit than that it grow.
One of the examples of leadership that Godin discusses is the case of Chris Scharma. Sharma is a rock climber who discovered that if he simply "let go" of a jutting cliff face and jumped upwards he could quite often catch hold of crevices higher up the rock face and successfully complete climbs that had been thought to be impossible. He also fell into the sea on many occasions, but it is exactly that willingness to risk failure that is the true essence of the kind of leadership that Seth Godin wants to encourage.
A tribe can be very small and local or it can span the world and come together via the Internet.
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If you are willing to stop being a sheepwalker and follow your passion, Seth Godin would tell you that there is definitely a tribe out there waiting for you to lead it. If you think that you lack the charisma, consider this:
"Being charismatic doesn't make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic." (p. 127)
David Hurley
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About the Author
David Hurley is a professional Internet marketer, copywriter, and editor based in Japan. David builds Free Business Websites for his clients. For full details, click here.
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
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