Essay: We need you to lead us by Seth Godin

Book report
Tribes
We need you to lead us by Seth Godin
Summary
This book is about tribes. A tribe is a group of people who is connected to each other, a leader and an idea. A tribe needs a shared interest and a way to communicate. In the history when we didn’t had internet it was hard to communicate with a tribe. Nowadays, it is easy to communicate and you can start a tribe whenever you want. It is in the nature of people to find a connection with a tribe. Due to the internet there are a lot of new tribes raised, and existing tribes are growing. All these tribes need an individual as leader, a person who has passion about something. Regular thinking and regular effort is almost never enough to be a leader. There must be something extraordinary. In the book Seth Godin uses several examples of successful tribes. A few examples are: Jimmy Wales the co-founder of Wikipedia, Steve Jobs from Apple and Joel Spoelsky, the owner of a software service business.
The difference between leadership and management is also described. Management is about manipulating existing resources to perform a known task. Managers are managing a project that they have seen before, and strive for a fast and cheap as possible process. Leadership is about creating changes where you believe in. A Leader has followers, a manager employees. The best managers of now want leaders. They want leaders who take care of changes, before change will happen to them.
What a leader must do according to Seth Godin (2014):
1. Publish a narrative
2. Make sure you are reachable to your followers
3. Make sure your followers are reachable to each other
4. Realize that money is not the goal of the tribe
5. Follow your progress
The meaning of the book is to persuade people to stand up and become a leader. It is not written as a manual or in one clear story, but S. Godin jumps around quite a bit.
My personal opinion
Before reading the book, I didn’t knew what to expect by only reading the title. When I started reading I couldn’t stop anymore, because I wanted to know more. Seth Godin has used great examples of leaders of a tribe. Because of these examples I felt connected to the book. It is an inspirational book and from now I have a different view of leaders.
Seth Godin encourages people to start leading a tribe (the subtitle is “we need you to lead us”). I learned that you must do what you believe in, and that faith is crucial. The barrier of leadership is fair. When you want to be a leader you need to have faith in yourself, the idea, the followers and the goal of the tribe. Of course, not everybody will like your ideas but you have to get used to this. You must make a plan for the future and just go there. The people will follow you automatically. There is nobody who will give you permission or approval to be a leader. You have to start on your own, the only one who can say no is you. When you have a clear mission statement and allow communication you can lead anyone and anywhere. This is what really inspires me in the book.
I did recognize in the book that failure isn’t always fatal. Being wrong is not immediately the end of the world. If you accept your mistakes you will learn from them. This is not only with leadership, but with everything. Making mistakes is human.
As second, it is not easy to change something. As a leader you have to make changes every time, but that can be hard. A change can improve something, but it is also possible that it isn’t that good. But, change is the only way to succeed. For me change can also be hard sometimes. When I am used to something it can be hard to change it.
In the book is written that it is important to listen to you followers, because people want to be sure that you hear what they have to tell. But, you have to make the decision on your own. I think that it is normal to decide on your own. You can always listen to advice and the opinion of others, but it is about you.
For me it was new to read that this world exists of so many tribes and there are too less leaders. Tribes are almost everywhere, in organizations, in public and private, in classes, around the entire world. Before I read this book I never thought about tribes and what they are meaning to the leaders. What I did not know either is how tribes are exactly working. Tribes are all about faith. Faith in an idea or a community. A Tribe is based on respect and admiration. At Last, I didn’t knew that it is so easy to become a leader. The only limitation of becoming a leader is you, you are the only one who can change it.
I think the most important message of the book is that everyone can become a leader nowadays. You can search for a tribe with the same interest and start leading. A second important aspect in this book is how you lead a tribe. If you lead a tribe for getting money it is not going to work. You lead a tribe to change and improve something. At last, don’t focus on the growth of your tribe. If you try to lead everyone usually it ends with leading no one particular. You can better focus on a small group.
In my opinion, this book is inspirational, and it can be a life changing book. Godin said that leadership is not hard, but we are trained for years to avoid leadership. Nowadays, everyone can be a leader, we need you to lead us.
In think this is the best quote of the book:
“The secret of leadership is simple: do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow” by Seth Godin (2014).