Tribal Leadership: Interview With Author John King

Part 1 of a 2 part post by our resident music industry philosopher Kyle Bylin

The African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” was used on Hypebot by Bruce as a reality check for Music 2.0.  Black Stone Cherry adds onto those famous words of wisdom in their song 'You' by saying, “It takes an army to march a mile.”  We've been talking on the blog quite a bit about followings and I'm sure like myself, many readers were left with the daunting question, “How do I lead a Tribe?”

To help us better understand this question, I reached out to John King, co-author of Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization.

In Tribal Leadership, you identify five tribal stages (Despairing Hostility; Apathetic Victim; Lone Warrior; Tribal Pride; and Innocent Wonderment) that exist in thriving organizations.  Companies can avoid hiring people from the lower stages, but clearly, artists cannot pick their fans.

Bylin: How do you think the stages you identified reflect tribalism in a fan base?

King: Stage 2 shows up as a mood of ‘not being understood’…

the classic teen lament of martyrdom and the dreaded inevitability of betrayal. Stage 3 is a heroic posture, a ‘me against the world’ attitude of overcoming and ‘making it’. Stage 4 is a more collaborative, ‘we can do anything together’ point of view. There’s a lot to say about each stage, but that starts the conversation off.

Bylin: The book concludes that Tribes exist in all organizations at different stages, but the difference is in the culture of the community.  Here on Hypebot we have questioned the difference between the followings of pop artists like Rihanna and jam band followings like Dave Matthews.  Dave obviously has a strong following, but its unclear what stage of tribe Rihanna has.

What factors do you think come into play when trying to evaluate in what stage your music tribe is primarily thriving in?

King: It will be a matter of observation of two main elements that will reflect that. First, we listen to how they talk amongst themselves, and how they identify and express their relationship to other groups that follow similar bands in the niche. The delta to that is probably fairly close to the truth. Other than that, we always look at how they congregate, how they ‘clump up’ in their relationships. Do they tend to be ‘loners’, are they grouped in little gangs with a recognizable strong personality, do they collaborate, or does it always turn into some form of a competition? It is not unlike geeks when they flame each other. None of this behavior is particularly predictable, it has to be observed. My guess is that the great mass fall in Stages 2, 3, and 4, with the greatest preponderance at three, looking like a normal Gaussian bell curve distribution.

Artists at on their very best days seem to lead a stage four tribe, this band is great and this band is not, but the ideal place to peak is stage five.  During big events like an album release, the bonds formed between a stage four and a stage five could be the difference between fans telling their friends about the release and calling radio stations to demand the playing of the single.

Bylin: What leverage points and actions could an artist utilize to encourage stage five behavior from their fan base?

King: This is an awesome question and the heart of the matter if the band is truly interested in creating a breakout experience for themselves, and, by extension, their fans. One thing they must always be dong is preserving the faithful, while constantly accumulating new fans from other cultural point of view. A Stage 5 experience is the holy grail of breaking a new act, or, releasing new product. The old saying that they need a ‘crossover hit’ is exactly right. They need to go away and come back as morphed into something that preserves the old fan base, while attracting new followers. This usually means a complete revivication and maturation of all of their musical and artistic ideas to drive them to boldly come back as something unexpected and unpredictable, and of higher quality.

Part 2: Building A Tribe

Follow the link to purchase a discount copy of Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization on Amazon.