Module 1 – SLPLeadership Traits and Tribal Leadership
Please read the following chapter about diversity and culture and then follow the SLP instructions to complete your assignment:
Crandle, D. (2007). Chapter 17: Harnessing the power of culture and diversity for organizationalperformance. In Leadership lessons from west point. Jossey Bass. Available in the Trident Online Library.
Select an organization you are familiar with and know one of its employees. Determine the organization’s present stage by interviewing the organizational member to glean more detail concerning the culture of his or her organization. (At this point, you can share the five stages of Tribal Leadership with him or her.)
This can be any type of organization (some examples include a business, church, sports team, or volunteer organization). The person should be willing to participate in an interview about his or her organization’s culture. You may conduct the interview in person, via phone, or via email.
- Interview your subject (interviewee) to discover information regarding his/her organization’s culture by asking the following questions:
- Tell me about the relationship of your organization’s people to the mission, vision, and values of the organization.
- Are the people in your organization used to taking risks (innovation) or is organizational stability more important (the status quo)?
- Are the people in your organization more focused on the details of their work (the means) or toward the outcomes (the end results)?
- Would you say that your organization’s leadership is more process-oriented or people-oriented?
- Does your organization focus more on recognizing the accomplishments of individual members or the accomplishments of teams?
- Do people tend to be easygoing and cooperative, or are they aggressive and highly competitive?
- Describe the general demeanor of the organization’s people. In other words, are people mostly disengaged and apathetic, or are they engaged and energetic?
- Is your organization more formal or less formal in its day-to-day operations and approaches?
- Are there any organizational standards or ideals that are particularly important to the people in the organization? If so, what are they?
- What words best describe the overall “mood” of the organization?
- What rituals are important in the organization?
- What symbols are most important to the people in the organization?
- Are there any stories that people tell newcomers that help to indoctrinate them into the organization? If so, what are they?
- What artifacts are most important to the people in the organization (e.g., mottos, slogans, meetings, awards, new hire trainings, etc.?)
- What are people most proud of?
- What do people complain most about?
- What shared assumptions come to mind (that are important to the people of the organization)?
- Which stage of Tribal Leadership do you think fits best with your organization?
SLP Assignment Expectations
The objective of this SLP will be to accomplish the following:
- Determine the organization’s tribal leadership stage.
- Recognize the tangible and intangible cultural characteristics that define the tribe and tribal stage (using the interview questions).
- Determine how well the identified stage of tribal leadership aligns with the characteristics of the organization’s overall culture (based on the interview questions).
- Write a 2- to 3-page paper (not counting the title page or reference section) applying tribal leadership to organizational culture by noting the impact the tribal stage you observed has on the organizational culture of the interviewee’s organization.
