Leadership Beyond the Tribe
Be suspicious of leaders who say, “my team” or “my people.” Their language often betrays an us versus them mentality. Their primary concern is for those they consider part of the in group. Others are not seen as collaborators but as competing factions, each looking out for “their own.”
This is narrow minded leadership. It reflects small thinking.
Effective leaders see themselves as citizens of a larger community: one that includes the organization, other departments, and the people they ultimately serve. They think systemically. They attend to their impact on the broader whole. They actively work against their tribal instincts and seek opportunities to collaborate across boundaries.
We are social beings, made for cooperation. To privilege my people over the larger whole is a shrinking of one’s moral horizon. We belong first to the human community and only secondarily to our particular roles, titles, or teams. Leadership should be understood as an exercise in expanding one’s circle of concern.
Why is this expansion so difficult? In group versus out group thinking becomes especially pronounced under stress. It shrinks our circle of concern because it is easier. When teams face threat or uncertainty, they slip into fight or flight mode: an external enemy is identified, boundaries harden, and complexity is reduced. It is emotionally safer to retreat into a protected ecosystem of our people than to remain engaged with the wider system. Thinking becomes rigid, moralized, and oversimplified.
A central task of leadership is to resist this pull. This requires tolerating anxiety rather than discharging it onto an out group. Leaders must interrupt the reflexive mindset that they are the problem and we are the solution. Instead, they ask: What is the larger good here? What is being disowned or projected? What responsibility is actually mine?
A leader is not the owner of a team but a citizen of an entire organization—indeed, of an entire community. What is good for the organization must also be good for the community it serves. Leadership begins where “my people” gives way to shared responsibility, expanded belonging, and the disciplined refusal to let fear decide where loyalty ends.