Author Talks: Why birds of a feather flock together

In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Christine Y. Chen chats with Michael Morris, the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership at Columbia University Business School, about his new book, Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together (Thesis/Penguin Random House, October 2024). Through his research and observations as a behavioral scientist, Morris reveals the origins of the word “tribe” and dispenses with negative connotations associated with being “tribal.” He provides a framework for viewing culture as a positive, malleable entity that can be intentionally redefined to unite and inspire people and communities rather than to divide and discourage them. An edited version of the conversation follows, and you can also watch the full video at the end of this page.

What’s misunderstood about the word ‘tribal’?

The word “tribe” is a very old word; it’s a Latin word. The Romans used it to describe the ethnic groups that made up their early nation. It referred to any kind of enduring community united by some shared beliefs. It came into other languages via the Bible as the word for the 12 lineages of Israel. By Shakespeare’s time, it was used to refer to the Scots. Then, during the era of colonialism in the centuries that followed, there was pressure in Europe to rationalize what they were doing.

It often took the form of contrasting European civilization with non-Western tribes. That was more politics than science. Some of these non-Western tribes, like the Aztecs and Incas, were as sophisticated as many of the European societies at the time. There were societies in Africa that were also equally sophisticated. So at that time, “tribe” took on some pejorative connotations of stasis and primitivism that had not been part of the word before. As a result, some feel that the word has a pejorative ring.

The word has also proliferated in ordinary discourse and business discourse because tribe is the best word for capturing the feeling of being part of a community that’s united by shared ideas, aesthetics, or shared customs.

I don’t think we can ban the word. It has a bright future, just as it has a very long past.

There’s a way of talking about conflict. That way has developed in the world of journalistic pundits, spread to politicians, and started to spread to some management gurus. That approach involves using the concept of tribalism as a catchall explanation to explain escalating conflicts that don’t seem amenable to any kind of solution. Yet it doesn’t make for very good policy or practical remedies to these conflicts. It’s a very dangerous way of thinking. It’s despairing and cynical.

I don’t think any behavioral scientist or evolutionary theorist would recognize that way of talking about human evolution and tribal instincts. There are instincts for collaborating in groups. They can occasionally contribute to misunderstandings and conflicts, and they have in recent years. But they are not designed for that purpose.

The secondary agenda for the book is to counter this trope of “toxic tribalism.” I’m trying to push back from the perspective of someone who has actually researched the basic social instincts that shape human behavior and how those instincts create loyalties, affinities, and biases.

Why did you decide to write a book about tribalism?

I’m a behavioral scientist who has been studying individual and organizational behavior for decades. As a consultant to corporations, political campaigns, and government agencies both in the US and abroad, I’ve developed a framework for thinking about culture and how it’s relevant to managers.

There’s a myth that culture is unchangeable and somehow fixed. That couldn’t be more wrong. Culture is malleable and manageable. I wanted to give people the tools to see how they could change that deliberately instead of having changes happen without understanding why.

What can people learn about tribalism from sports?

Guus Hiddink, a Dutch soccer coach, made a name for himself by bringing out the talent in teams that were underperforming. He did so in the Dutch league, and then he was recruited by Turkey, and later, Spain. At the time, there was a presumption in the world of soccer that Dutch players play one way; Brazilians play another way. National character cliches are applied to soccer tactics. Hiddink was able to bring Brazilian players to Holland and create a new variant of the Dutch style. Then he took that style, known as Total Football, and he brought it to Spain. Total Football, combined with some of the Spanish talents, was to take on a new form and become very successful there. In 2002, South Korea was more of a rival than a partner and had bid to host the World Cup, along with Japan.

South Korea made a World Cup bid in the late ‘90s when its economy was riding high and its team, the Reds, was a well-performing local power. Yet by the time the World Cup was approaching, the team was faltering. In a last-minute bid to use the cup to restore their reputation, the Korean soccer authorities called Guus Hiddink in Holland to ask whether he would coach the South Korean host team for the World Cup.

Though Hiddink thought it was an exciting challenge, he had never been to Korea. When he arrived, he did not make a very good first impression. He didn’t know the important people in Korea or the star players there. He didn’t like some of the traditions, such as the soccer authorities’ tendency to take social backgrounds into consideration while choosing the team. So Hiddink held open tryouts where any high schooler could come engage in the drills alongside Korean soccer legends, and not all of the legends made the cut. That rankled everyone.

Also, as part of the job terms Hiddink negotiated, he could bring the world’s best teams to Korea for exhibition games. They started playing against Germany, France, and Portugal. They were defeated, in part because they had a young team and they were playing against the world’s best.

Hiddink conducted long training camp sessions with the team, which he used as a teaching opportunity. Though Total Football was different from the more regimented and somewhat hierarchical style of soccer they had traditionally played, the team felt confident as the World Cup approached. They played a different style that no one expected and advanced beyond group contests to the tournament competition. They defeated Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and made it to the semifinals—one of the few times that a team outside of Europe or South America achieved that distinction.

Their success was improbable. More improbably, corporations, schools, and universities tried to transform their own cultures by modeling them after Hiddink’s revamped culture of the team and by removing some of the hierarchical elements. Hiddink’s story is but one example of a person who had faith in the adaptability of people and cultures.

What do tribal instincts and signals look like?

Culture changes a lot because we all have many cultural identities. These identities come to the fore based on situational cues. These are cultural triggers or tribal triggers. Understanding these triggers is one of the keys to being a “Hiddink”—somebody who can at one moment bring players’ Korean identity to the fore because he needs them to make a big sacrifice, and at the next minute bring their identity as professional soccer players to the fore because he needs them to learn a new tactical system.

Hiddink recognized that his players aligned with many different identities, and he could selectively bring different characteristics to the fore. When I speak with practical people of the world, I put them into three major categories: the peer instinct, the hero instinct, and the ancestor instinct.

1. The peer instinct is the set of impulses and capacities we have to imitate peers, to mesh with the people around us. We can recognize it in the sideways glances to classmates, coworkers, and neighbors. There is a sense of “keeping up with the Joneses,” of doing what other people are doing. That act often gets derided, but it can be very positive.

   For example, if you place a child from an underperforming middle school into a higher-performing middle school, by the next year, that child’s standardized test scores improve due to the pressure of conformity. These peer tendencies can be used to elicit better performance. That allows us to communicate efficiently and develop trust within a community. It is enormously empowering because it enables us to work as a united front. That instinct enables us to be more than the sum of our parts.

2. The hero instinct is what I call the next major category of tribal instincts. It emerged about half a million years ago. We saw signs of hunting large game like woolly mammoths. This type of hunting required a real sacrifice by the lead hunter to get right in the face of an enormous animal in order for the group to overwhelm the animal. It required someone to take one for the team and say, “OK, I’m going to risk death to be a hero and be the lead spear person. And then everyone will rejoice if we manage to bring down this large animal.”

   There was a new social instinct of people trying to contribute to the greater good, even though it required sacrifice personally in the short term. This is fundamentally different from the peer instinct. It’s doing what everyone else is not doing. It’s doing something that makes a unique contribution to the group.

   This behavior enabled cooperation in the deep sense. It allowed human groups to grow larger because they could get over the “free rider problem.” It enabled people to learn which contributions were valued by the groups people started. They started imitating role models in the group who had prestige or status. In evolution, this process is called prestige learning. We can recognize it in ourselves today.

   When in doubt, we emulate the cultural hero. Symbols of the tribe, not signs of the tribe, play an enormously important role in triggering the hero instinct. Symbols are the images and phrases, stories, and public figureheads that a group uses to stand for itself. When we are exposed to the symbols of our tribe, it activates our aspirations to contribute to the tribe.

   We do that while trying to model the actions of the tribe’s heroes. For centuries, soldiers would follow a flag into battle. Corporations have logos [symbols that represent an entity]. Similarly, professional sports teams send a mascot out on the field, and the fans go crazy.

3. The ancestor instinct represents the final wave of tribal instincts. This is a set of capacities and drives for learning from generations past. It manifests itself in curiosity about what the elders are saying, as well as a fascination with artifacts from the past. Examples could be a primeval human encountering an arrowhead from the past in a cave, or a person observing a painting on a wall or viewing a collection of antique furniture and artifacts.

   We are attached to these objects because they are from our group and belong to our past. This curiosity about the past—the nostalgia and all the sentiment that we feel—unearths something incredibly valuable for groups, which is tribal memory. Groups didn’t have to reinvent the wheel with every generation because they were retaining the wisdom of the past. They were building on the stock of knowledge. Groups started accumulating culture and becoming wiser and more able to survive with each generation.

   Building on the past is something that is now true of organizations and corporations. Businesses have a corporate culture that accumulates across the generations. Each generation selectively learns from the prior generation. Certain components are discarded, but certain new components are added. By learning from other groups, cultures then evolve across generations with some degree of continuity.

   Ceremonies trigger the continuity of evolution. They play an enormously catalytic role in creating a traditionalist mindset. When an organization wants to maintain the part of its corporate culture that is essential to how it operates, it will often have a ceremony bestowing a type of founder award.

   In such ceremonies, everyone gathers and recites a slogan or a cheer in unison. These aspects of ceremony where people engage in synchronous behavior, and then reflect on the collective history of the group, have a very distinctive effect that neuroscientists have documented. These events reduce self-focused attention. They also create solidarity and a sense of unity—connection to the tradition. At the same time, they can be dangerous because they turn off critical thinking, which can be a bad thing in a corporation or in other kinds of communities. Leaders must be aware of the tradeoffs of using these different tribal forces.

Through the research I conducted while writing this book, I’ve come to understand that the sides of human nature that may seem a little irrational—a conformist tendency toward peers, the adulation of heroes, and sentimentality and fetishistic interest in tradition—are actually the things that have kept us alive. They have allowed us to change adaptively. That approach may provide our best hope when it comes to dealing with the challenges ahead.

What are some actions that leaders can take to leverage tribal instincts to bring about cultural change?

The different layers of culture can be remolded. They will change organically, but leaders who understand the signals to which each culture is sensitive can change them deliberately as well. Peer codes, which are shared habits in a group, are very sensitive to what I refer to as “prevalence signals.” Prevalence signals offer information about what most people are doing. Corporations that aim to change the habits of a group can inspire gradual change through a specific tactic. They can engage in campaigns that show people that others like them are doing a certain thing. Here’s an example from the history of a prominent corporation.

Kodak practically had a monopoly on film and cameras for home photography. However, in the early 20th century, there was very little market for home photography because it was something left to professionals in their studios. Traditionally, photography had been a very solemn affair because early cameras could not capture a fleeting smile. So people would hold very grim expressions when they were photographed. Kodak had to create the sense that photography was a more light-hearted affair, and that one should smile for the camera. So they started by creating a camera called the Brownie that was inexpensive, and they would give it away to schools and colleges. They would give it away to scout troops and to the YMCA to increase usage. Then Kodak developed magazines that included photo contests. They invented the concept of a “snapshot” and the concept of a “shutterbug.”

Kodak also created campaigns like “Preserve your happy moments with a snapshot” to inspire families to photograph special moments. All of this led to an incremental process where people got used to the idea that one should smile for the camera and take pictures routinely, rather than just for a serious affair. In that way, Kodak created cultural change.

The next example relates to “hero codes” and involves [Microsoft CEO] Satya Nadella when he took the reins. Microsoft’s two previous CEOs had a particular style. Microsoft’s approach to marketing was sometimes described as a “take it or leave it” approach. The corporation had a near monopoly and people would buy products each year and renew their licenses. In the era of cloud computing, the switching costs for users suddenly became relatively low. A new industry norm developed of paying only for the features that you use. Microsoft was losing market share.

Microsoft appointed Satya Nadella as its third CEO in 2014. Nadella came from the cloud computing division and was a more soft-spoken guy. He realized that Microsoft was losing market share because the company didn’t really know its customers very well. Microsoft had focused on technical things it thought customers needed. So Nadella decided to go on a “listening tour.” He went to all of the divisions of Microsoft and also to its ecosystem—to customers and developers.

After listening to everyone, he said, “What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? What should we do less of? What should we do more of?” Satya realized that there are structural impediments that smart organizations have to take into account, so he put new measures into place. He is regarded as having changed the culture from a knowing culture to a learning culture.

The final part is probably the hardest for people to think of as something that CEOs can use, but it’s about how one can apply the ancestor instinct—the ancestor codes—to create change. It may seem like a paradox. If people are traditionalists, how can you use that to create change? Well, there’s a concept in the field of history called “invented traditions.” They are created strategically and retrospectively by leaders to serve certain purposes.

One prominent example is the tradition of Thanksgiving. American schoolchildren learn that the wise Pilgrims initiated a national holiday known as Thanksgiving, where we have turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie, and we talk about togetherness.

The Pilgrims did have a type of harvest party in 1621, but it didn’t have any of these other characteristics. It was only centuries later that the concepts of a harvest festival and reconciliation became combined in this concept of Thanksgiving.

Abraham Lincoln created a ritual during the Civil War, when the country was much more divided than it is now. He realized that to unify the country, he needed a ritual or a tradition. For that tradition to have legitimacy, it needed to seem like something that was already established as a time-honored tradition.

As a lawyer, Lincoln understood how precedents work. He noted that the Pilgrims had a dinner and that George Washington had a one-time Thanksgiving meal after the Revolutionary War. He also noted that different states in different parts of the union had harvest festivals as part of their tradition. Lincoln referenced all of these things and led Americans to think that there would be a new annual holiday. The concept fell on “fertile soil” because people wanted to have a time when they looked back to common ancestors, thought about gratitude, and overcame their differences.

It played an important role in unifying the country after the Civil War, and it became a sacred holiday very quickly. That’s some inkling of how each of these kinds of cultures can be changed by leaders who understand the levers and the signals.

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