• Tribes

  • We Need You to Lead Us
  • By: Seth Godin
  • Narrated by: Seth Godin
  • Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (6,396 ratings)

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Tribes  By  cover art

Tribes

By: Seth Godin
Narrated by: Seth Godin
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Publisher's summary

A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It's our nature.

Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they're enabling countless new tribes to be born - groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.

And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?

The Web can do amazing things, but it can't provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals - people just like you who have a passion about something. The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at her fingertips.

If you think leadership is for other people, think again - leaders come in surprising packages. Consider Joel Spolsky and his international tribe of scary-smart software engineers. Or Gary Vaynerhuck, a wine expert with a devoted following of enthusiasts. Chris Sharma leads a tribe of rock climbers up impossible cliff faces, while Mich Mathews, a VP at Microsoft, runs her internal tribe of marketers from her cube in Seattle. All they have in common is the desire to change things, the ability to connect a tribe, and the willingness to lead.

If you ignore this opportunity, you risk turning into a "sheepwalker" - someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good. Sheepwalkers don't do very well these days.

Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities in leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers....It's not easy, but it's easier than you think.

©2008 Do You Zoom, Inc. (P)2008 Audible, Inc.

Featured Article: 55+ Powerful and Inspiring Quotes to Guide Your Leadership Journey


What makes a great leader? While leadership styles vary, most experts agree that the best leaders have key characteristics in common. Gathered from a wide range of audiobooks—classic novels, management guides, sci-fi thrillers, political memoirs, and more—this collection of quotes reinforces and reflects on seven hallmarks of every great leader. These quotes offer insights to help you develop core leadership qualities and rise to the calling.

What listeners say about Tribes

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Get to the point!!!

We tried, really hard, on a long road trip to get past Seth Godin's annoying delivery style (so slow and he over enunciates everything!) and his continual promise of "I'm going to tell you..." or "you'll learn it here..." without him actually doing that. But after almost 3 hours we couldn't take it anymore. He says the same thing over and over and there wasn't much new here that delivered on his huge promises. Skim it in a bookstore and you'll get what you need.

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65 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Leadership

This book hit the spot for me. I thought the reader was really good. If you are someone that is just getting into Leadership or need to renew your Leadership skills, this is a good book. Well worth listening too.

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28 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

the worst audio book ever

I never write reviews. But this book was so bad I had to warn others.

First of all the narration was awful. But I decided to listen further hoping the content is better than the narrator. It was a jumble of obvious and same old ideas. Do not waste your money and time on this book.

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27 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

a bit too repetitive

The concept is interesting: that the social experience can be categorized into groups called tribes. The problem is the concept is too simple for a book. I found the author repeating the same terms. The repetition sounded like autocratic calls to allegiance. (We need you!) This content would be better suited for 40-page paper.

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23 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Overly simplistic attempt at inspirational writing

What disappointed you about Tribes?

The content doesn't rise to the level of social science, but lies somewhere in that area of "social media science" where if I can come up with a few examples (which may not be directly linked to the phenomena I am trying to explain) then I must be on to something.

If you’ve listened to books by Seth Godin before, how does this one compare?

NA

How could the performance have been better?

The narrator is a bit monotone at times. Seth could have hired a voice actor to spice it up.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Tribes?

This book is extremely repetitive. I feel that I got the point and lost interest within the first 20 minutes.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Kernals in the Chaff

Overall worth the read. There are things to get past as other reviews point out, but does provide great kernels of wisdom. It did take a second listen to pick out all of the points.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic

I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to better understand why Managers are not wired to be Leaders and why so few people choose to be Leaders. In addition, you will come away with a new appreciation for the next person you cross paths with that is referred to as a "heretic".

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18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Tribal Manifesto

Godin's manifesto (and I use that description in the best sense of the word) convincing makes the case that the most dangerous thing we can do at work and in our careers is play it safe. Suspend your critical eye and realist orientation for just long enough to be swept into Godin's passion. Allow yourself to be inspired. Read, share, and decide to lead your tribe. We will be discussing this book together at work - so more to come on if inspiration can be translated on the ground

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Good content, a little difficult to listen to

Let me start by saying I am a fan of Seth Godin. I've read most of his work and read his blog daily. Overall this books was good, however Seth's writing style (in this case) does not make for great audio experience. He tends to write his chapters in sub-sections with various titles. This makes for some choppiness in the audio that you really need to pay attention to or you might get lost. Once you get used to this the book is a good listen and if taken to heart can be powerful for any one.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Seemingly good ideas based on anecdata

I recently took part in a leadership course designed for young scientists. The course was inspiring but I was frankly amazed that even though the course was for scientists, the scientific basis of the material was dubious to say the least.

The same is true for this book. On the surface the advice in this book makes sense. Be a heretic, have faith, pursue your idea. This is what leaders do! It is of course easy to think of many people who followed this recipe and became famous world leaders or multi-billionaire entrepreneurs, and the author use such examples to backup the advice given.

However, although anecdotes and inspiring examples are nice, scientifically speaking they don't hold much water. Is it always good to have faith, and to follow your own path? Aren't there also people who follow these principles who are seen as stubborn idiots? These people, unlike the ones who ‘make it’, receive no media attention.

The bottom line is that one can find examples of almost anything - which makes them close to meaningless. Until then, the jury is still out. And hence when it comes to the advice in this book I would also say that the jury is still out.

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12 people found this helpful