A strong team is built on common experience, shared difficulty, and the certainty that nobody gets dropped for struggling. When someone underperforms, a team looks at how to replace them and a tribe looks at how to fix the gap. That single difference changes who will tell you the truth.
People ask what I miss about Special Forces, and the answer is never the jumping out of planes or the rock faces or the double black diamonds. It is brotherhood. A common bond built through common experience and common suffering.
That bond is what made us successful. It is what held us together and pushed us through the obstacles, because the last thing any of us wanted was to let a brother down.
Most companies call that a team and then run it in a way that guarantees they never get it.
What is the difference between a team and a tribe?
A team optimizes for performance. A tribe optimizes for the people producing it, and gets the performance anyway.
I failed plenty on my detachment. I could not shoot as well as I needed to. I could not get the knots right setting up a belay station. I missed the finish time on a run. I was not kicked out. I was given grace, and that grace was training to help me hit the mark.
That was the power of the team. Everything got handled internally, whether it was a discipline issue or a failure of performance. We circled around each other and worked to fix the problem rather than eliminate it. That is what made it a tribe instead of a team. We performed like a high-end sports team and it went past performance on the range or on a mission.
The 063 tribe is still the thing I miss most, and that gap sat in my life a long time. It is one of the reasons I built the Steel Men Tribe. I wanted the accountability back. The feeling that I cannot let these guys down because I know they will not let me down.
Run the test on your own company. The last time someone on your team was underperforming, was the first conversation about how to fix it or about how to replace them? Everybody on that team knows the answer, and it decides how much truth you ever hear from them.
How do you build a strong team?
You build it by making people do hard things together and by writing down the two rules that make a group carry itself.
Every year a group of us heads into the mountains for a week of hunt camp. We justify the trip by carrying guns and occasionally killing an elk. The real reason is that we all like being off grid around a campfire with good friends. The first couple of days run rough, everyone twitchy about the lack of instant communication. By day two the phone is a camera and nothing more, and the camp turns into a smooth running machine.
Membership in that group has two requirements. If you need help, you ask. If something needs doing, you do it, even if you did it last time. That is what has kept it going more than twenty years. We have asked some people not to come back and we have opened the door to new men, and almost nothing else has changed.
Those two rules will do more for a company than most culture decks.
- Put them through something difficult together. Common suffering is what builds the bond. Shared labor is what turns a group of individuals into a tribe, and comfort will never produce it.
- Write the two rules and enforce them. If you need help, ask. If something needs doing, do it, whether or not it is your turn.
- Fix the person before you consider replacing them. When someone misses the mark, the first move is training. People behave differently once they have seen you do that for somebody else.
- Handle it internally. Discipline and performance problems get solved inside the group, not escalated out of it. That is what makes people trust the group.
- Get physically together on a schedule. Trust has a half-life and distance is a slow leak. More on that in how to delegate.
- Let people leave, and be willing to ask someone not to come back. A tribe that never removes anybody is not a tribe, it is a crowd. We have done it, rarely, and the group is stronger for it.
- Get off the grid at least once. Something changes on day two when the phone stops being a phone.
Why will nobody on your team ask for help?
Because most of us are carrying a belief that needing help means we do not know what we are doing.
I have it too. I have a hard time even asking for a veteran discount, which saves me money, and I think it comes from a belief that I did not do anything special. It is the same thing that stops a lot of people, not just veterans, from asking for anything at all.
If we believe we will grind through and figure it out and never admit we need help, the struggle is harder than it has to be. I have told many veterans I have coached that it is fine to ask for help. There is always an apprehension that they owe something in return. The person spending time helping is doing it of their own free will, and who am I to judge whether that exchange is enough for them. Often they are paying back somebody who once helped them.
The irony is that in the Army I always looked for help and for how someone had done it before. I never liked starting from scratch. I read the after-action reports. I talked to people about how the operation went for them so I had a head start on mine. That is not cheating. That is doing it better because you learned from somebody else.
There is a harder version of this too. I am hesitant to share my own problems, and in my masculine mind an unsolvable problem is a sign of weakness, so when I do share one it is private. Sometimes the problem gets big enough or complex enough or far enough outside my control that I want to tell everyone, hoping the answer comes back. The truth is that almost none of the time does anyone have it. Some problems have to take care of themselves, and I have to accept that wanting to fix everything does not mean I can.
Your people are running the same calculation. If asking for help has ever cost somebody on your team, nobody will do it again, and you will find out about problems late.
What does helping actually look like?
It looks like not asking first.
Adrian and I served together on my second Operational Detachment-Alpha and we have stayed in touch ever since. One week this winter he did what he does. Following my last back surgery I was on limited duty, no lifting, no bending, no twisting, which means no plowing and no shoveling. Both are chores I handle with pride, and I could not do them.
Adrian did not ask whether I wanted him to come plow and shovel. He asked how much snow I got, then said he would be there in thirty minutes. If he had asked me whether I wanted help I would have said no, we have got this, Suzanne will shovel. That is the wrong answer, and it was an unacceptable one to somebody like Adrian.
His version of help is a reminder of how small the useful things are. Holding a door. Putting a cart in the corral. Cooking a meal for somebody. A smile can do it. It does not take much to change someone's day if you live with an attitude of service.
The same applies at work. Asking a struggling person whether they want help usually gets you a no. Showing up with the help gets you a team.
Does your tribe determine your success?
More than your own effort does, and it is the part most founders underinvest in.
I shifted my working priority this year toward the Pocket Litter, which meant my flex time went into the go-to-market plan. Three phone calls with men in my tribe moved the momentum of that effort by about three hundred percent. Three calls, with guys I enjoy spending time with, and a small shift in the conversation.
It validates something I keep relearning. No one gets there alone, and your success depends on the people in your tribe as much as it depends on your own effort. It is not who you are that determines your success, it is who you know. And who you know is decided by who you are. Be a good person and you will find your tribe is full of good people.
The mechanism is simple. When I hit a decision point on the product, the decision was still mine and the responsibility was still mine. I did not have to make it without knowledge. Some members of my tribe have walked a similar path and know where the obstacles sit. Never the same ones, and their experience still tells me what the indicators look like on mine.
In a tribe, nobody says I got mine the hard way, good luck to you. It is about helping each other, and about the satisfaction of watching somebody avoid the costly mistake you already made.
What to do this week
Look at the last person on your team who struggled. If the conversation went to replacing them, that is the thing to change, and everyone already knows it.
Then put the two hunt camp rules in front of your team and say you mean them. If you need help, ask. If something needs doing, do it.
The 7 C's of Leadership assessment will show you where the trust is thin before you start. If the gap you cannot describe is that you have no tribe of your own, that is what the Steel Men Tribe exists for, and the Green Beret Leadership Program builds the same thing inside a company.
Find the gap before it costs you
Score your team against the 7 C's of Leadership in about ten minutes, then talk it through with Otis.
Take the 7 C's assessmentFrequently asked questions
What is the difference between a team and a tribe?
A team optimizes for performance and a tribe optimizes for the people producing it. When someone underperforms, a team considers how to replace them and a tribe considers how to fix the gap, usually with training. That difference decides how much truth a leader ever hears from their people.
How do you build a strong team?
Put people through something difficult together, because common suffering builds the bond that comfort never will. Then enforce two rules: if you need help you ask, and if something needs doing you do it whether or not it is your turn. Fix people before you consider replacing them, and handle problems inside the group.
Why will not my team ask for help?
Because most people carry a belief that needing help means they do not know what they are doing, and because somewhere they learned that asking has a cost. If asking has ever hurt anyone on your team, nobody will do it again, and problems will reach you late.
How do you build trust on a team?
Get physically together on a schedule, handle discipline and performance problems internally rather than escalating them, and show people at least once that you will fix somebody rather than drop them. Trust has a half-life, so distance drains it whether or not anything goes wrong.
Does who you know really determine success?
It is not who you are that determines your success, it is who you know, and who you know is decided by who you are. The decision stays yours and the responsibility stays yours. What a tribe gives you is other people's experience of where the obstacles sit before you walk into them.