How To Be A Leader

This month, Seth Godin asked us, the members of Triiibes.com, to invent and accomplish a project in December. We brainstormed and came up with at least twenty ideas. Three or four of them were quite popular; a lot of people said "Let's do that one!" or "Count me in!" But only two of them happened: the Giant Squid Project and this one, the Triiibes Blog Project.

Why? Because those were the only two with a leader.

It's not as hard as you think to be a leader. Here are my thoughts on what it takes to be a leader, based on my experience with this project.

1. Talk a lot. I posted a lot of comments about the project on the relevant thread. I didn't spam (permission, not interruption) but I spread information and enthusiasm.

2. Create a home for your tribe. In this case, it was a sub-group on the Triiibes forum.

3. Listen, then take decisive action. If I had waited for everyone to reach consensus on our goals, infrastructure, topic guidelines, and editing rules, we never would have gotten off the ground.

4. Delegate. Give others an opportunity to lead as well. Two (or more) in harmony surpass one in perfection. And plus, you'll end up running yourself ragged if you don't ask for help.

5. Have fun! Enjoy the journey and find the joy in your project and the people in it.

Thank you, everyone, for making this a fun and unforgettable growth experience for me, and hopefully a great experience for our readers, too.

Thanks, co-leaders!
Jodi Kaplan and Judy Vorfeld

Thanks, content creators!
Becky Blanton, Bernd Nurnberger, Betsy Wuebker, Bette Miles-Holleman, Bonnie Larner, Ed Welch, Jean-Philippe, Jodi Kaplan, Judy Vorfeld, Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian, Marcos Gaser, Martin Whitmore, Megan Elizabeth Morris, Michael Donk, Stephen Martell, and Tom Bentley

Thanks, editors!
Judy Vorfeld (Editor-in-Chief), Bonnie Larner, Jodi Kaplan, Joel D Canfield, and Tom Bentley

Thanks, sneezers!
Anne McCrossan, Denise Milligan, Didier Daglinckx, Ellen Di Resta, Eric Dorsett, Greg Digneo, Joe Noonan, John W. Furst, Jordan Goodman, Jule Kucera, Martin Whitmore, Molly McMahan, Nadine Toukan, Norma Vela, Patrick Prothe, Rahul Deodhar, Rex Williams, Suzanne Matthiessen, Tom Larsen, and Wendy Siegel

Thanks, aggregators!
Jeremy Meyers and Megan Elizabeth Morris

Thanks, readers!
That's you! Thank you all for reading and commenting.

December is over and so is this project, but stick around; Ed will be continuing to post excellent articles about tribe building, and you'll still see the occasional guest post from us Triiibespeople as well.

Happy New Year!

-Pace (of Pace and Kyeli)

Comments

[Dr.Mani]

Great post to top off a great month on the 'Tribe Blog'.

Having just spearheaded a joint project through to completion on another forum, I completely agree with the lessons you shared in this post, especially "If I had waited for everyone to reach consensus... we never would have gotten off the ground."

Harmony is desirable. Consensus is often Utopian. A 'half as good' project that gets done is better than a twice as good one that doesn't even get started!

It was fun being a part of this group - and hopefully, we'll be able to twist Ed's arm and take-over his blog now and then again :-)

Happy New Year!

All success
Dr.Mani