Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together

"That’s right. The timing of this book is clever—it came out in October. That was aimed at putting it in front of people in the month before the US election where we’ve got two tribes—Trumpians and Democrats—taking each other on. We’ve seen many years of the political landscape, not only in the US but also elsewhere, dividing into bad tribalism. Morris’s point, first of all, is that tribalism is innate. Going back to the Neanderthals , he spends quite a lot of time explaining how Homo sapiens has developed these tribal instincts and how they have not only protected but also advanced humankind. There is no getting round tribal instincts. What he’s arguing for is that there are real opportunities for positive change, if leaders—and he takes leaders across the whole gamut: from politicians like Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore through to modern corporate leaders—can harness this tribal instinct. He makes a little nod at the beginning of the book to working from home, and why it’s not as good as getting together in the office. One of the reasons is that our tribal instinct looks for cues from other people in our team, and that’s harder to get when you’re on a Zoom call. I must admit, when I first saw the book, I thought, ‘This will be another of these behavioral science books that’s going to recycle some old thinking and research that we’re all familiar with’—but it has a strong spark of originality in the way he is recasting tribalism as a potential positive. At least one of the judges, when we were talking about it, said this was a book they wish they’d had when they were a CEO or leading a team, as a way of helping to interpret what you’re looking at when you’re confronted with a team management situation. It’s a genuine business book, but with a very wide brief as well, to look at things beyond business."