Book Summary

Power Your Tribe

Creating Resilient Teams in Turbulent Times
Book by Christine Comaford Published by McGraw-Hill | © 2018

Synopsis
How do you handle change? Does your team crumble under pressure? In a constantly shifting world, both you and
your organization need to pivot to changing markets, new management, and unexpected competition. With the right
knowledge and tools, you can lead your team toward clear solutions.

Power Your Tribe (McGraw-Hill, © 2018)

The key concepts of Power Your Tribe can be distilled into the

provides the core principles you need to

following ideas:

guide your team through adapting to Let Go of Uncertainty

relentless internal and external changes.
Author Christine Comaford shows you how
teams can remain strong and resilient, even
in the midst of change. In this book, she
teaches you how to
• adjust behaviors to increase business
performance
• build emotional agility in yourself and
others
• help your team redefine success for the
organization
• empower your tribe to be resilient
Humans instinctively resist change, often due to uncertainty about
what that change will mean and what might result. Let go of resistance
to learn how you can use your emotions, instead of fearing them.
Acknowledge Your Emotions
To maneuver through change, you need to understand the fear and
uncertainty that accompany it. Navigating these emotions as a team
will strengthen the organization for a more resilient future.
Communicate with Others
Misunderstandings occur most frequently because people interpret
their environments differently. Take time to communicate with others
on an individual level to understand their unique needs.
Change the Message
You can choose how to interpret your experiences and environment.
Reframe negative situations to a more positive outlook and
encouraging message. Create new stories that empower you and your
team.

“When we’re unsure of how to move forward and unclear about what the change means, we often
withdraw and isolate ourselves to make sense of what is happening. But we are tribal beings. We
need to be together. We need to know we’re safe, we belong, and we matter. So the key to successful
change is understanding and navigating the emotional undercurrent of change together. ”
Based on Power Your Tribe: Create Resilient Teams in Turbulent Times by Christine Comaford, we discuss how the right
knowledge and understanding of individuals and their emotions can strengthen an organization and its experience
of change. We share our interpretations of these ideas in the following pages.
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2

Tribe Basics: Human Behavior

and How People Experience the World
In situations where you’re under pressure to meet demands, you need tools to shift your mindset from panicked
survival to level-headed innovation and collaboration. Once you know how the human brain categorizes experiences
and what it needs to function for success, you’ll be able to reframe perceived challenges as opportunities that you
can work with rather than struggle against. Deepening your understanding of human behavior and the emotional
experiences people need to succeed personally and professionally, will help you respect others’ perspectives, and
recognize that everyone in your tribe is doing the best they can with the tools they have.

The Critter State and the Smart State

Despite the developments humans have made in technology and quality of life, primitive instinct still governs
how you respond to changes and threats in your environment. Using what she terms the Critter State and the
Smart State, Comaford explores the connection in how these instincts affect and diminish workplace
collaboration, communication, and productivity. To understand human behavior, Comaford begins by defining
neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean’s “tribune brain” system, which consists of the three essential parts of the brain:
the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, and the prefrontal cortex.

• The reptilian brain is the most primitive part of the brain, which controls basic life-support systems
like breathing, eating, temperature regulation, and sensory information. The focus of the reptilian brain
is pure instinct and survival.
• The mammalian brain governs emotion, motivational systems, learning, short-term memory, and the
fight/flight/freeze/faint response. The focus of the mammalian brain is survival, but it also controls
more sophisticated emotions such as anger, frustration, happiness, separation distress, and maternal
nurturance.
• The neocortext brain, or the prefrontal cortex, is the most evolved and complex part of the brain. It is
used to plan, innovate, solve problems, and think abstract thoughts. It also enables more advanced
behaviors like social connection, language, and envisioning the future.

If you combine the fight/flight/freeze/faint responses in the mammalian brain with the survival instincts of the
reptilian brain, you have what Comaford terms the critter brain or Critter State—defined by a purely reactive and
instinctive need to survive. The Smart State, however, has access to all of the brain’s resources, and can therefore
choose how to respond to a situation or threat.

When a business is faced with a threat, many people enter Critter State—communication diminishes and people
may become aggressive or territorial. When in Critter State, you often end up with an environment where there’s
little or no trust. In contrast, when you’re in the Smart State, you have the flexibility, power, and balance to choose
your responses. For example, if you’re in Critter State you can only react to an angry email with the
fight/flight/freeze/faint response, but if you’re in Smart State can choose to brush it off as the sender having a
bad day.
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How the Brain Creates Experiences

You’re constantly flooded with sensory information—visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory. The way
your brain processes this sensory overload informs how you interpret your experience of the world. As you move
through your days, you store images, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes internally that shape your experiences.

To illustrate this, Comaford asks you to recall your favorite place in your home. Most likely, you remember an
image or visual of your favorite place. Similarly, when you have to recall an experience, your brain calls up stored
sounds, which can either be spoken words or tones in the environment, or internal dialogue or thoughts. These
sounds are auditory input. Visual and auditory experiences combined lead to feelings, or kinesthetic responses,
which Comaford suggests can manifest as tension in your shoulders or a knot in your stomach. She then describes
how these physiological feelings are translated into emotions you can name—fear, excitement, joy, or anger.

From these kinesthetic experiences, your brain interprets meaning from the world, other people, situations, and
ourselves. However, in the process of interpreting meaning, your brain is filtering the flood of information it
receives every minute, deleting, distorting, and generalizing what you experience. The meaning you interpret
forms your beliefs, which then become part of your identity. The problem with this process of interpretation,
Comaford argues, is that it doesn’t always create the best possible outcome. For example, during stressful
situations, you may feel threatened, pressured, and overwhelmed. If these kinesthetic experiences are informing
your beliefs, as Comaford suggests, suddenly powerlessness is a part of your identity. This is a negative outcome.
But, once you understand how these negative perspectives can manifest, you can lead others toward a more
positive emotional outcome that reinforces a “strong and capable” identity.

The Three Things Humans Need

According to Comaford, you can’t reach your Smart State, or self-actualization, without the three things humans
crave—safety, belonging, and mattering. These three key emotional experiences control how emotionally agile
or fragile humans are in any situation:

• Safety, both emotional and physical, enables you to feel as though you can take greater risks. Safety
creates an environment free from fear. Employees who work in an environment where they feel safe—
from being reprimanded, punished, or even fired for taking risks—communicate and collaborate
better, and function as a stronger team.
• Belonging instills a sense of togetherness with others, and creates an aligned team, or tribe. A tight-
knit environment in which everyone is moving in the same direction contributes to greater success. You
can create a sense of belonging with a mission statement, vision, and goals that resonate on an
individual and team level.
• Mattering is the sense of making a difference and being a part of the greater success of the team and
the organization. It’s the feeling of contributing individually to the whole and having that contribution
appreciated and acknowledged. An organization where employees feel as though they matter
facilitates a greater work culture and environment of collaboration and success.
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Safety, belonging, and mattering all contribute towards reaching your Smart State. The greater your experience
of safety, belonging, and mattering, the greater your emotional agility, resilience, and your ability to adapt in any
business situation. By understanding why people need to feel safe, belong, and matter, you’re able to identify
when others are struggling, which in turn enables you to provide adequate support and understanding.
Comaford reminds you that it’s important to behave in ways that help employees feel they are safe, that they
belong, and that they matter. Doing this helps them shift from Critter State to Smart State, where they are
empowered to innovate and collaborate with their teams.

Empowering Your Tribe: The Playbook

Emotional agility is about being able to choose how you want to feel in any given situation, and helping others
choose how they feel, too. With the right tools, techniques, and training, you can learn how to build emotional
agility into a muscle memory response for yourself and your organization. You can learn how to become more
emotionally agile, moving from your present Critter State, where the problem exists, toward your desired Smart
State, where you and your team can thrive.

Let Go of Resistance
People instinctively resist situations and people perceived to be harmful, or threatening to their safety, belonging,
or mattering. While resistance demonstrates that you are engaged, to an extent, in the situation, the goal is to
move past these feelings and consent to them. In this context, Comaford tells you that consenting to resistance
simply means to accept that the situation exists. This acceptance, or consent, enables you to redirect energy
toward becoming more aware of your emotions and in turn change your consciousness, or your current conscious
emotional experience.

You can use Comaford’s Maneuvers of Consciousness tool to transition through this. Begin by evaluating the
negative experience, move to questioning its existence, allow yourself to be fascinated by the situation, and then
fully shift toward appreciating it as an experience. This step-by-step process enables you to acknowledge that a
difficult or painful situation exists, and then become aware of your emotions surrounding it. Once you’ve done
this you can work to change your outlook to your desired emotional state.

Develop a Better Rapport with Yourself

Most people frequently behave in a way they immediately wish they hadn’t. For example, after a difficult
assignment or client call, you might crave junk food, and tell yourself, “It’s okay that I’m having this donut, it’s
been a tough morning at work.” You justify your behavior, while knowing internally that the donut or other
chosen vice really isn’t good for you. Instead of beating yourself for this behavior, Comaford advises you to
transform your outlook by developing rapport with the part of you that came up with those unhealthy solutions
in the first place.
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You can use Comaford’s Parts Model to examine the emotions that lead you to partake in unhealthy habits and
find the underlying need—usually a form of comfort. Using this tool, you first reconnect with and acknowledge
the parts of yourself that are self-sabotaging, and then develop a deeper connection among those parts of your
subconscious mind. Acknowledging that your need for comfort is okay is the first step in having a better rapport
and understanding of yourself. Once you’re able to accept these emotions, you begin to have greater compassion,
connection, and kindness with yourself. Through this acceptance and rapport, you can develop new behaviors
that are more in line with the underlying part of yourself that craved the unhealthy behavior in the first place.

According to Comaford, this self-awareness enables you to become more emotionally agile, where you can
experience control, confidence, and support. Once you’ve learned to break your negative behavior patterns, you
are better equipped and more open to collaborating and communicating with your team.

Reframe the Meaning

People interpret meaning through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic cues from the world. These in turn inform
beliefs, which results in whether people feel positively or negatively about an event or situation. Negative feelings,
especially in a work environment, typically lead to lower productivity, weaker communication, and splintered
teamwork. Instead of accepting this, learn to reframe the meaning of a situation. The tool of reframing is a way
to reconfigure a view, or experience, event, emotion, or idea to find a more useful, alternative meaning. Comaford
demonstrates that knowing how to reframe meaning from an event can help to change your perception of
yourself and others’ perceptions of themselves. For instance, instead of thinking how difficult it is to find a job
fresh out of college in a crowded market, reframe your mindset to see how the situation can present
opportunities to stand out from the crowd in a challenging, but perhaps rewarding way.

Choose Your Behavior

People’s beliefs about their surroundings, external conditions, such as the world, others, situations, and
themselves, drive behavior. People usually default to the best feeling or kinesthetic response to a situation. If
there are no good feelings, then they’re instinctively drawn to the least painful one available. However, choosing
your behavior involves responding to situations by choice instead of by impulse. To do this, Comaford tells you
that you need to recognize when you feel triggered by stressful situations, and learn how to recall, replicate, and
generate past good experiences during these triggering moments. The flood of positive emotions can help you
to step back and analyze the situation, enabling you to collaborate with colleagues, communicate more
effectively, and direct energy toward a solution.

Comaford suggests the tool of VAK—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic—Anchoring to help you reconnect to or
recall positive experiences. First, you need to establish a discreet, but unique anchor, such as pressing your wrist,
and then immerse yourself in recollections of positive memories. You then need to practice triggering your
anchor and recalling happy memories until you’ve “set” those positive emotions to your anchor. This can take
time and practice, but it’s a useful tool when you feel stressed, panicked, or overwhelmed.
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Engage Your Tribe

To enable your team to become resilient and shift into its Smart States, you need to ensure your team has safety,
belonging, and mattering. In order to engage your tribe, you must be able to recognize the behavioral clues that
indicate when others are feeling threatened, and are therefore lacking an emotional need. For instance, someone
who gossips at work or whispers about needing an exit strategy is likely in need of feeling safe. Those who
withhold information or fail to communicate with teammates are most likely craving belonging. Individuals who
come off as condescending or self-focused may be feeling like they don’t matter to the organization.

Comaford stresses that you need to help these individuals for the sake of the overall tribe—talk with them one
on one, discuss their fears, and reassure them that they are part of a team that requires their individual strengths.
She reminds you that giving people what they need to enter their Smart State engages the individual, and
empowers them to foster connection, collaboration, and high performance within the tribe.

Build Emotional Agility

All human beings are biased; it’s a normal and instinctive response. According to Comaford, one of the most
common biases in organizations is the “like-me” bias, which means that people feel more safety, belonging, and
mattering with the people who are most similar to them. In theory, this isn’t problematic, but it can quickly
become discriminatory. The effects of bias in an organization can influence hiring, business perspective, and
innovation. Comaford reminds you that a team’s diversity isn’t just about representing individuals from different
genders and ethnicities, it’s about expanding and diversifying the collective intelligence of the team, fostering
greater innovation, and increasing the safety, belonging, and mattering of every individual in order to empower
the tribe as a whole. A team that feels empowered and connected facilitates trust across the organization. When
tribal members are emotionally engaged and agile they are happier and more productive members of the group.

Redefine the Tribe

In any organization, a new employee has fewer responsibilities than the founding CEO, but they both have
important and unique roles within the tribe. Neither should try to take over the role of the other, as that would
throw what Comaford describes as energetic weight out of balance. The energetic weight is the weight, power,
and authority associated with a given position. You’ll know when employees are in the right position or energetic
weight if you feel confident that they can fulfill the duties and perform the responsibilities of their role
competently. A large part of ensuring employees are performing satisfactorily is giving feedback. Frequent and
proper feedback can help your team learn how to auto-course-correct, where they take their own action, deal
with their own consequences, and become a tribe with the ability to thrive no matter what challenges they face.
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Insights—Empower Yourself to Empower Others

People tend to react to change with doubt, fear, and

uncertainty. These energy-draining feelings affect pro-
ductivity levels. When you feel fear and resistance to
Rewire Your Emotions change, refocus your energy on more empowering
emotions. Learn how you can maneuver your current
experience to a more rewarding emotional state that
can help you navigate change.

We all have bad habits that usually surface if we’re

stressed or under pressure. Instead of berating yourself
if you indulge, learn to transform your vices into some-
thing positive. By accepting the part of yourself that
wants to engage in an unhealthy habit, you validate
Transform Your Inner Voice
your underlying needs—such as comfort, safety, or
acknowledgement. In turn, you may find yourself seek-
ing healthier methods to achieve the same comfort.

Your perspective is your individual experience of your

environment, but it can often be distorted. You can
redefine how you perceive situations, ideas, and emo-
Restructure Your Story tions, and even yourself and others. Replace the nega-
tive with something positive. See new market trends or
competition as an opportunity instead of a problem—
change the story so you can change your mindset.

Your beliefs about the world, yourself, and others drive

your behaviors, positive or negative. Negative behav-
iors are triggered reactions from feelings of stress, dis-
Choose Your Response appointment, or powerlessness. Learn to recognize
your triggers so you can counter negative behaviors.
When you’re in a more positive frame of mind you can
focus on reaching a solution.

Every individual needs safety, belonging, and pur-

pose—the key is identifying what employees are lack-
ing so you can help fulfill that need. Engage team
members—ask questions, call out their strengths,
Empower Your Tribe
assign them to lead a project, request their feedback,
and communicate their value to the organization.
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Conclusion
Change, and resistance to change, is emotionally charged—with fear, uncertainty, doubt, and even isolation.
Successfully navigating these challenges depends on an understanding of how change breeds these negative,
but predictably human emotions. Comaford’s Power Your Tribe gently guides you through the principles of how
humans experience the world and how their experiences influence and affect business performance, especially
during times of change. With this solid foundation, you can begin to understand different situations from a new
perspective, and learn how you can help others release emotional resistance, be fully present, make new meaning,
focus on desired outcomes, and engage your team. These steps guide you in building a resilient and emotionally
agile tribe with collaborative engagement, high performance and productivity, and sustainable growth.

“Emotional agility is, in essence, about choosing how you want to feel, and helping
others choose how they feel too. If emotions are the muscle, then emotional
agility is the flexibility, strength, and adaptability of the muscle. ”
If you’ve enjoyed our insights on Comaford’s Power Your Tribe: Create Resilient Teams in Turbulent Times, we
encourage you to access the other Power Your Tribe assets in the Skillsoft library, or purchase the hardcopy.

About the Author

CHRISTINE COMAFORD is a leadership and culture coach, entrepreneur, and a New York
Times bestselling author. She is highly sought after for her expertise in navigating growth and
change, shifting executive behavior, aligning teams during different periods of change, and
increasing sales and company value. Comaford’s neuroscience-based coaching and consult-
ing techniques and strategies have helped generate hundreds of billions of dollars in new
revenue and value for her clients.

Also by Christine Comaford

1 SmartTribes: How Teams Become Brilliant Together, Portfolio, © 2013, ISBN 978-1591846482.
2 Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your
Individuality, McGraw-Hill Education, © 2007, ISBN 978-0071489751.

Power Your Tribe: Creating Resilient Teams in Turbulent Times, by Christine Comaford. Copyright © 2018, McGraw-Hill, 272 pages,
ISBN 978-1260108774.