Smart Tribes
Christine Comaford
Are You Scaring Your People into Mediocrity?
All leaders want to outperform, outsell, and outinnovate the competition. And most teams are fully capable of doing so. The problem: we consistently say and do things that spark unconscious fears and keep our people stuck in their Critter State. This primitive fight, flight, or freeze mode distills all decision making to one question: What will keep me safest?
Lying low, sucking up, procrastinating, and doing a good enough job may keep employees breathing, but it doesn’t make for vital organizations. Leaders have to get their people unstuck and fully engaged, replacing their old, limiting mental patterns with new patterns that foster optimal performance.
New York Times bestselling author and applied neuroscience expert Christine Comaford knows what it takes to move people from the Critter State into the Smart State, where they have full access to their own creativity, innovation, higher consciousness, and emotional engagement. When an entire culture maintains that state, it becomes what she calls a SmartTribe. Focused. Accountable. Collaborative. Imbued with the energy and passion to solve problems and do what needs doing, again and again and again.
Comaford brings to this book more than thirty years of company-building experience, combined with her expertise in behavioral modification and organizational development. She has helped hundreds of leaders navigate rapid growth, maximize performance, resolve internal conflicts, and execute turnarounds with the full support of their people.
Now she shares potent yet easy-to-learn neuroscience techniques that will help you do the same. You’ll learn how to move your team forward and reach your next revenue inflection point using the five key Accelerators of the Smart State—focus, clarity, accountability, influence, and sustainability. You’ll get better at anticipating and moving through your own stuck spots and those of your people.
Using her proven system, Comaford’s clients have already created hundreds of millions of dollars in new value. They’ve seen their revenues and profits increase by up to 210% annually; individuals become up to 50% more productive and 100% more accountable; marketing demand generation grow by up to 237%; new products and services created up to 48% faster; and sales close up to 50% faster. They spot changes in their markets more quickly, then pounce on them to create the future they want.
Ultimately, SmartTribes will help you and your team achieve optimal performance and engagement—brilliance—and leave competitors in the dust.
Bill Gates calls her “super high bandwidth.”
Bill Clinton has thanked her for “fostering American entrepreneurship.”
For over 30 years New York Times bestselling author and Leadership and Culture Coach Christine Comaford has been helping leaders navigate growth and change. Christine is sought after for providing proven strategies to shift executive behavior to create more positive outcomes, enroll and align teams in times of change, massively increase sales, product offerings, and company value. Her coaching, consulting and strategies have created hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue and value for her clients. The potent neuroscience techniques she teaches are easy to learn and immediately applicable to help leaders see into their blind spots, expand their vision, and more effectively influence outcomes.
As an Entrepreneur, Christine has built and sold 5 of her own businesses with an average 700% return on investment, served as a board director or in-the-trenches advisor to 36 startups, and has invested in over 200 startups (including Google) as a venture capitalist or angel investor. Christine has consulted to the White House (Clinton and Bush), 700 of the Fortune 1000, and over 300 small businesses. She has helped over 50 of her clients to exit their businesses for up to $425 million. Christine has repeatedly identified and championed key trends and technologies years before market acceptance, due in part to her work as a software engineer in the early days of Microsoft, Apple and Adobe.
Christine is a leadership columnist for www.Forbes.com. She has appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX Business Network, PBS, CNET and Stanford Graduate School of Business has done two case studies on her unconventional rise to success as a woman with neither a high school diploma nor college degree. Her two New York Times bestselling business books are SmartTribes: How Teams Become Brilliant Together and Rules for Renegades.
Christine believes we can do well and do good, using business as a path for personal development, wealth creation, and philanthropy.