Dave Logan

Dave Logan is an author and academic from Chicago, Illinois. He is one of the founding members of the Collaborative Leadership Network, a trusted source for inspiring executives, teams and organizations in effective collaboration. As a sought-after speaker, Dave has shared his insights and research on collaboration, leadership and culture at conferences and events across the globe.

Dave is best known for his New York Times bestseller, Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization. Published in 2008, it was the first comprehensive book on group dynamics in organizations. Dave and his co-authors — John King and Halee Fischer-Wright — helped pioneer a new way of understanding teams, transformation and collaboration through the idea of tribal leadership.

In the book, Dave proposes that humans naturally organise themselves into tribes, namely:

Defeated (Stage 1)

Hostile (Stage 2)

Pseudo-independent (Stage 3)

Achieving (Stage 4)

Collective (Stage 5)

Successful organisations are marked by a strong collective stage, encouraging members to share ideas, opinions and resources. The authors use real-life examples to illustrate how organisations succeed through collaboration, providing tools for individuals and teams to improve engagement, morale, and productivity.

Dave also co-authored The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life along with his fellow collaborators. This book applies the foundational principles of tribal leadership to the workplace, helping managers and employees design performance systems that inspire collaboration across teams and departments. The authors suggest that, with the right performance system in place, organisations realise an optimal performance with increased business results.

In 2008, Dave released Tribal Leadership in Practice, a workbook featuring exercises and activities to deepen and extend what is learned in the original book. Written as a companion workbook, it offers practical and actionable advice to implement the principles of tribal leadership.

Dave’s latest book is Culture Works: How to Create Happiness in the Workplace. Written together with his co-authors Scott Christopher and Liz Rodriguez, this book shows leaders how to shift their organisational culture from stuck to unstuck. The authors suggest such shifts begin with the leader, and explore the six distinct cultures leaders can choose to nurture in the workplace:

The Hunger Games

The Treacherous Path

The Bureaucracy

The Ambivalence

The Playground

The Ideal

By embracing a culture of collaboration, teams and organizations can move beyond stagnation and fuel performance, innovation, and growth. Dave’s insights through all of his books help organisations drive change, unleash new possibilities and create a culture where employees thrive and excel.

In addition to his books, Dave’s research has appeared in Forbes and Harvard Business Review, and he has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Financial Times. He holds a doctorate in Organisational Psychology and doctorate in Human Resources and Leadership. Dave is currently a faculty member at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, where he specializes in leadership, team dynamics, and culture works.

Dave Logan is an insightful author and researcher whose work provides leaders and teams with actionable strategies to enhance collaboration and organisational performance. Through his books and research, Dave has made a name for himself in the business and academic worlds, providing a framework for a new way to lead and collaborate in the workplace.