What Team Leaders Can Learn From Cults

Isolated groups with strange beliefs have mystified scholars and leaders throughout history. How do self-appointed and charismatic leaders recruit and persuade people to join a group with deviant beliefs and practices? More importantly, how do these leaders demand and achieve an unwavering devotion to those beliefs, binding people into a highly cohesive structure, usually to their detriment? 

Cults operate with a hive mentality. They isolate themselves and work hard to separate their adherents from people who would make counterarguments against their views. Cult leaders “brainwash” members by manipulating who they engage with and what they hear. They demand zero tolerance for criticism or questions. 

Not surprisingly, cults are shunned and ridiculed by society to discourage people from joining them. Scholars don’t hold up cults as an example of anything good, so they are largely ignored by leadership and team experts. In fact, referring to a team or organization as a cult or cult-like is usually a pejorative and meant as a putdown. It’s hard to imagine why leaders would want to emulate any aspect of a cult. But there is one feature all good teams share with these deviant groups: A compelling and clear Higher Purpose and Vision.

The foundation for cults to recruit and retain members begins with a higher purpose, noble cause, or vision that is so compelling that it is hard not to want to be a part of it. Anyone in the cult can explain the vision and people can feel its allure immediately after the first exposure to it. 

Impressively for cults, each day and every interaction are filled with this grand goal, vision, or purpose. Charismatic cult leaders do everything they can to imprint the cause and to keep it in front of members throughout the day. 

It is the cause or ultimate purpose or promise that entices people to devote themselves to the group and its leader. As important as the leader is to a cult, their influence depends first on this higher calling.  

Team leaders could learn a thing or two from cults about how important it is to craft a captivating vision and to connect the daily work to a higher purpose. Consistently reminding people about the “Why” behind what they do is a critical strategy for all leaders. 

When team members connect their day-to-day work to a higher social meaning, they engage differently. They work with a fierce devotion to achieve it, and they bond with other like-minded team members who elevate each other’s commitment. 

There’s always a spellbinding way to describe where an organization is going and why. Good leaders work hard to craft an engrossing message, not to create mindless followers, but to excite and energize new and existing team members. 

When an organization connects a vision and purpose to team members that is larger than themselves and has social relevance, they bind people together. There’s nothing delusional about that.