September 22, 2026
This weekend, my daughter left for her university. The very same ancient brain that kept our ancestors safe and close, that scanned the horizon, made sure the fire was lit, and checked that everyone was safe, suddenly had to make sense of an empty feeling and the knowledge of an enormous distance.
For years, I could see her, check in on her, be there. That’s how our caveman brain is wired. We protect the people in our sight. But evolution also gave us something else, the ability to build tribes that are outside a local camp.
Trust, shared values, the quiet certainty that someone has your back, even from 200 miles away.
This week’s newsletter is about exactly that. How the strongest teams aren’t held together by being in the same room. They’re held together by purpose and goals, and what a leader discovers about their tribe, and themselves, when the distance grows.
I have been a police detective, sat with grieving families and vicious criminals alike. I have had to deliver news that nobody wants to hear and stayed strong when being there was the most useful thing I could offer. I thought I knew how to manage difficult emotions, and I believed I was reasonably well-equipped for these hard moments.
I was not prepared for watching her in the rear view mirror as I drove away.
Something happens in the first few hours after a big goodbye that I have been turning over in my mind, because it is not just personal, it is an ancient pull. The empty chest, the feeling of being too quiet in our house. It was once full of fun and a family hum, the desire to pick up the phone not because anything is wrong but because the brain keeps sending signals that the tribe is separated and incomplete. Your caveman brain, which once kept your ancestors alive for hundreds of thousands of years, knew and registered that weakness; now it registers the disappearance of someone you love the same way. Something is missing, the circle is broken, the threat-detection fires off, even when you know perfectly well that she is fine, that she has a new tribe around her, and that this is exactly what is supposed to happen for everyone’s greater good.
I am telling you this because what I actually want to talk about has everything to do with how the best teams in the world stay strong when distance is created. Distance is the biggest challenge of modern working life, whether you are a leader whose team is spread across three towns and cities, a manager who inherited a hybrid arrangement they did not design, or someone sitting in a home office wondering whether the team they care about still feels like a team to them at all. The question underneath it all is the same one my caveman brain was asking on Sunday afternoon. How do you hold a tribe together when you can no longer see them?
The honest answer is that the question contains a false premise, as seeing was never what held the tribe together.
The human brain evolved when proximity and safety were the same thing. If your tribe was near, you felt safe and were protected. If you could see the people you depended on, you could read their signals, respond to their needs, coordinate efforts without a word. Thousands of years of living in close physical community built a nervous system that struggled when the people who matter most are not in view. That is not a character weakness, it is a safety feature in our species, and it runs in the background of every remote team on earth, usually without anyone naming it.
Evolution also gave human beings the capacity to build and sustain tribes that extend well beyond the immediate camp. Trust, shared values, showing up for each other, the knowledge that someone will cover for you even when they are not in the room, these are not modern inventions, they are ancient traits. Our ancestors formed friendships with people they rarely saw, they traded, collaborated, grieved and celebrated events across distances that would have been impossible to bridge without something more durable than a car or a mobile phone.
That something is a tribal identity. The deep sense of belonging to something larger than yourself, even when you’re standing alone.
The strongest remote and hybrid teams do not succeed because they have excellent video conference call systems. They succeed because their people feel a genuine tribal bond that doesn’t depend on a shared office space, and building that bond, sustaining it, and understanding what it needs from each person on the team looks different depending on which of the four tribal types you happen to be.
If you are a Hunter
The Hunter leader does not struggle with distance, provided the settings are right. Hunters are energised by end goals, offering the freedom to pursue them any way the person wants to do it, with the trust that says here is the target, make sure you hit it, now go. A distributed team can bring out the best in a Hunter, because autonomy is the Hunter’s natural working state. The Hunter leader needs to watch for ingenuity so they can measure effort, not attendance. When anxious, the Hunter brain starts scanning for signs of activity. Are people online, where is their green dot? Have they responded quick enough? Are they visibly working? That anxiety, unchecked, slides into micromanagement, the fastest way to kill a remote team’s motivation. The caveman wisdom for the Hunter is clear: set the goal, trust the tribe, and judge them only by what they bring back.
If you are a Protector
Distance is hardest for the Protector, and I say that as someone whose wife has been feeling it keenly this week. Protectors are wired to scan the room. They pick up the signals, the quiet when someone is struggling, the change in tone that tells you something is off, the face that smiles while the eyes do not. All of that depends on being present. Strip it away, and the Protector is left with a persistent low-level unease, a feeling that they cannot quite verify that everyone is okay.
The Protector leader’s work in a remote or hybrid team is to build deliberate contact rhythms that replace what proximity once provided. Not surveillance, which is the proximity anxiety wearing a management costume, but a genuine, scheduled chat for a human connection that gives the Protector confidence that their tribe is intact and that anyone who needs support knows they will get it. A quick video call where you ask the real question, not “how’s the project going” but “how are you actually doing” — that is a Protector’s superpower deployed at a distance. Use it. (There is a constant flow of WhatsApp messages flowing in our house at the moment).
If you are a Gatherer
The Gatherer thrives on information and context, and remote work suits them well in principle. They are comfortable with the written word, good at reading between the lines of a long email thread, and capable of building a comprehensive picture from multiple sources. What the Gatherer loses in a scattered team is the information that flows naturally through a shared physical space. The overheard conversation that tells you the direction is shifting, the body language at the town hall that the slide deck doesn’t show the mood in a room that no one puts in meeting notes.
The Gatherer’s task as a remote leader is to create explicit channels for that information. Regular one-to-ones that go beyond a status update, creating a culture where people share not just what is happening but how it flows. The Gatherer is usually the person on the team who does this best, because they already know context matters. The challenge is building the systems that generate it when the environment no longer does it automatically.
If you are a Healer
The Healer feels everything. Connection and feelings are key, any absence and they feel it just as deep. They notice when the energy in a meeting shifts, they pick up on any tension nobody wants to name, and can make colleagues feel seen and heard rather than simply managed. That gift depends on being present, on real-time human contact, on the thousands of small signals that our body language sends before we utter a word.
A Healer leading a remote team carries a real, specific weight worth naming: the effort required to replicate genuine human connection across a screen is disproportionately high, and over time it diminishes. If you are a Healer and you have been feeling unusually tired by the end of the working week without knowing why, this is likely part of it. The investment you are making in your people is real, and it costs you more than it would if you were in the room with them.
The answer is not to stop investing, but to be deliberate about recovery. You need to build this into your schedule, the human contact that will refresh you, not just the contact that serves others. To recognise that your capacity for connection, even at a distance, even through a camera, is one of the most powerful things a leader can bring to a team that might start to feel like individual contributors who happen to share a Teams file.
My daughter’s departure has reminded me that the tribe does not dissolve when distance grows. It changes form, and the ancient brain panics at first, because proximity used to mean safety, and the nervous system does not easily distinguish between a gap in the cave entrance and a gap in the office floor plan. As human beings, we built something different, a more sophisticated life over tens of thousands of years, learning to belong to each other, the capacity and need to stay connected not by location, but by something different – Purpose and shared values. The belief and trust that you would show up for each other even when you cannot see each other.
That is what the best remote and hybrid teams have, not a perfect processes or a flawless technology, but through a tribal bond that does not depend on a shared postcode.
She is going to be fine, heck, it has only been a few days and she is already out on freshers week with her new friends. The tribe she is joining will teach her things I can never. The tribe she left behind, this one at home, will still be here when she comes back with a bag full of washing and several empty carrier bags to go shopping in our fridge, all are held together by exactly the same thing, a desire for her to have a better future.
Take the free Tribal Sorter to find out which type you are: https://cavemanprinciples.com/#quiz
If you lead a team that is navigating a sparsely occupied office, whether that is remote working, hybrid arrangements, or simply the reality of being part of a growing organisation where you can no longer know everyone personally, understanding how your people are wired, and giving them the language to understand themselves, is the foundation of a team that stays connected when geography pulls them apart.
That is what I help organisations do. Find out more: www.carljones.org
If you would like me to bring this conversation into your next event, I would be glad to. Send me an email at carl@carljones.org.
Book me as your next keynote speaker: www.carljones.org
Caveman Thought
The caveman did not need everyone in the same cave to know who his tribe was. He knew them by the heat of the fire they kept, the language they shared, and the way they showed up for each other. Distance meant a good life, belonging to a Tribe was a choice. The wisest leaders have always understood the difference.
Parting Question
Think about that person on your team who you’re not physically near right now. Do they know, genuinely know, that they are part of your tribe? Not because they are in the org chart, but because you have shown them? What is one thing you could do this week (or right now) to close the distance geography has created?
As always, tend your own fire first. It is the one that actually warms the people around you.
Your friend,
Carl – The Caveman.
P.S. When you are ready, here are a few things that might help you;
- You can book me to attend your next event as a Keynote Speaker.
- Want to take a FREE personality test? Check out The Caveman Principles Tribal Sorter.
- Check out my theories – The Caveman Principles and The SLAP Technique
- Grab a copy of my book The Caveman Principles, directly from my printing agent.
- You might want to book a spot on one of my eLearning courses to help you master a new skill.
- Or, if you have time and want to schedule a Caveman chat (with virtual coffee) for a discovery call, do it here.