How Following a Cat's Lead Can Make You a Better Business Leader
We all need a fresh perspective at times of stagnation, or if we're not getting the results we should. The Feline CEO explores leadership through the lens of cat behavior!
Do cats have anything to teach us about leadership? You bet they do! Each chapter explores a different aspect of feline behavior and applies their simple wisdom to leading a business team. Quotes from successful CEOs in a variety of industries support the principles unveiled in the book.
To accompany each section of the book is an exercise accessed through the book's website, helping you start putting its principles to work immediately in your own life. The website also has a free downloadable glossary of terms used in the book and more information on additional training available on the principles.
Chapter List:
Be Confident in Your Awesomeness
Get the View from Above
Hunt Daily
Observe Before Leaping
Dealing With Fleas
Choose Your Friends Wisely
Make a Remarkable Leap!
Play Regularly
Sleep When You Need To
Always Keep Them Guessing
If you're feeling stale, stalled, or stagnant, The Feline CEO may be just the dose of catnip you need to revive your company or your career!
Available on Amazon in Kindle edition; the print edition is currently available only through the author's website.
Excerpt
The king of the jungle.
The eye of the tiger.
Our culture is filled with powerful images associated with cats. We talk about someone who’s agile as having cat-like reflexes. Feline photos dominate social media. Marvel’s Black Panther movie set box-office records and received critical accolades. What can we learn from cats to enhance our role as leaders?
According to experts, cats have lived with humans around 9,500 years. In the United States alone, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates the number pet cats at 85.8 million, outnumbering dogs by 7.8 million. Yet research funding dedicated to felines lags far behind that for canines. Why do we value our cats less than our dogs?
I’ve been living with cats since the late 1980s. In those 30-some years, I’ve observed a lot about cat behavior.
Vixen lived with me for 23 of her 24 years. She taught me much. By the time her body failed, we knew each other as well as two beings of different species can. With her guidance, I noticed more about other cats around me, picking up cues from their behavior. Soon I was noticing similar details about people around me.
These were things I hadn’t noted before. Body language is crucial in feline communication. They try to use it to communicate with humans. We don’t pay attention, viewing the cats in our lives as crazy or funny, never realizing there’s genuine intellect and depth behind those mysterious feline eyes. Cats have reasons, in their own minds, for everything they do.
Having spent many years in the corporate world before becoming an entrepreneur, I’ve also read a lot of books on business leadership and have seen many management trends du jour come and go. Large companies set up systems based on one, only to have those fall by the wayside as the next trend emerges. Funny thing: most of the advice boils down to common sense.
As I developed my OldMaidCatLady.com store in 2010, all the knowledge I’d learned from living with cats became essential when writing copy for the business. Just as I put my knowledge of the business world to work in building my business, that knowledge of cat behavior was crucial to developing content that drove traffic to it. Product descriptions, blog posts, articles, educational brochures… each offered an opportunity to educate people about why cats do what they do.
That also forced me to delve more deeply into feline behavior. What I learned was fascinating. The science behind my observations confirmed one fact above all: people don’t understand cats.
The more I learned, the more I connected cat behavior to business leadership. There is simple wisdom in most feline behavior.
Cats reason through things differently than do humans. Each cat has a unique personality. Some want to understand people better; others don’t care. Like us, they are shaped by their experiences and lessons their mothers taught them. Almost all cats are fascinated by people and attempt to interact with us.
In The Feline CEO, I have codified the feline behaviors most applicable to leading a business. Interviewing successful CEOs has reinforced the validity of my theory that the wisdom behind feline behavior transfers well to the business world. When viewing leadership through this lens, it changes our perspective, giving us fresh eyes to view our companies and our society.
Of all the leadership books out there, and there are many, you certainly have an interesting hook. You will certainly catch the eye of cat lovers.
A psychologist at the University of Wisconsin once acquired the attic of a large building and funding for a research study on the behavior of cats. He studied them at night when they are most active. Like Freud, what he found out was that cats were spending their nighttime hours pursuing sex.
Learn to profit from the Natural Cycles of the stock market.
An illustrated introduction to the relationship between planetary orbits in the solar system and periodic cycles in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Practical application
