Lion Taming: Working Successfully with Leaders, Bosses and Other Tough Customers - Hardcover

Katz, Steven L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1402202172 ISBN 13: 9781402202179

Publisher: Sourcebooks Inc, 2004

Synopsis

Do you feel that you need a whip and a chair to work effectively with your boss, client, customers, or others? You know the dangers-a growl if you throw them a compliment and a roar if you ever look for thanks!

Lions are the people in all organizations who wield power and influence. They act differently because they think differently. But that doesn’t mean that they have to be difficulty to work with! Lion Taming will help you get inside their minds, so you can communicate and work more effectively together.

Based on in-depth interviews and research into real lion tamers as well as the experiences of numerous people at all levels of the workplace, Steven L Katz shows how the secrets of the center ring can lead to a great performance in the office.

Prey, the Enemy or Ignored: Lions make an instinctive calculation the minute any living thing comes into view: You are either prey, the enemy, or ignored. Lion Taming shows you how to avoid all three of these and earn a place in the pride.

The Lion’s Four Senses: Every lion in the workplace views things through four senses: Dominance, Territory, Social Standing, and Survival. Understanding these senses, and how to make use of them, will give you a leg up in working with your lion.

Sticking Your Head in the Lion’s Mouth: Lion Taming shows you how people stick their heads into the lion’s mouth in the office, why it shouldn’t be done, and how to avoid it yourself.

Lion Taming Is Really Lion Teaming!: Ultimately, the purpose of lion taming is not just to survive. Lion tamers and lions work together to achieve something that neither could achieve alone. Together, you can leap through the hoop of fire!

Lion Taming also contains more than 75 secrets of the lions tamers and numerous strategies for working with the lions in your workplace, such as:

o Approaching the lions so the lions will approach you
o Closing the gap between attention getting and attention using
o Establishing trust and rapport
o Building the Lion Team in your office!

Lion Taming is the ultimate guide to everyone’s "real" job: working successfully and achieving results with leaders, bosses, and other tough customers!

LION TAMING HAS THE STRATEGIES AND SECRETS YOU NEED TO:
o Establish your presence, authenticity and credibility in the eyes of leaders, bosses, and other tough customers
o Identify the lions around you, and separate the good ones from the bad ones
o Get inside the lion's skull by learning about The Lion's Four Senses and The Lion's Instinctive Identity
o Decode the lion’s social worlds: the hierarchy and the pride
o Avoid being the prey, enemy or ignored, and become a very influential member of the pride or organization!

About this title

From the Publisher:

Why is LION TAMING important?

LION TAMING: Working Successfully with Leaders Bosses, and Other Tough Customers is the first book to recognize that everyone's real job includes the need to understand the people who wield power and influence and have strategies at their fingertips to communicate and work more effectively with them. It does so through the use of a metaphor that is already in people's minds. Lion taming is an identity and a role that you can step into whatever your actual job, position, title, or occupation may be. From executive assistant to CEO - there is always a bigger lion.

Most books that explain leadership, management, and organizations are written with the goal of having the top executives identify with the story and tell everyone around them to read the book. LION TAMING is the book everyone else will read but they won't tell the boss they are reading it!

LION TAMING: Working Successfully with Leaders Bosses, and Other Tough Customers uses both the metaphor of being a lion and of being a lion tamer to enable readers to read their own experiences into the book and create a strategy that fits their own personality and position. Being a lion is personal in a way that makes people in the workplace unique in the eyes of others -- and so is being a lion tamer!

How will LION TAMING benefit its readers/affect their lives?

* Establish your own presence, authenticity, and credibility in the eyes of leaders, bosses, and other tough customers
* Learn to identify the lions all around you, and separate the good ones from the bad ones.
* Get inside the lion's skull by learning these tools:
o The Lion's Four Senses
o The Lion's Instinctive Identity
* Understand that lions in the work place live in two social worlds:
o The hierarchy -- the world in which they establish they are a lion
o The pride or organization that supports and enables their role as a lion
* Learn that if you compete with or threaten the lions in your office, they will assume you are challenging their place in the hierarchy. But if you show that you are supporting their status, role, and objectives, you can be a very influential member of the pride or organization!
* Lion Taming contains more than 75 secrets of the lions tamers
* Lion Taming contains specific strategies that come directly from the methods that real lion tamers use to:
* Enable lion tamers and lions to adjust to each other
* Approach the lions so the lions will approach you
* Close the gap between attention getting and attention using -- and do it on cue!
* Lion Taming Is Really Lion Teaming: Spark the kind of communication and behavior with the people who are the lions and others around you by using the golden nugget of lion taming wisdom: by building rapport, trust, confidence, and respect, Lion Taming Is Really Lion Teaming!

What are three words that you feel best describe LION TAMING?

Roaring with Insights! (Insightful, Dynamic, Witty)

How is LION TAMING unique? Does it use a different approach to its subject?

LION TAMING: Working Successfully with Leaders Bosses, and Other Tough Customers is unique because it successfully taps into an image in everyone's mind and translates it into experiences, secrets, and strategies that apply to virtually every job. Lion Taming is not a theory, but a role that you step into, and it can be done whether you are an executive assistant or the CEO. There is always a bigger lion!

In addressing everyone's need to strengthen personal awareness, communication, and behavior when working with people of power and influence-a subject sometimes addressed in the context of "managing up"-the metaphor of being a lion tamer provides readers with new and personal identity that also makes them feel stronger and more capable. The metaphor and the stories about both lion taming and business experiences blend together to enable readers to visualize their own experiences, their own lions, and their own opportunities to begin to work as a lion tamer!

The majority of business and worklife books tell a story from the standpoint or experiences of a well-known or accomplished leader, such as Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric. However, very few people can arrive at work and step into the shoes of someone like Welch or any other CEO who books are written about. As a result, such people are really metaphors themselves, but ones of very narrow value and use to others.

LION TAMING: Working Successfully with Leaders Bosses, and Other Tough Customers fills an unmet need for books that establish that there is an art to working with leaders, executives, clients, and customers-and that the art is in the nature of the understanding, relationship, and behavior between you and them. LION TAMING opens your eyes and provides the secrets and strategies to those important links to success. As one reader commented - "Finally, a book for the rest of us!"

About the Author:

Steven L. Katz, has worked for more than twenty years as a right-hand executive and senior advisor to leaders and executives across the worlds of business, politics, government and non-profit organizations. From Capitol Hill and the White House to boardrooms, clients, and customers, the author has developed the art of lion taming and added it to the lexicon of the workplace. Steven L. Katz has degrees in anthropology, history, and law. He lives with his family outside Washington, D.C.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sourcebooks Inc
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1402202172
• ISBN 13: 9781402202179
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 290