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

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Summary: Has helped me with my career....
Review: I highly recommend this book as it has already positively impacted my career. The Aha! moments are too numerous to pass along here but of immediate help was the section on quickly differentiating the good lions from the bad....as well as the entire chapter entitled Lion Taming is Really Lion Teaming. A particularly empowering line form that chapter: "You can live and operate in the lion's world, but they cannot operate in yours".

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Summary: It works!
Review: Katz has written a really insightful and helpful book. He compares bosses to lions and the metaphor works. He also gives some specific ideas about how to deal with bosses who are lion like in their behavior. In fact, I really wish I'd had this book a couple of bosses ago. Recently I heard President Clinton speak, and I couldn't help but think he would have been benefitted greatly from having better lion tamers around him.

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Summary: Got a boss who roars or eats things alive? BUY THIS BOO K!
Review: My boss is a self made, powerful person. He roars, he eats people and their ideas alive and he intimidates everyone just by walking into a room. Around him. I used to feel ill at ease. I was always in a hurry to get away from him and I felt helpless to get him to sign off on any of my ideas.
Then I got lucky. I read a copy of Lion Taming: Working Successfully with Leaders, Bosses, and Other Tough Customers by Steve Katz and learned how to tame the beast that is my boss. I know where to sit when I am with him, how to keep him focused on what I am saying and how to get him to respond in a timely fashion. It's amazing, the techniques that real liontamers know and their value in the work place.
If you want to know how to get your boss to treat you with respect - this book has what you need.

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Summary: Katz has it right -- a fun read and very insightful
Review: Steve Katz has written a very interesting and insightful book about how to work successfully with high-powered executives. He's clearly been in the lion's den and lived to tell about it. And his lion analogies are both fun and thought provoking. This is a great read for both lions (to understand themselves and each other) and for anyone who works for or with them.

As a management consultant to a wide range of governmental, corporate, and not-for-profit clients, I see the characteristics he describes every day. He clearly understands what is important to powerful people and how the rest of us need to approach them. I particularly liked his theory that execs (and lions) are driven by dominance, territory, social standing, and survival -- and that they see the people around them as either part of the pride, prey, an enemy, or someone to be ignored. I think he's dead on, and those of us who need to influence these people definitely want to be part of the pride rather than lunch.

A great book with lots of useful examples. I highly recommend it.


Rating:
Summary: It works!
Review: While reading this book, I was faced with a situation involving the president of our professional society and several other officers. Our "lions" were quickly "tamed" by using the insights in this wonderful book, and now everyone (including the lions) is happier (and more effective).

The book is lively and easy to read. As an educator, I appreciate the instant summaries in each chapter and the pithy quotes from "real lion tamers" scattered generously throughout each chapter.

The "lion taming" metaphor is an apt one for dealing with all kinds of situations with bosses, leaders, colleagues, mentors, . . . just about anyone we deal with professionally. And Katz applies the metaphor masterfully, weaving in his own considerable experience "in the arena" with some interesting and occasionally intractable "lions" in business and government.

LION TAMING is certainly going to be the next "big thing" in management circles!