Are You a Puppy or a Lion?
The corporate jungle and points beyond requires different behaviors.
How do you show up?
Are you a people-pleaser? Are you in a meeting and working the room? Do you check in with everybody? Crack some jokes? Populate the Zoom chat with bits and bobs?
Or do you hold your ground and let the game come to you?
What do you do when a non-urgent email or txt shows up? Do you answer it immediately?
Or can you let it sit for a minute or even an hour? Or a whole day before you answer?
Are you all smiles all the time?
Or are you sometimes just cool?
If you find yourself always trying to please others and work hard to be liked, you’re a puppy.
If you’re cool, calm and collected, you’re more of lion.
And frankly, there’s a time and place for both.
I love puppies.
But I’ve found in a business context, “work puppies” show up at my doorstep and want some coaching.
You see, all the things that make puppies the greatest creatures on earth, are a lot of the traits that make them frustrated business people.
Puppies come to me looking for more respect, more gravitas and more career advancement.
Puppies are frustrated because they work really hard and people like them, often love them — but then they don’t get the big-dog jobs.
So when puppies come to me and tell me their stories, I’ll often ask this question: “Are you a puppy or a lion?”
And then we’ll start talking about lions.
Lions show up strong.
Lions hold their space and their ground.
Lions do things on their terms and they do them with precision.
Lions rule the jungle.
When puppies hear this they take note.
We then start to talk about showing up differently.
We talk about entering the room with a different posture.
We start to talk about listening more than talking.
We talk about waiting a beat and being more thoughtful when answering a txt or an email.
We talk about a different way of working.
Make no mistake, I am not advocating that you suddenly become un-likeable or arrogant.
There are plenty of moments for your natural canine charms to come out.
But not all moments.
Some moments require that you show up differently.
And this is something to be aware of.
Puppy? Or Lion?
How you show up is up to you.
Image: Midjourney.
Love this, Rob. I think there’s another nuanced version… the “Lioness”… who is both strong and gentle. It’s a tricky balance at times, often requires switching gears depending on the room and is sadly still often criticized as being “too nice” or “too bossy”. When the two traits act symbiotically in a Lioness, wonderful things are indeed possible.