I couldn’t help but notice this ginger fellow’s stoic expression while reading through the China Daily Global Weekly (April 24-30, 2026 edition). As the original caption notes, this is a cat being vaccinated at Ringpai Pet Hospital in Tianjin back in March.
Photo credit: Yan Dongjie / China Daily.
You want to know what I think about leadership? Watch a cat. Then watch a dog. You’ll learn more in five minutes than from a shelf of books written by some retired CEO who got the boot and decided to cash in.
Cats are great leaders because they’re completely themselves. They don’t need a pack. They don’t look around to see what everyone else is doing. A domestic cat will walk into a room, assess the situation, and decide on their own terms whether to engage or walk away.
Compare that to the pack mentality of dogs or wolves. I’ve been reading The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy recently—wolves in Texas and Mexico—and last year I read Call of the Wild. Wolves are fascinating. They work in packs with a clear structure. The young upstarts take the front line of defense, the frail ones get protected in the middle, and there’s a rear guard watching their backs. Nature figured this out a long time ago. But here’s the thing: a wolf leader is still embedded in the pack. A cat leader doesn’t need the pack. That independence, that self-possession—that’s rare.
Which brings me to leadership books. Some 20 years ago or so, the market felt flooded with them. Consultants were writing them. Media experts were writing them. Retired CEOs or given-the-boot CEOs were writing them. Every theme under the sun: principle-centered leadership, ethical leadership, the leadership of Attila the Hun. There was one obscure book on a Taoist approach written by a human relations consultant. I bought it but forget the title. A quick Google search found the title: The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age” by John Heider, published in 1986.
There’s a new one now by a media consultant Jack Myers called The Tao of Leadership: Harmonizing Technological Innovation and Human Creativity in the AI Era. I looked at the summary and couldn’t make head or tail of it.
Anyone who has been a practicing Taoist would read the second book, not the first one, and wonder what leadership is all about.
A practicing Taoist doesn’t need a media consultant to explain Lao Tzu. Real Taoist leadership is simple: you get people to do things, then you walk away. The people say, “Look what we did.” The leader steps out of the way like a midwife who encourages the birth of good ideas but doesn’t grab the credit. That’s not how things usually happen, unfortunately.
The Face of Stoic Leadership
I walked into Cape Town International Airport yesterday—I still catch myself thinking of it as DF Malan—and saw a photograph in the China Daily that stopped me in my tracks.
I couldn’t help but notice this ginger fellow’s stoic expression while reading through the China Daily Global Weekly (April 24-30, 2026 edition). As the original caption notes, this is a cat being vaccinated at Ringpai Pet Hospital in Tianjin back in March.
This fellow—a mix of Golden British and Exotic Shorthair—captures the essence of what I’m talking about. He isn’t performing for a crowd. He isn’t checking a manual. He just is.
I got curious about how many leadership books are coming out now because I thought the flood might have thinned. Surprise—it hasn’t. If anything, it’s worse. Estimates show thousands of new paperback books with “leadership” in the title appear every year. One calculation from a few years back already counted well over 50,000 leadership-related titles across major retailers, and that was before self-publishing and audiobooks exploded. Twenty years ago there was a surge, but the current ecosystem makes it cheaper and easier to publish than ever. Retailers and bestseller lists still routinely feature dozens of new leadership titles. The market is as crowded as it was two decades ago, maybe more. I have no reason why this has happened, nor do I want to find out.
I’ve worked with leaders in all sorts of fields, and I often wonder if they’ve read any of these books. One memory still makes me groan: a defunct manager wormed his way into the HR training department just to preach leadership. Oh, what a tedious, awful time that was. Let’s forget that and move on.
Here’s what I actually believe. Leadership starts with you. If you don’t have self-leadership, how can you lead others? Then you need to think situational. One style won’t work for an art club, a performing arts venue, a manufacturing plant, or an industrial tech lab. They’re all different.
And then there’s the ancient Chinese wisdom. Lao Tzu said in the Tao Te Ching: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” That’s the cat leader. Not the wolf leader. Not the CEO who needs a microphone and a stage. The real leader creates conditions where things happen and then gets out of the way. Another Taoist image I love: the leader as water. Water doesn’t struggle. It flows around obstacles, wears down stone over time, and always finds the lowest place—which is actually the position of strength. Humility and patience. Not exactly the stuff of most leadership bestsellers.
Take Steve Jobs. Whatever you say about him, the man had vision. He listened to others, sure, but ultimately he made the decision he felt was best. As I walked into Cape Town International Airport yesterday—still think of it as DF Malan—and saw huge ads for the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro. I was astounded. That business is still going exceptionally well. Vision, insight, wisdom. Those are the fundamental qualities. Not the flavor-of-the-month framework from a consultant who’s never actually led anything.
So read the books if you want. But maybe watch a cat first. Then look in the mirror. Then ask yourself: am I leading, or am I just managing a pack because I’m afraid to walk alone?
