Be more wolf

Oxfordshire, March 2026

I have an amazing coach who, over the years, has used my love of metaphor, analogy and story telling to get me to explore my ideas, challenges and (to be completely honest with you) insecurities.

We recently had a conversation about a meeting that I’d been in that I’d found challenging for a whole bunch of different external and internal factors, and she got me to describe each person in the room as an animal. 

It was a really helpful discussion about the roles that people were playing, how they were interacting and how it impacted me. Catherine then asked me about what animal I was and my answer genuinely surprised me; a wolf.

For those of you who know me, that probably isn’t the first animal that would spring to mind but please hear me out.

My values are very strongly held. I talk about them a lot. I try and live by them in everything that I do. They are fairness, teamwork and trust.

Wolves are pack animals. The popular depiction of the wolf in business circles in usually The Lone Wolf <link> or something akin to The Wolf of Wall St.  and that lonesome existence is made out to be an aspirational characteristic.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Lone wolves have usually been kicked out of the pack as their contribution or aggression is not deemed worthy of the effort of the pack to support or tolerate them. A lone wolf has drastically reduced chances of survival.

Kipling’s “Law of the Jungle” poem describes it perfectly: “for the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack”.

Wolves hunt down prey that is much larger than they are, they literally cannot do it alone. They have clearly assigned (fought for) roles and unless everyone fulfils their roles the pack will go hungry. Food is shared fairly; the alpha pair get first go at the fresh kill but nursing mothers, the young and the sick are all cared for. Breaking that fellowship of trust will result in an extreme response from the rest of the pack as they recognise that their very survival depends on it.

Oh, my goodness! Fairness. Teamwork. Trust. I am a wolf!

Back to the challenging meeting and Catherine’s brilliance and leading me to why I was uncomfortable. My reaction to one of the people (other animals) in the room was to behave like the domesticated version of the wolf, a dog. Anxious to please, looking for approval, subservient. Not at all characteristics that any of us wish to display in any aspect of our lives. That awareness has helped me to feel differently about that, and similar interactions and to check my dog tendencies and to look for my inner wolf so that I can fulfil my role in the pack.

I’m not sure that this analogy stretches much further but I’ve had a t-shirt printed with that Kipling quote on it!