Written by: Cristina Galeote
Illustration Róbert Farkas
The search for leadership, team cohesion, improved communication, trust, empathy, emotion management … all this and much more teaches us coaching with horses applied to the business world. Horses and coaching become one of the most exciting, professional and fast ways to acquire skills and resources to be a better leader.
To speak of leadership in the business world is to speak of emotional intelligence, empathetic leaders with great social skills capable of motivating and managing teams with great “capital”: human capital.
A “capital” difficult to manage, especially in the business sphere, but perhaps the answer is far from our technologically developed world and may be to leave our comfort zone and return to contact with nature and with one of the most beautiful and noble creatures: the horse.
The “Horse Assisted Education Methodology” was born using these animals as a useful and effective tool for coaching, since horses in the wild live in herds and follow a leader. Horses are highly sociable, feel comfortable and safe when they live in a group and have a perfectly established hierarchical order, regardless of whether it is a pair of animals or a large herd, an organization very similar to the corporate world.
The horse that leads the herd performs teamwork where cohesion is fundamental for the survival of the group and, therefore, it is important that the leader demonstrates security and self-confidence; his movements and energy constitute a vital message to the herd.
“Feedback with the horse is clear, immediate, honest and objective because the horse does not judge: it observes, perceives and interacts.”
The horse’s great sensitivity allows it to capture those same feelings in people and react according to what it perceives, providing a very valuable feed-back. The relationship with these animals involves winning their will with large doses of patience, presence, empathy and effective communication, essential qualities to exercise leadership and achieve success in human resources management.
“In a horse experience, it doesn’t matter who you are but what you feel and how you communicate.”
The horse becomes a companion that helps us discover how we are, how we manage, how we relate, how we withstand stress and face new challenges. It is a mirror where our weaknesses and strengths are reflected, the reaction of the animal is not conditioned by conventionalisms being the experience much more valuable than the opinion of an expert, and all this wrapped by the great nobility of this animal that will show us our defects and virtues without harming or humiliating us.
WHISPERING TO THE HORSES
David Russ is a horseman, a “horse whisperer” after a year of inactivity due to a serious fall of a horse, he decided to change his life as an advertiser and pass on everything that these magnificent animals had taught him. Thus was born the Russ Natural Horse Way method.
“The skills a good whisperer needs to have to get a 500 kg animal to want to cooperate are very similar to the skills a good leader needs to have when it comes to managing his teams,” says Russ.
His program “The Whispering Leader” is focused on managers and middle management to analyze and improve leadership skills. “The techniques of horsemanship to lead horses are transferred to the professional environment – Russ points out – they are dynamics based on Natural Horsemanship (convincing the horse instead of defeating it) focused on developing the skills and competencies necessary to exercise leadership. The techniques used by the whisperers are not very different from those that we can use in the business environment”.
Skills such as assertiveness, self-control, non-verbal communication, sense of opportunity, empathy, motivation, flexibility, security, confidence and lateral thinking are worked on during the training.
“When we work with a horse, you’re looking at the best teachers in the world.”
According to Ada Quintans coacher “The most striking thing is to see how the power and material forces that each leader has in his organization are not valid in these dynamics with horses and they need to resort to their natural leadership and creativity, to change behavioral habits that serve to effectively guide their teams”.
A course can be held in approximately 8 hours with 10 participants for 150 euros per person, including materials, breakfast and lunch. The training can be individual or group. “There is no established profile, it is open to anyone who is interested in developing and improving areas of communication and empathy from excellence,” says Quintans.
“The horse assumes leadership or relinquishes leadership with whom it feels it can absolutely trust.”
“In coaching, the important thing is the coachee’s willingness to change, to determine what goal he or she wants. Each of us lives a reality that is our own, the one we perceive through our filters,” assures Edgar Guerrero de la Rotta, horseman and professor of Holistic Horse Dressage and Excellence.
In the equine world it is a learned value that the leader should never be alone, so the oldest mare is the one who leads the herd to a safe place with the best pasture and plenty of water. That safe, comfortable and stimulating place that we would all like to have as our workplace.
Do you dare to ride to achieve it?
