Leadchange. Experience - the difference

Pay Attention!

Insight is transformational.
Insight is transformational. We have all experienced moments of insight that permanently changed our mental maps – the highly personal, internal representation of reality that we create through our beliefs, thoughts, theories, expectations and attitudes.

Experiential learning with horses is one of the most powerful ways I know of exploring mental maps. Equine-facilitated workshops consistently demonstrate that ‘the way you approach the horse is the way you approach life’. The patterns we run that create how we experience life are played out on these programmes in our interactions with horses. Insights are generated from the instant, honest, accurate feedback provided ‘in the moment’ by the horses, to how we are being and behaving around them. Up to 93% of meaning is communicated non-verbally. With the finely-tuned awareness and sensitivity of a prey animal, horses read and respond to the energy of our mental maps.

Delegates on LeadChange "Courses with Horses" frequently comment on the depth of insight they experience. Feedback from the CEO of a pharmaceutical company on a recent programme was: ‘Extremely insightful day that connected everybody with some inner truth’. Others describe the experience as ‘enlightening’.

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Mirror, Mirror
IN THE STALL ...?

Experiential learning, leadership and the equine mirror.
There is a gap between theory and practice; between awareness and action; between what we know and what we do. We move from knowing to doing when changes take place at a deep neurological level, through insights (‘aha’ moments) which create complex new neurological connections. T.S. Eliot said that not paying attention to an experience is to ‘have the experience but miss the meaning’. Paying attention to an experience is a powerful way to get even more from it.

Leadership calls for a dynamic combination of self-awareness, multiple intelligences and highly developed inter-personal skills. Knowledge informs; skills develop through practice – requiring an experiential approach to learning which allows participants to become aware of how their behaviour and actions impact others.

A growing number of organisations are buying into "equine-facilitated", "equine-assisted" and "horse whispering" programmes as a leadership development process. What do these programmes offer to corporate executives who want to improve the way they lead?

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Never work with
children or animals

Developing Leadership Presence.
The Department of Transport in the UK was recently criticised by the Taxpayers’ Association for wasting taxpayers’ money on horse whispering courses for managers.

W.C. Fields said: 'never work with children or animals'. So why do government departments and large businesses send senior executives on programmes where they interact with horses? And what explains the widespread popularity of television programmes like Cesar Millan's 'The Dog Whisperer'?

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Horse Sense

An (emotionally) intelligent approach to leadership development.
What is leadership? The Collins Concise dictionary defines the verb ‘lead’ as ‘to show the way (to an individual or a group) by going with or ahead’ – and ‘to cause to act, feel, think, or behave in a certain way; induce, influence’. In the last century, corporate leadership was largely about ‘command and control’, but the development of a knowledge economy, in which most physical processes can be automated, calls for a different style of leadership - transformational rather than transactional; inspirational rather than instructional.

In his bestseller "Emotional Intelligence" (1995), Daniel Goleman offered proof of the importance of emotional and social factors in business success (explaining why it is that people with IQs of 160 end up working for people with IQs of 100 – people who happen to be more emotionally intelligent). In the book "Primal Leadership" (2002) by Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, the authors argue that the primal job of leadership is emotional. Great leaders ignite passion and inspire the best in their followers by working through the emotions.

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