A Time Marker is how we remember and mark the passing of time. This has shifted for so many of us in 2020. Was 2020 fast or slow? I really can’t say. I was reflecting with a group of leaders on 2020 and talking about Time Markers. When I got a lot of puzzled looks I thought I should explain myself.
What is a Time Marker?
A Time Marker is an event or something that happens to us, that makes it easy for us to remember that moment in time. Our rites and rituals are important Time Markers. If you remember moments in your childhood they are often around significant events. Do you remember the graduation ceremony from school? Do you remember a birthday party? Your first kiss? Your first concert? A wedding? These rites and rituals of how we celebrate and mark time create moments for us to reflect on the passing of time.
Why are Time Markers Important?
They are opportunities for us to come together, create connections and engage with each other. They offer opportunities for things to look forward to, provide hope and celebrations.
One of the important functions of our Time Markers is to be our reference point and understanding of time. It also creates opportunities for change, rites, and social phases like “schoolies”, “weddings”, “significant birthdays”, “funerals”, “honeymoons”, “retirement parties”, “first days at school/jobs”, “sporting events”, and “graduations” these rituals mark a point in time where we expect change and our structures determine that this is a different phase in our life. Those more significant Time Markersare our rights of passage. Those first moments, and final moments like schoolies which marks the passage from a schoolchild to adulthood. Those significant Time Markers don’t just mark time but create our sense of time.
How many times have you said, “I am looking forward to… (holiday, birthday, celebration)”? The things we count down days until. We build anticipation and excitement around time markers. We use them for our delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is essential for motivation both personally and professionally.
Delay of gratification, the act of resisting an impulse to take an immediately available reward in the hope of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future. The ability to delay gratification is essential to self-regulation, or self-control.
For me, 2020 has been plans, plans, and disappointments. I have attempted to plan so many things only for them to be continuously changed or canceled. I have paid for tickets to events, to be postponed and changed. Parties have been canceled. Family events canceled. Events of all sorts canceled. Even holidays canceled.
Without Time Markers
So what is the impact if we don’t have transitions or Time Markers to signify important moments in our life which allow for transitions? We feel a sense of flux and grief. There is a collective sensation of emotional disorientation.
Sense of Flux
They feel disconnected, unmoored, isolated, lost. Some can’t sleep; others sleep too much. Some obsess while others tune out. For some, anxiety spikes or depression deepens; others report feeling numb.
It is important to remember that all of these are reasonable and responses to a highly unusual situation.
When we can’t plan or plans are canceled we need to acknowledge even as leaders we are also experiencing these emotional responses.
Leadership and Time Markers
In the workplace, it means we have people who are experiencing anxiety and depression or feeling disconnected and searching because they don’t understand the loss they are feeling. There is a shared experience when we lose our Time Markers and a sense of feeling disorientated. We haven’t experienced this before and we don’t have the language to even talk about it.
What are our Leadership Lessons?
Talk about what it is and what you are feeling. As leaders, we need to acknowledge that 2020 has created new challenges and we need new tools and language to deal with the constant change and loss. A shared language to describe things allows a space to describe and talk about these issues. Compassion and empathy are key whilst everyone is going to handle their grief very differently.
However, if you can find space to share what and how you are feeling it creates a sense of team and ‘we are in this together’. It allows an understanding of what we are feeling and acknowledgment of those emotions.
I have managed my plans, plans, and disappointments by trying to use mindfulness and gratitude. When I have another Time Marker lost I simply ask myself a number of questions to think about the situation differently. It has been a game-changer.
“What is it that I can learn?”
“What space does it create, or what is the opportunity here?”
“What can I be grateful for at this moment?”
The simple act of reframing the situation has made me less frustrated and reactive to what is going on around me. It has also given me a sense of control.
If you can continue this practice, it also starts to harness innovation. Imagine if you can, what happens when you have a culture of looking for an opportunity in change, you begin to build a team culture of innovation and growth.
When it comes to finding success, most people believe that the higher your IQ, the more success you’ll enjoy in life. However, this isn’t always the case. In the last decade, the topic of emotional intelligence has gained popularity and been shown to be a better predictor of success. Fortunately, unlike IQ, emotional intelligence, or EQ can be learned and developed.
Emotional intelligence is your ability to be aware of, control, and express your emotions and to effectively handle interpersonal relationships with empathy. There are two kinds of emotional intelligence: interpersonal and intrapersonal. Interpersonal emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, acknowledge, and regulate the emotions of others. Intrapersonal emotional intelligence is about your ability to understand, accept, and control your own feelings, motivations, and fear.
Having high emotional intelligence is not only necessary for success but plays an incredibly important role in your overall happiness in life. There are a variety of benefits that are associated with having a high level of emotional intelligence and improving your emotional intelligence can help you to navigate better the social complexities you face throughout both your personal and professional life. Here are some of the indispensable benefits that you can gain by having a high level of emotional intelligence.
Success in Your Career
Being successful in your career has a lot to do with effectively dealing with other people. In fact, recent studies showed that 75 percent of jobs are derailed for reasons that are related to emotional competencies. This includes your inability to handle interpersonal issues, an unsatisfactory team leadership during times of conflict and difficulty, and the failure to change or adapt to changing circumstances, among others. When you have a high level of emotional intelligence, you will find that you thrive in the following areas:
Success in your career
· Managing a team
· Leading a team
· Working in a team
· Selling or marketing
· Providing customer support
· Negotiating a deal
· Connecting with professionals
When companies are filled with high emotionally intelligent workers, not only does it contribute to the overall success of the company, but it also creates a better work environment, which helps the employees remain happy with their job. Whist your employees are happy, your customers are more likely to stay happy as well.
Able to Build Better Relationships
Building better relationships with emotional intelligence
One of the most common reasons why most relationships end up failing is because of low emotional intelligence. As Dale Carnegie once said, “When dealing with people, remember that you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” People that have a low level of emotional intelligence, often find it challenging to manage their emotions and understand others.
Building a relationship is a two-way street, which means that you need to work on raising your emotional intelligence, while also finding someone who also has high emotional intelligence. When two people with high emotional intelligence are compatible, the relationship tends to work out much better.
Improved Personal Development
Among all of the relationships that you have in your life, the one that you have with yourself is the best relationship. If you have a toxic relationship with yourself, you can’t hope to have a healthy relationship with others. Emotional intelligence helps you to understand and manage your emotions. The more that you can understand yourself, the more you can recognize the differences in others. This will help you to understand others better and meet them where they are.
So, before you can go on to help others, you have to start helping yourself. However, you need to remember that you can’t be selfish or self-absorbed, which will cause you to become indifferent to others. There is a delicate balance between putting yourself and your health first, and not making everything about you. Fortunately, improving your emotional intelligence can help to draw a line between the two.
More Confidence and Happiness
When you can effectively monitor unpleasant feelings, you can take more action to feel happy, confident, and calm. Too often, we depend on outside influences to bring us joy, confidence, and peace. While you always want to celebrate the positive events, if you continue to rely on them for your happiness, you’ll find yourself sad, depressed, angry, upset, and more in your default state.
Having high emotional intelligence means that you can switch from this default state because you are able to regulate your emotions effectively. Through mindfulness, and taking the right actions, you can ultimately become more focused, happy, confident, relaxed, and enthusiastic in your life.
The Components of Emotional Intelligence
Psychologist and best-selling author of the book: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Daniel Goleman, has suggested that five components are critical to emotional intelligence. The more that you can manage each of these five components in your life, the higher level of emotional intelligence you can expect to have.
Component #1 – Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is your ability to recognize, as well as understand your emotions, skills, and motivations. Another important aspect of self-awareness is understanding how your emotions affect those around you. To achieve self-awareness, you need to learn how to monitor your emotional state and identify your feelings. Traits that prove a person is emotionally intelligent to include the ability to laugh at your mistakes, confidence, and the awareness of how others perceive you.
Component #2 – Self-Regulation
Being able to self-regulate, when it comes to emotional intelligence, is your ability to control your impulses, the ability to think before you speak or react, and the ability to express yourself appropriately. In other words, it’s the emotional maturity that allows you to take responsibility for your actions, as well as being able to adapt to change and respond to other’s emotions appropriately.
Component #3 – Motivation
Motivation is having an interest in learning and improving yourself. This component of emotional intelligence is about having the strength to keep going when encounter obstacles in your life and setting goals and sticking to them. An emotionally mature individual in this category has traits like having initiative and being able to commit to the completion of a task, as well as having the perseverance to continue on in the face of adversity.
Having empathy means that you understand other people’s emotions and reactions. You can only achieve empathy for others if you’ve achieved self-awareness. Before you can understand others, you have to be able to understand yourself and your emotions. Those who have emotional maturity in the category of empathy possess traits like being interested in other’s worries and concerns, being able to anticipate someone’s emotional response to an issue, and the understanding of societal norms and why people act the way they do.
Component #5 – Social Skills
Social skills are your ability to pick up on sarcasm, jokes, customer service, finding common ground with others, and the ability to maintain relationships. It is defined as someone who has excellent communication skills, good time management skills, the ability to resolve difficult situations or conflicts using persuasion, and the ability to be a leader.
How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
Like any other skill that you want to develop, improving your emotional intelligence will take both time and practice. To start with, you have to develop a growth mindset and believe that you can improve your emotional intelligence no matter where you’re starting. You also have to think that there is no limit to how much you can improve your EQ. Here are some of the best ways that you can improve your emotional intelligence.
There are a lot of theories out there on personality traits, but the “Big 5” personality traits have been wildly researched and talked about. The five traits include openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness. When you can come to understand your personality traits, it can become much more comfortable to accept or change who you are, while becoming more understanding and accommodating to the behavior of others.
Define Your Values and Beliefs
Limiting beliefs
While we all have similar basic needs, we all want different things in life and hold different beliefs and values. The worst thing you can do is chase others desires or copy their beliefs and not staying true to your values. To overcome this and improve your emotional intelligence, you need to take the time to set your beliefs, values, and goals. Once you’ve chosen your values, you need to define each one in your own words with as much detail as possible. The clearer your definition, the higher the chances that you’ll stick with your values and direct your energy toward them.
Listen to Yourself
Whether you realize it or not, your body and mind are continually giving you signs, but it’s not easy to notice them when you’re living on autopilot. Many times, we experience what is known as Amygdala Hijack. The amygdala is an area in the brain that is responsible for processing emotions. When it is hijacked, your pre-frontal cortex gets shut off, and the amygdala region of the brain activates your fear, putting you into the fight-or-flight response. While this phenomenon helped us to survive in the past, it often gets us into trouble today. The best way to combat this is to practice mindfulness.
Visit the Past to Create the Future
Since your childhood, you’ve been exposed to millions of different concepts that set the foundation of your subconscious mind. Your past holds a lot of insight into why you do what you do. Looking back at your past can help you to understand the underlying reason for your values, desires, thought patterns, preferences, and emotional reactions. Start by asking questions and resetting your mind and exploring the possibilities of what you can let go and who you can ultimately become. When you can develop a better understanding of your past, you become free to create a better future and navigate the world with confidence.
Learn to Handle Emotions Appropriately
If you want to improve your emotional intelligence, you need to begin to understand a wide range of emotions and how to handle them. The benefits of building your emotional granularity are immense including being 30 percent more flexible when regulating your emotions, being less likely to explode in anger when someone hurts you and handling fear and anxiety in a better way, among others.
Learn to Listen to Others
Learning to listen to others
You have to approach everything with a beginner’s mind and treat every opportunity to look at things from a different perspective. The more perspectives that you can collect, the more you will start to realize how small your viewpoint really is. If you want to expand your perception and knowledge, you have to learn how to observe and listen. You can also work on getting honest feedback from others on how they perceive you. The insights that you receive about yourself will change your life.
Learn to Communicate Better
There are two types of communication, verbal and non-verbal. When it comes to verbal communication, learn how to listen to others rather than thinking about what you’re going to say next. You can also try to make people feel safe by showing kindness. To improve your verbal communication skills, you can’t be afraid to share yourself with others, and you have to explain things simply so that others will want to listen to you.
To improve your non-verbal communication skills, you will need to learn how to use eye-contact appropriately, uses gestures and expressions in your communication, and read people by paying attention to the body language and expressions of others.
Conclusion
You can’t expect for people, including yourself, to be intelligent all the time. We all make mistakes, and one of the humblest things that you can do as a person with high levels of emotional intelligence is to accept mistakes. When it comes to improving your emotional intelligence, you want to make sure that when you meet people who lack EQ, you can lead by example and hope for the best for them. None of us are born with high emotional intelligence, but rather, it is something that we have to learn how to develop throughout our life. With this simple 5-minute guide on emotional intelligence, you can get a start on the path to improving your EQ and finding happiness and success in your life.
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How To Develop Emotional Intelligence: A Step-By-Step Guide To Developing Self-Awareness, Improving Your People Skills, and Creating Happier Relationships
There are so many leadership lessons in the Wizard of Oz. I thought I would share some. Recently I went to an end of the year competition with my riding club and one of the events is the fancy dress competition. I went with a Wizard of Oz theme. It is usually heavily contested and this year I went dressed as Dorothy and my horse was the Cowardly Lion. Which is why I began thinking about the deep morals and life lessons in the story.
Vision
Every good leader needs a vision and a plan. Simply put: a strategy. The Yellow Brick Road is an easy to follow strategy so regardless of who your team is they can step on the path with you and know where you are going.
“It’s always best to start at the beginning. And all you do is follow the Yellow Brick Road.”
– Glinda the Good Witch of Oz
Courage
Courage requires those in a leadership role to step up when it seems too hard for others. As leaders, most things that make it to your desk are too complex for others or have no clear answer. Making brave decisions requires courage. Courage is also required when you are the one that needs to bring conviction and enthusiasm when you are having a bad day.
“Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What have they got that I ain’t got? ” – Cowardly Lion
Courage doesn’t mean being frightened. Courage is about being scared and showing up anyway.
Dorothy: Weren’t you frightened?
Wizard of Oz: Frightened? Child, you’re talking to a man who’s laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom, and chuckled at catastrophe… I was petrified.
Relationships Matter
When we are managing staff or trying to influence others, they will not seek out your advice because of how much you know, but, because of how much you care. Show people you are genuinely interested in them and their success and they will show respect. Relationships with those around you matter.
“A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.” – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Experience
Experience counts. Wisdom often comes from our greatest mistakes not from our greatest successes. So don’t discount those around you who have failed. They are often the greatest teachers. Wisdom and experience can be your own, but in leadership, hire people smarter than you and be brave enough to say “I don’t know”.
“A baby has brains, but it doesn’t know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.” – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Uncertainty and Change
The tornado could represent several major disruptions. It is the winds of change and things happen outside of our control. 2020 has been a perfect illustration of chaos and significant upheaval. How many of us have felt that discomfort, had to pivot, and had to find new ways to operate outside our comfort zone. We need to learn to embrace change, challenges and uncertainty. They will be there regardless and we need to view them as opportunities.
“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” – Dorothy.
Communication
Clear communication is critical because if we explain our vision in a way that others can engage with we have no one on our path. Communication is critical but it also requires active listening. To persuade others, you need to hear them first.
Dorothy: How can you talk, if you haven’t got a brain?
The Scarecrow: I don’t know. But, some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?
Heart Led
The Tin Man shows us how to have a heart and have compassion. Leaders need to have a heart and be emotionally engaged with their staff, customers and their organisation. If you can learn to express how you feel authentically, it shows you care. It will attract and motivate others who want to work for you and want to care too. No one wants to work for a cold heartless boss.
“I shall take the heart. For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world”. – Tin Man
“You people with hearts, have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful”. – Tin Man
We are in this together
Team Diversity
A lion, a tin man, a scarecrow and a dog? All had their strengths and weakness. It is valuing all team members for what they can offer at different times.
“It’s not where you go, its who you meet along the way” – Wizard of Oz
Power and Leadership
There is a difference between power and leadership. We have all come across people in power who do not have leadership skills. Where those skills lack they often resort to power to get others to do what they want. When you pull back the curtain on them they are scared and confused.
“I am Oz, the Great and Terrible,” said the little man, in a trembling voice, “but don’t strike me—please don’t!—and I’ll do anything you want me to.” – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Self Care
As leaders, we need to value ourselves in the journey and take time to look after our selves as well. Often we have the answers but get burned out and exhausted. Value yourself and your experience and you will find your own ruby slippers to guide you home.
“You’ve always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.” – Glinda the Good Witch
“There is no place like home”
You as a leader also need to do what makes you happy and feeds your soul. Sometimes that is right in front of you and don’t forget to value your family and your personal time and space.
“If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it, to begin with! Is that right? – Dorothy.
There are so many life and leadership lessons in the Wizard of Oz. I found so many that I found it hard to narrow it to 10. The one lesson I have learned in 2020 is self-care. I need to remind myself, “There is no place like home” and the ruby red shoes will always have pride of place on my feet.
The success and failure of the societies and organisations are in the hands of their leaders. How they lead and manage is what makes the fundamental difference. The more charismatic, the more visionary, and the more enthusiastic they are, the greater their influence. A charismatic visionary leader has the ability to create a movement, transform an organisation, and even rewrite history. When I think of a charismatic and visionary leader several springs to mind: Martin Luther King, Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, and Mother Theresa. You can see from this list charisma and vision are not related to the purpose. Leaders and leadership styles are pivotal to the success of any business. Even an entire countries fate can be determined by its leaders’ charisma, vision, and ethics.
Style
A leader’s style is the greatest way to influence those around them. With an inspiring vision and motivation, anything is possible. Look at the impact of a teenage girl in Sweden, Greta Thunberg. Her vision and purpose are clear calling on others to take action on climate change she is leading towards a shared purpose. Leadership is not defined by where you are in an organisation but your charisma, vision, and purpose will define leadership. Among the many great leaders in the world, those who are successful are because of their vision, passion for the work, and creativeness in their ideas. Charisma and vision also need motivation and enthusiasm. We all know some leaders who because they thought differently were criticised. Innovation and motivation to change require a commitment to the vision. A change manager, leader, requires resilience to be able to weather the criticism for innovative thinking. It is only their motivation and drive that can change directions. A charismatic leader that has a strategic plan for the organization’s success, and is passionate about his vision is a powerful force. The strategy will keep everyone else focused on the vision in the organisation. This strategy is what makes the charismatic leaders’ vision a reality for others to understand and engage. It allows others to have an additional source of motivation and performance measurement. Great charismatic leaders are excited and motivated by their vision, so much so that they have the ability to inspire others. Even in the tough and challenging times where others will have given up.
Purpose, Passion, and Vision
Great leaders can be made. there are lots of opportunities available for people and organisations who want to focus on their leadership capabilities. Values and emotional intelligence must be where you start to ensure your purpose and values are aligned. If you want your staff to remain you need to ensure your leadership team is ready for the work not just on the organisation but also on themselves. The key to great leadership is simple, find your purpose, passion, and vision and you will and can change the world.
Leadership, mothers and dictators can you recognise them in your workplace?
Life with horses is about self improvement. I was attending a virtual horse expo listening to an incredible horseman recently Tristian Tucker who made a statement about how to create balanced horses. How to make horses that are mentally stable able to think through problems. He made the point that horses don’t want you to be a mother and they don’t want a dictator, they need a calm confident leader. I thought how powerful that statement was when thinking about leadership. When you look at your teams in the workplace can you identify the mother and the dictator?
Mothers
In order to create a horse who is mentally able to cope with strange things we can’t mother it. Making it comfortable and stress free. In horse terms it looks like the best of everything. You have seen the treat bringer, someone who always has a pocket full of the favourite treats so he/she comes to you. If something happens that it doesn’t like then we make sure that it never sees that stimulus again. He doesn’t like rugs so we don’t ever rug him again.
In the workplace mothering looks like the feeder. The person who bakes or brings lollies. Or the person who needs to make sure everyone is happy, they are a nurturer working out how not to have conflict. They would rather ignore the difficult bits, they are no difficult conversation at all just nurturing. We can all be friends and we will take away anything that makes you upset. They will be the person that always brings comfort.
Dictators
In horse terms it means managing everything. Your horse is not allowed to make a mistake and learn. They are often punished but not always rewarded. Every step is managed.
In the workplace dictatorship looks like micromanagement. You are not allowed to think your job is to do and to do in the way the dictator needs it done. Mistakes will not happen and if they do they will be punished. Chances are you will made an example of so no one makes the same mistake.
Fear
Both of these extremes are fear responses and coping mechanisms. Both end up creating a workplace full of anxiety. It doesn’t build innovation and confidence for growth.
I personally have operated in both styles, mothering making everyone my friend, and thought that management meant I needed a dictator style. I can say from experience that neither side is where you should stay. Use the tools when appropriate but to use leadership skills requires you to think differently.
Leadership
Creates confidence and develops people. Allowing people to learn be inquisitive and fail. Experience builds people so your role as a leader is to create opportunities for wins. How are you creating opportunities for your team to becoming a better and more balanced people?
Allowing someone to fail and learn is the hardest skill in the world to master.
Leadership, with calm confidence, how can you create the environment to create calm confident teams. You can learn how with leadership workshops.
Leading Together is a perfect place for growing people and organisations. This is because; at Learning Together you will be guided to find your authentic leadership style. Interestingly they use horses for their workshops and learning is based on emotional intelligence. Recently we interviewed the founder of Leading Together, Jannine Jackson about her journey.
Her ideas are inspiring and motivational. As a female entrepreneur, she shared about the challenges she faced in her entrepreneur journey together with advice to emerging entrepreneurs. Read our interview with Jannine Jackson to find out how she has been successful!
1. Hello! Can you please tell us about yourself?
I am a woman who has many roles as a CEO, an entrepreneur, a professional fundraiser, a mother, a leadership coach, an equine-assisted learning facilitator, and a horse trainer.
For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to find a way to help people and somehow make the world a better place. As a child and young adult, I experienced a lot of personal trauma. I was bullied as a child. I didn’t have a stable family upbringing and then in my late teens, I experienced intense grief and loss, losing way too many family members in a very short period of time. These events helped me in developing an understanding of the importance of compassion. Everyone has a story and everyone has some trauma that they carry which has shaped the way they look at the world.
For the last 20 years, I have been living my purpose by working in across a number of leadership roles in the non-profit sector to change lives. I have been a highly successful change agent growing organisations, often in areas that others thought were too hard. I have won international awards, dined with royalty and Prime Ministers but nothing beats those profound moments where a simple act of kindness can literally save a young life.
I guess on the other side of the coin I have also seen the worst that humankind can offer. The devastation and ripple effect that trauma can cause is also something that intrinsically motivates me. During my working career, I have also seen extremely toxic workplaces, experienced sexual harassment. I understand the lasting damage that workplace bullying can do, I have seen it cause suicidal thoughts, lead to physical manifestations, and ongoing severe mental health problems.
These moments have really crystalized what type of leader I am and how I try to influence others to lead. It is critical to have business acumen holding people accountable for performance and success but we need to see the people working with us not as commodities that are all replaceable but as incredibly valuable human beings. I believe that everyone is trying to be their best with what they have been given. It’s simply a matter of uncovering their purpose and finding tools and skills to help them shine.
So in the last 10 years, I started to bring horses into my life, I think this was my way of trying to heal and feel better. But what I attracted were horses with issues. I soon realised that owning a horse with issues is a dangerous proposition and I needed help to find a way to pursue my passion.
When I started working with a problem horse what I learned was that in order to make him a better horse I needed work on me. What I accidentally stumbled upon was through training horses I became a better mother, wife, and leader. I learned how to be patient, remove my judgment, how to be present, be in the moment, reduce my anxiety, start to see the world through their lens. My empathy, compassion, self-awareness, self-control, what I began to become aware of was I was working on all of my emotional intelligence abilities without realising. In helping horses I learned how to be a better human. The more I learned about understanding horses the greater the insights I got about leading people. And so the journey started.
2. Why did you decide to launch Leading Together? What inspired you?
I was approached and asked if I could run a horse leadership session for a group of senior corporate executives. Someone had heard of something similar in the United States and asked me if I could run a session. “Sure,” I said not knowing that this one session would completely change everything for me and those who attended.
Then this little idea just took a life of its own. Before I knew it my first session started with 7 people in the round yard with my horse.
What I didn’t expect was the most profound learnings for those 7 people. These are just some of their feedback relating back to their experience and how lasting the change was in them even months later.
“I realised that I am always jumping in and being first. This didn’t allow me any additional time to observation to learn. In trying to understand how to get it right and be the best at it that I didn’t try and be as present. My focus was on getting it right. I have been practicing patience and not rushing everything.”
“It was understanding the vulnerability of a close connection and being present with myself. I learned how to be more self-aware about being present in the room. I left feeling focused and happy, with purpose and lowered the anxiety and the feeling has lasted”
“This made me think about how to influence the other decision-makers so they get what’s going on. Thoroughly enjoyed the session. I had so much energy for days after the session it was so inspiring.”
“Powerful and relatable, giving you the know-how to deal with other people and your team. My confidence improved as a leader, I have done lots of thinking about the session afterward and still got more days later because it influences how you lead.”
“Love it so much there were practical tips on what to do. I could use straight away. Being present and how you are feeling in the moment. Made me understand how to relate your behaviours to moods. Highly recommend it. It gave me confidence – about being present and shifting my emotions. I was able to apply the experience immediately and improved confidence”
“It’s a bio-feedback mechanism with a horse about your self-efficacy. My learning from the session was I understood how to be up with intensity but with clear direction and focus.”
“I started with a fear of failure and feeling competitive. My ego meant I didn’t want to be the person who couldn’t do it. It was a new and different experience, I don’t have anything to do with horses so was intimidated and scared. I felt vulnerable and way outside my comfort zone. The connection I got was so refreshing and a great way to build a shared experience. It was a completely new context to make the unconscious thoughts into a competence.”
“It was feeling like a pressurised situation where you go to a feeling of threat and try to make it about me. But then learning how to make it not about me and about being in control. The experience connected a lot of dots and good personal values. Its things we should be working on every day and when you have mastered it in one situation doesn’t mean you have it secure.”
“It is an effective coaching and leadership tool. It improved my relationship with my daughter. I become more self-aware of my behaviour towards her. I have been making a conscious effect and our relationship has changed.”
3. Your workshops involve learner-based educational experience with horses. What is the idea behind this concept?
It is honestly the best leadership training available. Consistently leaders will tell me they learnt more about leadership in a couple of hours with a horse trainer and leadership coach than anything else they have done.
My insights into why this works so well are as a leader we need to understand how to use our soft skills or our emotional intelligence. People don’t always tell you the truth they often tell you what you want to hear. Horses don’t lie. As prey animals, their senses are heightened and they feedback immediately how you are at that moment.
So as we learn to be present, lead with intent, and use our physicality to relate our messages horses will tell us if we are being congruent or not. As you learn to relax and lead with confidence horses will engage and reward your behaviour regardless if you are CEO or a 10-year-old kid. Empathy, body language, calm assertive confidence, self-awareness, self-control, and reducing our anxiety are all things we can learn. These skills are required to motivate and engage and inspire teams but are not taught
It is like a try to be bodybuilder from a textbook. You can read how to be a great bodybuilder but unless you physically lift the weights you are not going to be a bodybuilder. The same is true for the skills required for leadership. You can read all the textbooks but unless you experience what it feels like to be empathetic or what it feels like when you are controlling your emotions then you cant master the skill. Horses are incredible teachers when we are being authentic to ourselves they immediately acknowledge and reward.
Management and being a boss are different to the skills of being a leader. We are often taught the practical aspects of our roles and how to manage tasks rather than lead people.
4. Can you explain the ways you can help your clients?
We teach people to find their authentic leadership style. So that they can feel confident and comfortable leading others. It’s about uncovering their own truth and what may be holding them back. Everyone has their own unique “aha” moments every time they come whether that is for one session or a whole 8-week program they walk away with tangible practical lessons for them.
5. With other leadership and coaching programs available, what makes Leading Together unique? How are your services different from its competitors?
Using a horse cuts through so much “stuff”. Leaders often have to put on a brave face and lie to those around you. Or the fake it until you make it. Be positive and motivate everyone else regardless of what is going on for you. However, “you can’t bullshit a horse” authenticity matters to a horse. As prey animals, horses are incredibly sensitive to your motions and emotions. They respond to how you show up at that exact moment. They don’t hold a grudge and forgive immediately. So when you are with them and being genuinely clear, confident, and comfortable in yourself and your role as a leader they will follow. Horses like humans just want to feel safe. Horses are to herds as people are to teams. They want a clear and confident leader but it has to be genuine.
“Horses make you humble”, you cannot ignore a horse working with a 600-kilo animal reminds you to be present. You need to park your ego at the gate. You need to be aware of what you’re doing (or not doing) as a leader and the impact you’re having on those around you.
“Horses want you to set the pace” – know where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, communicate it, and role-model it clearly. Once you have their trust, you don’t have to wait for the horse – they want you to lead.
6. Did you face any difficulties or challenges when you decide to launch Leading Together? As the Founder and as a female entrepreneur, how did you face the challenges?
So many challenges how do you juggle trying to start a business, and being judged as the face and person stepping forward. What if I fail? Or what if I succeed? As a woman in leadership, I have always felt I needed to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously.
Time management is the constant challenge of how to find the time to be the marketing person, being the website developer, be hands-on coaching, and sometimes accountant. I think for me it is allowing myself the opportunities to be vulnerable and to learn. And constantly being open to getting advice from those who have the experience find the topic expert and ask.
7. As a female entrepreneur, would you like to share some advice for others who want to become entrepreneurs?
You have to have a ridiculous belief in yourself. So that you can block out the criticism. Everyone is scared when you start something new. This is not unique. Somehow you have to feel the fear and do it anyway. The one thing I continue to remember is the advice “the breakthrough always comes just after you want to give up”. So when you get the days where it all seems too hard, and everything is at the toughest point, it is in that moment that the smallest step forward might just be your large breakthrough moment, that could be “your overnight success”
The other little reminder I have is grandmother telling me you will only regret the things you didn’t do. Not the things you did do. So don’t die wondering.
We are sure that you enjoyed and inspired reading this interview with Jannine Jackson, founder of Leading Together. To connect with her check her website www.leadingtogether.net.au
