Horses for leaders or equine-assisted learning for leadership is a form of experiential learning that involves working with horses to develop a range of leadership skills. Equine-assisted learning can help leaders in so many ways.
Communication
When you are a leader you need to be able to influence others and how and what you communicate matters. When you are leader you need to be able to show up and show people you care. So your communication is essential. Horses can show you how to develop your non-verbal communication. Horses are highly attuned to non-verbal communication, which means that they can pick up on even subtle cues from you. This makes them excellent partners for developing skills in non-verbal communication, such as body language and emotional regulation. This is a skill you cannot learn without practice and practical experience.
Trust and Respect
Trust and respect are the key ingredients in any relationship. Even in a team. Because horses are social animals they rely on trust and respect to function effectively in a herd. They show you in real-time effective ways to develop trust and respect. If you are authentic in your dealings with them they will show you trust and respect. Developing a trusting and respectful relationship with a horse can help leaders understand the importance of building similar relationships with their team members.
Emotional Intelligence
Because horses are sensitive and highly attuned to emotions they can show us how to be emotionally intelligent. They can help leaders develop emotional intelligence by providing immediate feedback on how their emotions are affecting their interactions with the horse. Horses will react to your emotions and allow you the opportunity to practice your calm-assertive leadership skills that can influence others.
Problem-Solving
The core principals of equine-assisted learning are problem-solving. Working with horses can present a range of challenges that require creative problem-solving skills. Leaders who participate in equine-assisted learning can develop their ability to think outside the box and find innovative solutions to complex problems.
Overall, equine-assisted learning can be a powerful tool for leaders because it provides a unique and immersive learning experience that can help them develop a range of important skills in a relatively short amount of time.
The impacts of excessive stress affect your ability to lead and also your team’s performance. As a leader, it’s natural to experience a certain level of stress when managing a team. However, there’s a fine line between healthy stress and stressful leadership. When leaders become excessively stressed and create a culture of stress within their team, it can negatively impact the team’s performance and productivity.
Everyone at some point has worked under a manager who handles stress poorly. They respond by “kicking the cat”. The “kicking the cat” analogy refers to the effect of emotional contagion. Anger and anxiety pass from senior management to subordinates, from the powerful to the weak, and eventually to the bottom, the most vulnerable, who have no place to vent their anger and who then become the ultimate victims.
The impact of stressful leadership on team performance can be felt in so many different ways but none of them are helpful.
High-stress levels among leaders can lead to several negative consequences for their team members not just emotional contagion and mental health concerns but reduce the capacity and capability of the team. Below are a few ways in which stressful leadership might impact team performance:
Reduced Productivity
Leaders who constantly exhibit stressful behaviors may cause their team members to lose trust in their abilities. This lack of trust can then lead to reduced productivity and reduced morale. When you are in these team environments you see symptoms like the blame game, gossiping, and presenteeism. Without faith or confidence in leadership, staff will be unable to perform at their best. If the leadership is not demonstrating confidence in the vision and decisions staff themselves become unsure. Staff really struggle to be their best if they feel that leaders themselves are struggling to perform.
Decreased Creativity
Teams that operate under high-stress environments may not be as receptive to new ideas and may lack creativity. Stressful leaders may inadvertently stifle creativity by not allowing their team members to think outside the box.
Higher Turnover
Stressful work environments may eventually cause some team members to become burned out. This would ultimately lead to them leaving the team and even the company. High turnover can lead to lost revenue, decreased productivity, and increased employee recruitment costs. Even staff who stay in this environment generally won’t be the high performers. It is the staff who can fly under the radar and simply turn up.
Tips for Reducing Stressful Leadership
It’s important to recognize the signs of stressful leadership and work to reduce it. Here are a few tips for reducing stressful environments for your team:
Create transparency
Leaders should be transparent about the effects their actions might cause on their team. Open communication helps to create a positive work environment. Owning mistakes and using this space to create learning moments can not only create transparency but also provide ways to relieve some stressful moments.
Encourage team bonding
Encourage your team to bond and create connections through events and team-building activities. Fun can relieve stress and shared stories. Connection and trust are essential ingredients for high-performing teams. Team bonding is more than just one event it is essential that this is a learned skill and one that is continued to enhance culture.
Support autonomy and creativity
Giving team members the autonomy to make their decisions can increase creativity and lead to greater productivity. True leadership is about empowering staff to work independently and allowing them opportunities to make their own decisions and mistakes.
Celebrate the team’s work
Recognizing and celebrating the team’s accomplishments can create a positive work environment and increase team morale.
In conclusion, it’s necessary for leaders to be mindful of how their leadership styles can influence their entire team’s dynamics. Creating an environment that is less stressful and more open can help increase the team’s performance and productivity.
Have you ever experienced a sound or smell that transports you to a different time and place in your life? Well, that moment happened to me today.
I have horses with colds at the moment. I don’t know how, but one of them got a cold and now they all have it. It feels a little bit like when your child brings home those disgusting germs from school or daycare and then spreads to everyone.
So I am mixing up my horse feeds with every supplement that could possibly make them better at dinner time. No one is really enjoying the “fancy and expensive stuff” in their food and not eating it.
Ahh. But I have a solution molasses! Horses love it and it disguises all the yucky stuff.
Well, this is when I was immediately transported to a different time and place in my life. I opened the tin of molasses and the smell made my grandmother appear right with me, to a time and a place when I was a very young girl bringing back to life such fond memories.
I am about 6 years old standing in her small country kitchen. She was telling me I needed to have a teaspoon of molasses because it was good for me. My grandmother used to swear by it. Everyone, man and beast would be given molasses regardless of whether they needed it or not.
The smell made me smile and reminds me of a time place and moment that was special to me.
My grandmother passed away earlier this year and this smell reminded me of the power of those small moments that make life so memorable.
I wonder if this has happened to you? Remember your loved ones will remember those small mundane moments just as much as big grand gestures. It’s reminded me to create a memory worth remembering.
Over 100 years ago, a guy called Hermann Ebbinghaus formulated the learning curve. The learning curve is the is how long your retain information or the relationship between memory and time. Simply put if you retain all the information on day one. Your memory is at 100 percent on day one, then you have a 50-80 percent loss on day two which continues until you have only 2-3 percent of that memory left at the end of thirty days.
Now, this is sped up with our shorter attention spans and increased overload of information. So 100 years later our learning sometimes is reduced to 140 characters!
So what can we do to improving learning outcomes and retaining critical information. This why experiential learning is the key to the overload of information.
What is Experiential Learning
Experiential learning is the process of learning by doing.
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (Kolb, 1984) defines experiential learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience.”
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory presents a cycle of four elements
Repetitive Learning or learning by rote has long been replaced by ‘Learning by Doing.’ Experiential Learning uses critical thinking, or problem solving and decision making. By learning this way it has been established it accelerates learning.
Accelerated learning our lessons in shorter sessions more suited to how we now learn.
2. Provides a Safe Learning Environment
Simulations are important. Simulations provide challenges, allow mistakes to happen during the course of learning. Creating a safe environment.
Make mistakes in a simulated environment and learn in an arena rather than in the workplace.
3. Bridges the Gap Between Theory and Practice
By moving beyond theory into “learning by doing,’. Our learning allows a first hand experience of how you react under pressure to put into practicing what has been taught. This piece in crucial in being able to retain concepts and ideas.
4. Produces Demonstrable Mindset Changes
There are very few learning methods that can have a dramatic impact on the participant’s mindset. Ours does, emotional intelligence workshops, is one of them. Management guru Henry Mintzberg pointed out long ago that, “Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it”.
5. Increases Engagement Levels
In the scenario of a Team Leadership Workshop there is a focus on collaboration and learning from each other and this learning environment it increases engagement. Given that in the arena, each person is immediately involved in the problem solving , the level of ownership of the outcome is high.
6. Delivers Exceptional Return on Investment (RoI)
Experiential learning is personal and effective in nature, influencing both feelings and emotions as well as enhancing knowledge and skills. It goes beyond classroom learning and ensures that there is high level of retention, thereby delivering exceptional RoI over a traditional learning program.
7. Provides Assessments
Assessing the effectiveness of the experience is a crucial element of any learning program. Most assessments are data driven and traditional tools use tests to measure effectiveness. When it comes to experiential learning programs, it is extremely difficult to gather data, which can be used for assessments. But others have said this it is still the best leadership training ever.
8. Enables Personalised Learning
Experiential learning is highly effective in meeting these requirements to enable personalised learning. Everyone gets to learn at their own pace.
Our leadership workshops are backed by research and experiential learning in practice, where personal reflections are put into practice. Get out of the classroom and into the arena for leadership learning.
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.
