Earned Leadership

By: Erika Isler

What can horses teach us about ourselves?

Plenty, when we’re willing to listen

Photography by Kelly L. Eide, From My Eyes Photography
(www.frommyeyes.org)


I swipe the sweaty dust from my face, leaving a dirty, arcing line down my arm. It’s late morning on a humid summer day in Virginia and all I’m trying to do is get a horse to move away from me. It’s just she and I and a dozen strangers outside the ring watching. I can hear their voices, but not what they’re saying.

I take another step toward her.

“You’re in her space!” calls Koelle Simpson, our instructor for a three-day workshop titled “Primal Leadership Taught Through the Eyes of a Horse.”

I’m attempting an exercise called a “join up,” which is basically moving a horse, without touching her, around in a small pen. It is not a strength contest, nor is it punitive; it’s about energy, presence and boundaries. Get too close, and the horse, as an into-pressure animal* (meaning they move into pressure rather than yielding) will either stop moving or defend itself. Remain too far away from the horse and there’s no movement either. Stay in the zone with the right energy to push her forward, and she will continue to move in whatever direction you send her.

“You need to back away,” adds Simpson, who is casually leaning on the fence. “What do you want her to do? Are you really clear what you want her to do?”

“No, actually…I’m not really clear on that,” responds a snarky inner voice.

I only know that I want to successfully complete this exercise, which ostensibly involves the horse deciding that I’m capable of “leading” her, not in a horse on a lead line kind of way but in a leadership way. In my mind, I’m already at the end game of her following me around like a little puppy, compliant and obedient as the crowd of onlookers applauds in admiration and approval.

Back in real-time, however, she’s not bought into my plan. In fact, it appears she couldn’t care less about much of anything at the moment.

I’m not a leader to this animal, who tolerates my presence but isn’t naturally predisposed to expend any more energy than necessary. Thirteen hundred pounds of coiled muscle will pay me no mind until I’ve demonstrated the ability to lead. Until then, she simply maintains her space in the small enclosure, likely strategizing her own ways to reach the tender greens just outside the ring, thank you very much.

I retreat a few steps in quiet frustration, raise my arms and bring the long lead line cracking down on my leg. The movement jettisons her toward the far end of the round pen.

“Okay,” my inner voice weighs in, a bit more optimistically this time. “That’s something. It’s movement at least.”

Just a half-hour prior, Simpson had demonstrated the exercise with another horse. ** After an explanation of equine and herd behaviors, she made a few gestures and sounds and the horse in the ring began trotting gently in a neat circle around the parameter of the roughly 30-foot round pen. She showed the class where and how to stand, how to move, how to get the horse to change direction and what signals to look for in your horse that shows he’s ready to follow you. Then she quietly turned away from her still-trotting equine partner and he immediately slowed his pace, came to a stop and focused on her. A gentle turn of her shoulder and slight downcast of her eyes, and he started walking toward her, ears forward and curious. She then stepped forward, then away and the horse followed. After a rub on his head, she turned and walked forward again. Her horse was right behind her, magically following, as if tethered by some invisible rope.

A conversation had just happened that none of us heard.

It was wondrous and mystical to watch it happen. Your mind tells you that interspecies communication happens on human terms. “We communicate to you and you do as we say,” might be the words we would use with domestic animals. In this exercise, however, the object is to get the horse to choose to follow you because you’ve communicated in his language. You’re the leader, he “says,” by falling in behind you free of any restraint or control. Case closed. No further discussion needed. In fact, no discussion was needed at all.

My thoughts begin to race around after Simpson’s demo, like a manic chipmunk facing early snow and an empty burrow, about what I’ll do when it’s my turn as I watch the first few brave classmates step into the ring. I figured, refigured and reconnoitered while the sounds of the analytical synapses clanked away in my brain, developing a plan. “No problem,” I think. “I’ve been around horses all my life. I can do this.” And even as that little voice trailed off, I felt its deep lack of conviction.

Watching my classmates only feeds my mind’s urge to strategize the process and by the time I enter the ring, my whole body is taut. I’m not sure if that’s about 1) failing  2) succeeding 3) being watched by all these people I don’t know while failing or succeeding or 4) all of the above.

Simpson rescues my near failed attempt at the exercise by entering the ring and hooks my arm in hers. Then, while explaining how to keep my eyes locked on the horse’s—a predatory gesture that, in conjunction with my staying in the right zone and utilizing more aggressive body language—continues to move the horse away from me. As she reminds me about staying present in the moment, and helps me position myself, I see more progress.

But it’s hard for me not to think that the horse is responding more to her energy than to mine, even as it walks closely behind me at the conclusion of the first attempt.

Each of my classmates got a little hands-on help from Simpson for the first go round during our morning session, but now we’re on our own and these are different horses. Which brings me back to the action.

I get this horse moving a little more successfully than the one I worked with in the morning. I can’t tell you what’s different but I do definitely feel differently about what’s happening. And it’s all happening pretty fast.

Within a few moments, the chestnut-colored horse trots speedily around the ring and, after a few laps, has one ear locked on me. When he slows I step toward him; when he gets moving too quickly, I drop my energy a bit. After a few minutes, he gives me the second sign—another step toward earning my role—chewing and licking while he circles me. I’m totally focused at that moment, watching the horse and thinking only about how much fun the exercise is once I quiet the voices in my mind that incessantly seem to anticipate a major, humiliating disaster with each second that passes. The horse’s head then starts to come down as he continues trotting around me. “That’s it!” called Simpson. “That’s the last sign you were waiting for!”

Koelle Simpson, in her late 20s, with liquid blue eyes and angular, athletic build, is a master life coach and protégé of the legendary horse trainer/whisperer, Monty Roberts. Though her background is with horses, her work has, as of late, been focused on helping people work through their issues using horses. Her life coach certification comes from Martha Beck, a world-renowned life coach, author and frequent contributor to O The Oprah Magazine. Simpson conducts workshops all over the world for individuals, groups and companies. The Primal Leadership Workshop combines experiential exercises, like the join up, along with biofeedback, psychological theory discussions and other physical activities. The three-day period is intensely, dramatically honest, which is not really something humans, with all our words, are usually comfortable experiencing. Not that I really thought about any of that before the workshop.

The theory is that horses, as expert non-verbal communicators, act as mirrors for our actions. Whatever you’re feeling—agitation, anger, stress—it doesn’t matter, a horse can read you, even if you think you’re doing a great job masking it. And from a herd animal’s point of view, if you’re unsure then you’re unstable and therefore, untrustworthy as a leader. There’s no verbal deal to be made; only action and authentic presence and clarity will work.

Statistically, Simpson explained to us, 93 percent of communication lies in non-verbal cues. Fifty-five percent is body language observation and 38 percent is tone of voice; just seven percent of communication comes in the form of words. Words without intention and clarity, therefore, mean little.

“Although we have become such verbally focused creatures, our instinctual mind knows that the physical body never lies,” explains our workbook for the program, written by Simpson.  “Without making a conscious effort, we zone in to the non-verbal cues that are being exchanged during any encounter with another individual.”

So what information is shared non-verbally with every one of our encounters? “The rapid unconscious scanning of non-verbal communication and body language allows us to decipher the truth behind what someone is saying,” according to Simpson. “This explains why during a very brief exchange with someone, you are able to walk away with a lot of ‘gut feeling’ information about him or her, even though you have exchanged only a small handful of words.”

If you are anything like me, you’ve had hundreds of interactions with people where the issue was not so much what was said but how you felt. Turns out, my gut has been trying to communicate with me for most of my life. I’ve only occasionally listened.

“Common themes tend to emerge during these workshops,” explains Christina Brandt (www.christinabrandt.com), another life coach that has attended several of the workshops, including the one in Virginia, in an email. “Typically, participants tie their experience at the workshop back to how they behave in their relationships with spouses, parents, children, co-workers, etc.…They uncover truths about what’s not working in their interactions with others, and their own responsibility for those negative outcomes.”

Brandt explains that after the workshops, many participants report that they are able to call upon the skills they learned. “Each participant takes away whatever she or he is meant to take away based on what’s going on in her or his life.”

Boyd Varty, our third life coach and a tracker at his family’s game preserve in South Africa (www.londolozi.com), made similar observations about the workshops. “I am much less concerned with getting things right and far more interested in what I learned,” said Varty in an email. “I carry that with me always.”

Energy? Space? Boundaries? Feelings? Staying in the moment? It’s easy to cast those terms about and claim those touchy/feely issues don’t interest or apply to you. But just a little bit of awareness about the world may force a double take. An August 2009 study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that about 10 percent of Americans, or 27 million, were taking antidepressants in 2005, which was roughly double the number taking them in 1996. Interestingly, the majority of those people weren’t being treated for depression but were instead using the antidepressants for back pain, nerve pain, fatigue, sleeplessness and other problems. Among users of antidepressants, reported the study, the percentage receiving psychotherapy actually fell from 31.5 percent to less than 20 percent during the same period.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brief in September 2008 reported that “In any two-week period, 5.4 percent of Americans 12 years of age and older experience depression” and that “rates were higher in 40- to 59-year-olds, women and non-Hispanic black persons than in other demographic groups.”

The brief also reported that “approximately 80 percent of persons with depression reported some level of functional impairment because of their depression, and 27 percent reported serious difficulties in work and home life.”

The facts could be construed to demonstrate that even in our ultra-wired, talk-to-anybody, anywhere, all-the-time world, we have trouble communicating with one another and it does affect us. We’ve lost something of our innate ability to be present and to communicate honestly with one another. We’re speeding forward, but leaving something vital behind.

I back the pressure off the chestnut-colored horse after the last sign, head lowered toward the ground as he trots calmly around the ring. After a few laps, I turn my focus away from the horse, who in turn slows to a walk and then stops. I feel his eyes on my back. The sweat rolls along my hairline.

I walk a gentle arc toward and then away from him. His ears are pricked and he watches me closely. Then, with no great fanfare, he takes a step in toward me and starts to follow me around the ring. After a few steps, Simpson calls from the side of the ring: “Give him a few pats! You did it!”

Even now, months later, it’s hard to describe just how that moment felt, as well as all the other exercises we engaged in over the course of the weekend. It’s too simple to say I felt that I’d succeeded at a task or that I’d learned a new skill. The deep down in your being feeling was more like a totally new connection was made, one that would forever alter how I move through the world. Perhaps Simpson and her fellow coaches framed it best: “Once you know it, you cannot un-know it.”

In September and for the purposes of this article, I feel the need to double check my experience to weed out dumb luck or some unknown magic charm that Simpson alone possesses that led to my success in Virginia. I make a few phone calls and finally, Suzanne Myers, whom we wrote about in the August issue of SCM, agrees to let me come try a join up at her barn in Port Matilda.

Rhiannon Schneider, one of Myers’ assistants, explains that they work their horses frequently in the round pen, so the first horse she pulls, a mustang still in training, may be “too easy.” She’s right. There’s nothing required of me for this horse to do what he does in the round pen. He’s eager for my signs and eager to move to the next step.

The next horse has had less time in the ring, so the ante is upped on my ability to get present and communicate clearly what I want. Within a few minutes, however, we had a successful join up.  

How ironic that a person who has spent her life working with words would find such lessons non-verbally. But how very cool to have expanded my “vocabulary” for life. And so much more interesting that it was all done in silence. • SCM  

 

*A horse’s into-pressure response can mean the difference between injury and death; when they feel the claws or teeth of a predator, by moving into it, they avoid further injury.
**It’s important to note that Simpson is based in Phoenix, Arizona (www.koelleinc.com) and had not worked previously with any of the horses we used in the workshop at The Marriot Ranch in Hume, Va.

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