The Stallion job

Stepping forward in the indoor arena, the boss of a large pharmaceutical company smiled nervously. ‘In our company we set annual objectives. If we achieve 80 per cent of them, we consider it a success,’ Paul Jacobs said.

He was then invited to walk a horse around the edge of the ring. The horse followed him and his commands to the letter – until they were 80 per cent of the way round, at which point she veered off course and wandered aimlessly into the centre of the arena.

Next, a corporate manager complained of leading a low-energy team and wanted to learn how to motivate them. He was told he would be working with a lethargic horse, which he had to lead around the arena. Try as he might, the animal refused to move. A female business executive confessed she was tired of being pushed around by her CEO. She was put to work with a horse she had seen behaving immaculately all day. But the minute she started talking to it, the horse started pushing and trying to shove her out of the way.

Coincidence? Clever coaching of animals? Trick of the mind? No, this is Equine Facilitated Learning at its best.

‘Horses are very good at giving instant feedback,’ explains Andrew McFarlane, director of UK-based training company LeadChange, which offers equine-assisted coaching sessions for top corporate heads in Europe to hone their leadership, communication and team development skills. ‘Horses can pick up subtle cues and they react instantly – something that people usually do not. They are ideal to help you learn more about yourself and find out where you can improve.

‘When you watch showjumping, you will realise that if the rider doesn’t believe he or she can jump the fence, the horse will refuse the jump. Horses tune into the most subtle of messages and play back the reactions of the people. Our work with horses is often a metaphor for what happens in work or domestic situations.’ In other words a horse can easily pick up on what’s running through the minds of its handler and reacts accordingly.

That’s why Paul was unsuccessful at leading his horse all the way round the arena. ‘He must have relaxed a shoulder or altered his breathing slightly,’ explains Andrew. ‘Or he must have felt contented to complete 80 per cent of the track – it was a subtle change but the horse picked up on it instantly, stopped following his commands and walked away aimlessly.

‘I then explained that if he focused on 100 per cent achievement, the horse would follow him all the way round. On Paul’s next attempt, that’s exactly what happened. He was focused on completing the task; he was not wanting just 80 per cent but 100 per cent. Once he was clear about his goal, the horse picked up the vibes and followed his commands.’

As for the man who complained of working with a low-energy team, he was tricked into believing that the horse was lethargic and told to lead it. So, working with a preconceived notion – that the horse was lazy – he did not put his 100 per cent into the task. ‘As soon as the session was over and we told him that the horse was a regular one and not a low-energy animal, he realised that it was he who had low energy and low motivation rather than his team.’

Andrew says that how we describe our team is often a reflection of ourselves.

In the last case – of the business woman who said she was being pushed around by her manager – Andrew says that the reason the horse refused to budge was because she was not taking the lead role. ‘She was allowing herself to be dominated in situations and not creating professional boundaries where they are required,’ he says.

‘The animal’s reaction shows you have to change what you are saying to yourself and how you feel about yourself.’

He says, in the case of humans, more than 90 per cent of meaning is communicated non-verbally. ‘With their prey instincts and extreme awareness, horses can size people up instantly and accurately. They are able to read the truth in our energy and body language and react to what they see – holding up an authentic mirror to our intention and behaviour.

‘Once we understand what is causing problems in our personal or professional relationships, we can then easily work towards correcting them and becoming successful individuals.’

Andrew began his career with an auto-trading company as a sales manager, then rose to become managing director before quitting to follow a new path in training and coaching in 2002.

‘I had taken up horse riding in 1996, and was discovering how sensitive horses are to our energy, moods and attitudes,’ he says. Keen to learn more, he trained with an equine expert, before setting up LeadChange in 2002. ‘I invited corporate executives to come along for a learning experience with horses and at the end of the sessions, they all agreed that they had learned more in a short session with a horse than they did in weeks of traditional training,’ says Andrew, who is an NLP master practitioner and is trained in coaching, EQ mapping and 360-degree appraisal. His impressive client list now boasts the names of some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical, communication and banking giants. ‘We have worked with two members of the House of Lords, and with CEOs of FTSE 250 companies,’ he says.

His team now travels around the world delivering one-day programmes to organisations seeking to develop their leaders, and Andrew is convinced it’s more powerful than leadership reading and coaching. ‘Our course gives people self-awareness about their non-verbal communication in a real and immediate way. It works all around the world – we work with local horses in local yards. The concept certainly travels well.’

A series of workshops will be hosted in Dubai later this year and a branch of LeadChange has recently opened in Istanbul. Andrew and his team also do team exercises – for example, seven people have to work together to get a horse to walk round the arena.

‘We see people making assumptions based on a lack of knowledge, they make a plan and by the time they have walked two metres they are doing or thinking about something different. Isn’t that what happens at work all the time?’

He recalls the instance when he tried this programme with two groups. The first was fine but the second group failed to get the horse to move. ‘Want to know why? One person in the second group admitted he was terrified of horses. The group didn’t address it at all and the horse would not respond.

‘If one person on your team is not on board, then that communicates in the group’s action. It would have been better if the group had asked him to observe and offer his feedback on their performance.

‘So often in corporate life people ignore the problems and just try to plough on but horses show us that if you change your reaction, you will get a different response.’

Another exercise is placing hurdles on the ground along the horse’s route to test the participant’s reactions.

‘If we set up a couple of obstacles we can show how people think to the target and not beyond it,’ said Andrew. ‘If you jump with a horse, you have to think to the landing and what’s next, not the fence itself.

‘It’s only an obstacle if you think it is. If you think an obstacle doesn’t exist, the horse reacts accordingly.

‘Horses are big creatures you can’t push around. They’re willing to do things if we turn up in the right way. We want to show that the same is true among human-to-human relationships.

‘When we meet a horse it doesn’t look at a badge and realise it’s working with a chief executive. It’s just interested in trusting you as an individual and your personal power.

He says there were people from Nigeria and Thailand on the same course – different people and different styles of leadership. ‘The Thais, for example, were very good at creating good relationships.

‘It shows the best way to be a good leader is to be yourself and within that there will be different styles. Where people are effective, the horse follows them without a lead rope and will be led around obstacles. These people are in the zone – they believe in what they are doing and have a clear intention.’

Kim Wherry, a secondary school teacher, is another person who says she has benefited immensely from the training session. She was experiencing bouts of self-doubt while in her career and had confidence issues.

‘I attended a session recently and have to say that the experience was one of the most positive, affirmative, uplifting of my life.

‘The horse Gracie reacted constantly to just how committed I was to my intentions. As soon as my intention flagged, due to me allowing self-doubts about success to enter my psyche, Gracie let me know. When I focused and remained in utter belief that my goal would be reached, Gracie and I got there – together.

‘Now, when I experience any sense of self-doubt, I recall how the resilience and determination I felt when working with Gracie made me feel; I instantly become emotionally stronger, and my self-belief and determination to succeed, rise.’

Kim says that what she took away from that is ‘the energy we give out has an impact on people around you; we have to take the steps to build trust and good working relationships with others for others to mirror that’.

Equine-assisted activities and therapies have attracted such celebrities as Robert Downey Jr, and Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (Eagala), a US-based organisation, has seen a spurt in numbers of people who are keen to be trained in this way - from a handful in the late nineties to around 1,500 in 2011.

Andrew agrees that more and more people are recognising the powers of equine-assisted training. He also runs HorseHeard, a not-for-profit organisation that works with families and young people at risk of becoming NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training), using the same experiential learning to tackle a range of issues. One such case involved Andrew working with a businessman and his family. They had four children and were experiencing particular problems with their 14-year-old son who was uncommunicative, argumentative and generally disruptive.

‘We had a brief introductory discussion and then I asked the father to walk the horse round the arena. He couldn’t get it to move. He said his head was too full, his mind was elsewhere and he wasn’t really in the zone.

‘I then asked the mum who got the same response from the horse. She said she felt guilty about the problems at home and a failure as a mother.

‘The 14-year-old was next and he went to the horse and it moved fine – there was a great connection. The parents looked at each other and realised eventually that they were the problem the boy was reacting to and he was suddenly the success story.

‘It’s a powerful way to explore family dynamics. This cuts past the thinking part of the brain and when you know what you are doing, you can change it.’

Teacher Kim is keen that the HorseHeard sessions be made available to as many children as possible. ‘Children are learning values, determination to succeed, self-belief, goal-setting, tolerance, resilience, trust, calmness, how to express love and positivity, how to form healthy connections. These are just the kinds of things these sessions can teach,’ she says.

In Andrew’s work with teenagers, the youngsters are taken out of the classroom environment and spend time at local stables.

‘Every time I see these kids on our programme, I see them as bright and interested – the opposite of how they are portrayed at school,’ says Andrew.

‘They are just not very good at sitting in a classroom environment. With the horses we see them totally focused. They are active learners but teachers haven’t got time to work with those who learn differently from the majority.

‘A training session with a horse is the best way to find out the real you.’