What leaders can learn from horses?

Studies emphasize that horses reflect through their behavior, the behavior of their owners or the people with whom they were interacting at that time.

In the human world, specifically in the workplace, leaders and learners often count on hidden feedback from colleagues, using others’ experiences and interpretations to guide their decision making. Kahneman highlights this in “Think Fast, Think Slow” (2011), precisely how this human perspective can be limiting because of human cognitive bias in interpretation and decision-making.

In contrast, some animals, including horses, do not consciously interpret their experiences as humans do — they do not seek to label events or to create meanings.

For instance, horses communicate through what they feel internally. Their safety strongly relies on how they can sense danger and the presence of predators. Horses perceive the stress that predators hold before an attack. This stress creates not only a specific physical posture but also particular chemistry (rise in cortisol). Horses can read all this information and sense when it is safe or not. Their communication skills are so subtle that a human mind cannot perceive it. A human who is in an incoherent state of being — thinking one thought while feeling a different emotion, or carrying a hidden agenda — sends out the same vibration or stress signals as a predatory animal in the wild. A person who is trying to project happiness but is inside frustrated or angry will most probably notice their horse more difficult and frustrated too. Horses, therefore, can scan and perceive accurately human non-verbal clues, and emotional changes (from serotonin to cortisol).

Scientific research shows that the brain of the horse does not have the resources to interpret an act or experience. Instead, horses react immediately to their experiences, and in this, they can reflect what they sense around them, including the deeper, sometimes hidden, emotions of the humans who are working with them. This can be a pathway to renewing and developing leadership behavior and cultivating greater authenticity between thought and actions.

Coaching is an action-oriented profession, so working with horses also speeds developing actions toward a goal. A horse gives direct cues on the degree to which the leader is leading, so that learners and leaders try new things, and take away plans and strategies. Horse-coaching experiences also add kinesthetic or grounded-ness to ongoing coaching relationships among leaders and their human coaches who help their clients open up to the experience, and get in contact with their inner truths, develop what to do, and feel confirmed in it. Leadership coaching with horses is a way of balancing our tendency to over-rely on our thinking(head — brain) and tuning into our sensing energy and emotions (body-brain).

Horses couldn’t’ care less what you are trying to appear to be, horses sense what you are feeling, who you are, even if you are unaware of it yourself. By becoming present in the presence of a large, sensitive animal, a gateway to consciousness opens and releases the next necessary piece of empowerment.