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Mane Event: Executive Coaching Straight from the Horse's Mouth (Part 1)
March 27, 2009
In a one-day session, Wisdom Horse Coaching shows Training first-hand how to keep employees riding toward productivity, collaboration, and leadership.
By Margery Weinstein
I've had teachers who looked like horses, and some who smelled like horses, but none who qualified as bona fide equines. As for "horse sense," despite the frequent resemblance, not all these teachers possessed it. So, being one who would much prefer an evening in a genuine barn with genuine pigs and cows to a cocktail party, the Wisdom Horse Coaching program seemed right up my alley. Despite the name, you luckily don’t have to be an equine yourself to participate.
Rather this program, based in Minneapolis, MN, and founded and directed by executive coaches Ann Romberg and Lynn Baskfield, uses guided interaction with horses to teach corporate employees, most often senior executives, about their work style. That means there isn't much you can hide. Not able to easily coax the horse in the direction you want her to go—even when all your co-workers chip in to help? That’s no coincidence, Romberg and Baskfield say. Chances are, there's something lacking in your communication skills that’s also adversely impacting your relationship with workplace peers, those you manage, and maybe even your customers.
With so much to learn (and dread learning about myself), I headed to Hudson, WI, approximately an hour from Minneapolis, in August, to meet the horses. I’d spend the morning observing Talon Performance Group, a recruitment firm serving the legal industry, and the afternoon of the same day getting equine-guided-dissected myself. As an obsessively introspective person, it was more excitement than I could bear.
Giddyap, Learners!
Arriving the night before, I was given a glimpse at dinner of what I would experience the next day. My dining companions were Romberg; Baskfield; Sue Wahl, owner of the farm the program is held at and the Hawk's Ridge Retreat Center house I was staying in; and three Wisdom Horse train-the-trainer students learning how to become equine-guided learning facilitators themselves.
It didn't take long before our conversation over salads turned to the horses I would be spending the next day with. The horses, explained my guides, reflect the energy of the people interacting with them. Sure, they'll be tense if you're tense and relaxed if you're relaxed, but it's much more than that. When learners in the Wisdom Horses program are on the verge of an epiphany—some big truth about themselves or their company—that's itching to be expressed, the horse he or she is working with often will stick out his tongue and move his jaw around. Sometimes the horse even will start coughing. Once the realization is spoken, the horse's ability to reflect energy sometimes takes an unceremonious turn—they liquefy their assets, you might say—or to put it plainly, they let out a powerful stream of urine. You're releasing something, so they thought they would, too.
While you probably wouldn't want to lose control of your bodily functions around co-workers, the uncanny ability of horses to read energy is something corporate employees could learn a thing or two from, said Baskfield. The ability of horses to match the energy of their handlers is what bosses in corporations need to do in their own setting, she explained. They need to be able to match and respond to the energy of their workforce. "So much communication is beyond language. Few of us learn how our energy expands and contracts, and how we do it," she said. "Horses are fabulous trainers for teaching us this invisible thing is real."
 What Kind of Horse Are You?
The next morning—leaving the guest house at 7:30 with Baskfield, Romberg, and three trainer-the-trainer learners who stayed with us—I'd see for myself just how real.
We arrived at the farm at 8 a.m., large chickens—about the size of kittens—greeting us in the driveway. The sun had risen about two hours earlier, but the roosters were still crowing intermittently. Along with chickens and horses, the farm is home to longhorn cattle in its covered arena, dogs, and even more cats as pets.
As the first item of business, Romberg and Baskfield asked our group to meditate as they burned sage in a candle. "Get present to what you want to get out of the day," said Baskfield, "and who you need to be to get that."
What I wanted to get out of the day as an ardent animal lover was face time with the horses. So, naturally, I didn't demur when Romberg and Baskfield, along with a few of their apprentices, asked if I'd like to go into the pasture with them to get the horses.
Baskfield asked us to keep in mind that we're going into their herd and we're a herd ourselves, meaning we're visitors in their home, and, therefore, would wait for them to come to us rather than the other way around. Doing otherwise, said Baskfield, would amount to "going into someone's living room and asking them to dance."
When we got within 50 feet, a beautiful black male horse named Cole trotted up to us of his own accord, with a brown horse with a black mane (known as a "bay") named Dan, and another black-and-white female, Tula, following not far behind. A large white male, Gyp, also decided to join us. With 20 minutes left until Talon arrived to groom the horses, I pitched in, brushing Tula, from her back to her mane, nose, and chest. As we walked the horses into the center of the arena to wait for the Talon group, the train-the-trainer apprentice who oversaw my grooming warned me to stay clear of the horse's blind spots, yet another useful metaphor for dealing with co-workers and bosses in the corporate world, I thought to myself.
When Talon arrived, consisting of seven employees including both the CEO and president, Baskfield and Romberg asked them to assemble in a circle to share "what kind of horse you are today." I personally felt like a big black horse galloping along the ocean, but I decided to keep that to myself since, at least for the morning, I was strictly a spectator. "A young, playful, inquisitive horse," one Talon employee shared. Another described himself as "a curious horse today, listening, observing, and trying." The CEO said she was "chestnut-coated and sleek, moving kind of at the head of my group." Another, by contrast, saw himself as "a trail-riding horse, following the leader."
After a safety demonstration with Dan, the bay horse, Romberg and Baskfield noted some initial parallels between communicating non-verbally with horses, and with corporate employees. They pointed out to Talon how to get a horse moving without ever touching him or her—oddly enough, the same kind of coaxing a workforce and customers sometimes require. "When clients want to leave, you have to get in front of them, or get behind them and push them forward," Romberg pointed out. Baskfield built on that metaphor: "Sometimes at work, even if you have buy-in, you need to propel people who are dragging their feet," she said, clapping her hands behind Dan, which spurred him to start walking ahead. "It makes you aware of how to get yourself and others going."
True, your employees, unlike horses, generally understand the spoken word, but according to Romberg and Baskfield, that doesn't mean they're listening. Communication research has shown, said Romberg, that more than 85 percent of communication is non-verbal, and stems from "the body language, energy, and authenticity we put out." For more meaningful interactions with employees and co-workers, said Romberg, "trust the energy you get from others."
But to be receptive to receiving that "energy," Romberg and Baskfield said you first have to be grounded in yourself, or, in other words, have a feeling of being centered and focused. So they started the day's activities by leading Talon in yoga exercises, asking the learners to raise their arms up high above their heads and then drop them down below their knees several times. "Do you notice how you feel your feet a little more?" Romberg asked. The Talon group seemed pretty well grounded to me, but Wahl's black German shepherd dog, Zion, seemed the most grounded, pawing at his ball and kicking dirt up at Romberg’s question. All of us—dog companion included—ready for deep energy exchanges, Romberg and Baskfield asked the Talon workforce to assemble around the horse they felt most drawn to.
The largest group congregated around Cole, the same horse who enthusiastically approached the facilitators and me in the pasture earlier that morning. "He looked at me and seemed feisty," a Talon career counselor said of his attraction to Cole. Meanwhile, one of his co-workers, a young woman who is a recruiter, said she wasn't drawn to any horse in particular because "all horses are the same to me." These reactions to the horses are instructive, said Romberg and Baskfield. "Listen to your colleagues," said Romberg. The traits they say drew them to certain horses, and their attitude toward those horses, says a lot about their reaction and attitude toward co-workers and customers.
 Horsing Around
With the learners assembled around Cole, Tula, and Dan, Baskfield kicked off the first formal training activity of the day—each participant using props such as orange traffic cones, shovels, work gloves, and buckets to create representations of their respective job roles. One mid-level staffer got down on her haunches, took a long-handled shovel, twisted it around, and balanced it a few inches off the ground, spinning it like an axis around her body so it pointed at each of her co-workers. Another, the career counselor who was drawn to Cole because of his "feistiness," revisited that sentiment with his display, an orange cone with a shovel stuck on top. Why the orange cone? Romberg and Baskfield asked. The orange cone was a "tad feisty," while the shovel symbolized digging "below the surface" of workers he coaches. The young recruiter ambivalent about horses interestingly chose a horse halter signifying her search for job candidates possessing "unbridled passion." She also included a rope in her display, "to lasso candidates to save them from being under-employed."
The CEO chose a dirtied-up pair of work shoes leaning against a rock. The shoes represented footsteps to follow behind, while the rock provided a "skid-free anchor" to support those following footsteps. The president, meanwhile, favored a riding crop balanced upright with a rope attached to it, marking his need to provide the Talon workforce with "gentle prodding." The office coordinator decided her role was best represented with a small decorative basket set atop a stool, which she said highlighted her "support" function in which the support is more than just functional—it creates a more pleasant work environment.
Romberg's and Baskfield's next assignment was for each Talon learner to take a turn leading a horse of their choosing around each of the displays. "It was hard getting Dan to go where I wanted him to go," the office coordinator noted after her turn. "I had to let him set the stage." Romberg and Baskfield asked whether that bothered her. She said it didn't matter if she wasn’t the one determining the path because she "got where she needed to go," a parallel to how she operates in her job, just going with the flow, deviating when necessary. "I try to hit the high points for everyone whenever possible," she said, "but it's not always possible."
The career coach drawn to feistiness went next, enabling the horse to take an unplanned path around two obstacles—the rope attached to the riding crop in the president’s display and the black shepherd dog, Zion. "I wanted him to step over the rope, but he walked around it instead," the coach said. Romberg and Baskfield asked who Zion, a living "obstacle" the horse felt obliged to walk around rather than disrupt, might represent in the coach's work life. The coach didn't know, but Cole had an idea. He began shifting back and forth on his hooves, sticking out his tongue, and, finally, coughing. "Anything that wants to come out?" Baskfield asked. "Maybe it's just wanting to be in the game, to be involved," the coach said, presumably of his desire to be more heavily involved in the workings of his company.
The young recruiter, who sounded like she could take or leave horses and the whole Wisdom Horse experience, picked the bay horse, Dan, to lead around her display and that of her co-workers. His yellow halter, she said, made him an "energy horse." Bridle in hand, she immediately set the horse at a trot, running with him around the displays. Romberg was curious about her approach. "You didn't stop, and you didn't let the horse stop," she noted. The recruiter pointed out in her job she has to pick up her feet. "I'm not doing my job if I'm not high energy," she said. "And I can't do career transitions if I'm not high energy." Her colleagues agreed there are parallels between her interaction with the horse and the displays and her personality at work. "You're fast-paced and do whatever it takes to get the job done," one of them said of her style.
Baskfield decided to push the recruiter toward a little more introspection, asking her to provide an "acknowledgment" to the horse of what they just did together. "Great butt!" the recruiter responded, with all of us laughing, and some of us unclear as to whether that was really the first thought that came to mind about her experience with Dan. She certainly seemed like an action-oriented worker, but watching her interact with and react to the horse, it also seemed to me like tasks requiring deep reflection might be hard for her.
The CEO was last to try her hand at the exercise. She chose Tula as her horse partner. Unlike the young recruiter who preceded her, the CEO allowed Tula to pause whenever Tula saw fit—which happened to be, for a minute or two, at the upright riding crop display assembled by Talon's president. When Tula and the CEO returned to where the exercise began, where her workforce waited, the horse placed her nose on the foot of the president, and as if that weren't enough of a hint, she laid her head on his left shoulder. Eliciting giggles at first, the mood turned serious when the CEO and president locked eyes, the CEO tearing up a little. Evidently, Romberg and Baskfield, surmised, the horse picked up on strong energy between the two of them—I later learned they were husband and wife.
Speaking of Tula, she was of particular interest to me. Based on her interaction with the president and CEO, and a story told to me by Wahl the previous night about a troubled adolescent Tula helped, she seemed like a sensitive, gentle horse. Yet—and this was the surprising part to me—she also was the leader of the herd on the farm. In the world of horses, leaders appear to be what most of us humans would paint as our ideal executives. "They're leaders, but not bullies," Baskfield explained to me. Tula's nurturing streak comes with the territory because, they added, the horse leader doesn't just keep the herd moving in the direction she wants them to go; she also "leads it to safety."
On our way inside the farm house, to a lunch of pre-ordered sandwiches made by local deli Grateful Bread, I asked Lindsay Clarke, one of the train-the-trainer/Wisdom Horse apprentice learners what she thought of the program. Clarke, a human resources generalist, said she wasn't sure yet what she'd do with the knowledge gained from the program, but that it expanded her opportunities. "I think I'll be able to take some of these skills," she said, "and merge them with my horse skills to do something different professionally."
"Equine Billards"
For Talon's next exercise, the young recruiter's wish for "unbridled passion" was fulfilled as the horses were released from their halters, or any other controlling device, for an exercise Baskfield and Romberg called Equine Billiards. The purpose of this exercise, they explained, is to discover ways to get the attention of new, possibly resistant clients, and sell new services to them.
The object was to get the three participating horses, Tula, Dan, and Cole, into three large rectangular "slots" in the arena marked off with PVC pipe. "No bribing or touching the horse," Romberg said, "and only the person who's turn it is can talk." Employees had to stand in a lateral line between two cones and remain in that configuration—another one of the rules. The person at the head of the line had 45 seconds to go out and take a turn at asking the horse to go into one of the slots. When the person’s turn was over, he or she then went to the end of the line, and the front person went out to work with the horse.
One hour was allotted for the exercise, so participants had several turns. After noting the "rules" of the exercise, Talon was asked to come up with a consequence if they broke a rule. The consequence had to be done right there, during the exercise, and the team could choose whether it was done only by the one breaking the rule, or by the whole team. Talon decided on push-ups as the consequence they all would share for rule breakage. Romberg and Baskfield said the horses symbolized their customers, and what it takes to push those customers toward the desired market direction, or "slot." Another way to look at it, they suggested, is each horse in a slot represents a new client in the door.
As the game began, none of the Talon team made much progress. And, to make matters worse, they accidentally broke the rules when one of the team—hard to tell exactly which in the commotion—clapped and shouted as the president tried to coax Cole into one of the slots. Romberg and Baskfield asked the Talon employees to do the push-ups they had agreed to as a consequence for breaking the rules. Thinking of my own paltry upper-body strength, I worried for them, but showing their o-the-fly innovation skills, they headed to the arena's perimeter to lean up against the wall for watered down, baby "push-ups." It's a good thing they thought of that, as the reflexive rule-breaking muscle flexed a second time, during another co-worker's turn, prompting the group back to the wall.
The Talon gang finally hit upon an idea—pick up where the team member who went before them left off. If a co-worker got a horse half-way to a slot, run to meet that worker and his or her horse where he or she left him, instead of starting from scratch, just as they hopefully would pick up where that co-worker left off in trying to woo or provide satisfactory service to a client.
Then, one of the Talon employees had the idea to ask the person at each end of the line to pick up the cones so the line could move throughout the arena freely and still stay between the cones. Talon banded together—literally—arm in arm in a phalanx to push (though still without physically touching) the wayward horse into place. With all horses, or "customers," in their respective slots, the Talon group breathed a sigh of relief. "That was hard," one of them exclaimed. "That's going to market," Baskfield responded.
The parallels between Equine Billiards and customer or client billiards were explored further during the exercise debrief, when Baskfield pointed out to Talon the progress they made when they started working together—especially when they communicated enough between turns to get behind one another's horses so the horse had a Talon teammate both in front and behind leading him into the slot. In your work life, Baskfield asked, are you ever "afraid to ask some one else to stand behind you?" Sometimes you know what to do for a client, but just as the horses in the arena were drawn to different workers, so, too, can clients can be moved to action by one Talon employee more so than another. So, a key to effective teamwork, said Baskfield, "is knowing when to hand off."
Then, too, there's the need sometimes to just relax and think a minute before acting. You might have a better chance quieting the nerves of a ready-to-flee client if you relax first yourself. A Talon learner noted that when she calmed down, the horse did, too. And just as important, those few reflective moments gave her a chance to come up with the next best move. "If I just take that breath and that moment," Baskfield said they should ask themselves, "What do I notice?"
At the end of the day, the Talon CEO said the Wisdom Horse lessons taught her the importance of "recognizing and supporting the leadership and ideas of people who aren't necessarily leaders by job title. There are more leaders than I thought at my company—I saw leadership in all of us."
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Photos by Nancy Peregrine
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