Equine WorkshopsLeadership has been increasingly under the spotlight. We have seen many leadership models evolve and books fill the shelves, yet business leaders still struggle to adapt the old "yell and tell” leadership style to a more conscious, enabling style.
Many leaders find it tough to embed the behaviour change discussed and learnt during a classroom based course or training.
This workshop is not about the horse! It is about the participant and their behaviour. Working with the horse enables participants’ to learn non-verbal communication, leadership, assertiveness, presence, confidence and a conscious attitude.
Stoke believes in experiential learning which means that participants’ learn about themselves through activities and exercises with horses. Open and reflective discussion helps uncover feelings, behavioural patterns and together with coaching, creates a new more effective behaviour.
The coach will guide the participant to embed that behaviour with the horse in the arena so that they can access that once back in the office. Hence, true behavioural change is possible.
Horses are big and powerful which means they are intimidating to many. This provides the first challenge to overcome and builds confidence within the delegate. Secondly, horses are herd animals with well-defined roles within the herd. For a horse to follow a person, the person first needs to establish their position as a leader worth following. This can’t be achieved using force or dominance. A difficult lesson for most humans to learn!
Most importantly, horses are sensitive to emotions and intentions, which means they provide a wonderful mirror of human body language. This enables the participant to receive instant feedback on their non-verbal communication and allows the participant to spend time practicing to correct and embed the new way
Participants’ will say the horse is stupid, however, are they communicating effectively? If they change the way they communicate, the horse will respond differently.
