In exercising leadership there are essential aspects: dealing with people who are with you on the issue, one for managing those who are in opposition and then for working with people who are uncommitted but wary: the people you are trying to move. This workshop is about understanding and developing those courageous conversations and uses horses to develop the insight and dialogue.
Equine Assisted Leadership Training is a powerful experiential approach for developing instinctive leadership skills in action. You try out your leadership skills with (not “on”) a horse, working with a powerful animal weighing several hundred kilos to do simple tasks.
Developing trust is the foundation to high performance leadership and is a powerful source of competitive advantage. The success of an organisation depends on fostering strong connections across teams and among bosses, colleagues and subordinates. How can you meet that need? This workshop is about trust: what can be achieved when it is present, what can happen when it’s not and how to develop it. It will enhance understanding of the concept of trust and help participants forge the link of trust to leadership and strategy rather than HR.
Why horses? Because horses are extremely canny herd animals that respond well to good leadership and instinctively challenge weak leaders. Horses don’t understand words, so you can’t hoodwink them. They don’t have a personal agenda. They just respond to who and how you are at any moment. You will be amazed at how instant and accurate the feedback is.
During the training the horse’s behaviour gives you constant feedback on your leadership skills – no politics, no whispering at the water cooler, no “I was going to tell you but…” no bull, just instant feedback in the way that matters most – behaviour. You immediately get to find out what doesn’t work, and you get every encouragement to stop doing it. Even better, you get to find out and practice what does work, you get the huge buzz of seeing it work there and then. It’s an experience that’s guaranteed at the very least to make you a more effective leader. And in our experience, most people get much more out of it than they imagined.
Outcomes of the workshop are:
- Identify the difference between old leadership and new leadership (positional power vs. relational power)
- Examine feelings and beliefs about leadership and how to make the shift from power-over to power-with leadership
- Create inclusive vital conversations and practices in the workplace to strengthen relationships with direct reports,
peers and colleagues and to achieve business results - Develop an action plan for expanding inclusive and co-creative leadership practices and conversations in the workplace.
- Participants will gain an understanding that the key to understanding and improving the potential for future business success lies in the power of trust.
- As business leaders the ability to manage trust to support change adds up to the strategic resource in developing effectiveness and innovation. You don’t need (and can’t have) absolute control – you need to know who you need to trust to do better.