Why Horses Make Good Leadership and Teaming Coaches

By Gayla Hodges

Equine Assisted/Experiential Learning (EAL) as used at Renewal Ranch AZ for personal development, leadership coaching and team coaching has an impact on clients that is almost always far beyond their expectations. Before people come here and experience coaching with horses, most ask why horses make good leadership and team coaches. It’s a question I’m always happy to answer.

In life and in business, we are socially conditioned to control our responses and reactions to others. We have been taught that there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to respond in various situations. A look at how horses respond in our workshops will make their value as team coaches easily apparent. Horses are not socially conditioned in the same way, even when trained. A horse will always respond directly and immediately to what it perceives. Their feedback is natural, honest and unconditioned by social expectations. It is easy for us to ignore subtle feedback from other people. But I can assure you that 1000 pounds of horse is a lot of feedback to ignore!

Some EAL trainers and coaches speak of horses as “mirrors” of what the people around them are feeling and doing. While I think this is a helpful image, I’m not sure I agree that horses simply “ape” human behavior. What horses do is react and respond to humans very much as other humans do. The difference is, they don’t use words.

Horses are naturally conditioned to run away from a perceived danger or predator. If a member of their herd goes into flight mode, they will also retreat and ask questions later!!  Humans generally, however, make a “fight or flight” decision when threatened. But our responses to various kinds of danger are a bit more complex. We might decide to respond in one way on a physical level, but respond in an entirely different way on an emotional level. When teams work with horses, the experience demands that each person get all of his/her responses in sync and communicate with voice and body language in a consistent way. 

If members of the team are confused and conflicted, the messages communicated to the horses will be confused and conflicted. Each horse will share its reaction to the team’s confusion. Some may become agitated; some may run away, some may become immobilized. All of these reactions are similar to those we see in the workplace when the team is not working together toward a common purpose.

Because horses are herd animals, they look to and follow their leader. In the wild and in the life of the herd, there is an equine leader. Horses will also bond with humans and accept a human as a leader. This happens as a result of some communication between the human leader and the horse(s) that has established trust, respect, and leadership worthiness. If the leader then communicates clearly, consistently and appropriately, the horse(s) will follow the human leader and respond as asked. This gives the team members the opportunity to “try before they buy” certain team behaviors to test how they work in a safe environment before trying them out on the team.

When I speak of horses as intuitive, I mean that they have an innate ability to sense and respond to our deeper feelings and needs. I have seen the horses respond in ways they think offer comfort to a human who is suffering or struggling. But in training leaders and teams, I see horses respond or fail to respond to people who are struggling with self-confidence issues or anxieties in ways that help the humans step back and realize that this is exactly what they were communicating to the horses. The facilitators (human) can then help the client understand how this attitude or behavior is being perceived by humans in other contexts and how it affects their ability to be understood or to be an effective leader or an effective member of the team/herd. 

These are a few of the reasons why horses make good leadership and teaming coaches. These are also a few of the reasons we say the horses are the coaches and the humans are the facilitators of human learning. What better way could there be to learn profound truths about ourselves than by working and playing with the horses?