LEAD: Equine-Assisted Development For Business 

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How Can Horses Help Your Business?

How does it work?

LEAD provides business teams an opportunity to improve teamwork, communication, and problem-resolution skills by interacting with horses.

Horses Can Discern Worthy Leaders

By working with horses, LEAD workshops enable teams to get feedback without judgement, which breaks down defenses.  Horses do not judge.  They don’t care how much money you have or what position you hold.  They only care if you are a worthy leader and if will treat them well.

During LEAD sessions communication issues become evident and creative solutions rise to the surface. Whatever solution the team discovers has a profound and long-lasting impact because the team takes ownership of the journey to finding it.  The team members were not asked to get behind a directive sent from “higher ups.”

Why Work With Horses?

Reason #1

Immediate feedback measuring authenticity. Horses live or die based on their ability to read body language. If a person’s inside (true feelings) doesn’t match their outside (body language), a horse sees this as a threat and will not connect.

Horses are masters at reading human body language and intentions.

Reason #2

As social animals, horses “push the boundaries” to test the worthiness of their leaders. Consciously or not, so do co-workers, colleagues, and family members.

Individuals work well with clear boundaries reinforced with appropriate consequences.

Reason #3

Like humans, horses are:

  • social beings
  • reliant on others to survive
  • assigned specific “roles” in the herd

Their ability to work efficiently is a matter of life or death. Humans have roles within our families and teams. Our ability to competently carry out these roles determines our success or failure.  A human team is only as strong as its weakest link.

How Well Does Your Team Pivot?

Are they able to adapt quickly and efficiently?  In the horse arena, much like in a work group, things do not always go as planned.  When the team’s communication and connection break down during LEADs sessions, horses often scatter, sensing the loss of cohesion among the members of the group and confusion of roles.

What Happens Next?

A few members may yell at the entire team or other members. 

    • Some may walk away in frustration,
    • while others try to solve the problem themselves or
    • others encourage everyone to come together and “just get along.”

Eventually, the entire team discovers they cannot truly be effective without:

    • teamwork
    • communication
    • a strategy

Partnering with horses in a “hands on” approach provides your team members a safe place to:

    • uncover issues while working through them
    • explore self-discovery and personal growth
    • Improve team dynamics
    • Increase departmental collaborations

All of which invariably leads to improved morale.

Staff Team Building Event

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