Why Horses?
What makes us different?
Our training room is in the arena, and the Horses are the teachers! When team members or individuals are taken out of the traditional meeting room, the learning potential increases exponentially.
"Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things." - F. Lewis
So, why do we partner with horses?
Horses are a prey animal and are acutely attuned to their surroundings. There is no pulling around a 500kg prey animal! To effectively complete our programs, participants learn to strengthen their leadership ability and communication styles. Horses are incredible teachers because exist in the moment and are consistently reacting to stimulus provided by participants (behaviour, skills, attitudes and intent).
The honest and immediate feedback to individuals and teams of people that work together is a rare window of opportunity for personal evaluation and self-reflection, and uncovers what skills the participants would benefit from developing, both personally and professionally. Horses provide feedback that parallels our own behaviour, skills and attitude.
Some of the joys associated with working around horses are - they don't judge, but they constantly assess. Their feedback is an amazing insight into which life skills the participants need to strengthen.
Horses are hard-wired with in-built herd behaviours. These require us to strengthen attributes such as trust, respect, understanding, team work and communication in order to achieve the objectives and work successfully with the horses.
Learning to listen to what horses have to say is powerful and can sometimes spur the answer to individual change. By including horses in specially designed educational exercises, equine-assisted facilitators have greatly multiplied the participant's rate of success to self-discovery.
How?
Horses can magnify an individual’s problem immediately and provide a skilled facilitator with an opportunity to identify an individual’s character. Horses don’t over think a participant’s motive but horses do challenge their behaviour and leadership.
Horses require participants to strengthen their self-leadership skills and encourages authenticity and a raised level of self-awareness.
EAL exercises within our programs provide a controlled environment for horses to respond to the participant's attitudes and moods of confusion, contradictory behaviours, frustration, aggression and passiveness. Horses aid in the process of a participant's personal emotional growth and development as they learn how to process and evaluate their own feelings and behaviours.
Here are Leading Change Experiences, we believe in empowering individuals through developing emotional resilience, embracing self-leadership and strengthening their own skills sets when it comes to; reacting to undesirable situations; being an effective problem solver; building resilience; taking more accountability and responsibility for results in their life; utilising more effective communication styles; living more authentically; and working toward being the best version of themselves. Rather than participants relying solely on external support and resources when navigating through life, we believe it is possible for participants to harness and strengthen powerful life skills that they can draw on themselves to assist them moving forward in life, both personally and professionally.
Leadership with Horses represents an equine-centered leadership development initiative that connects individuals and teams with horses. The purpose is to develop the deep awareness and practical skills that fundamentally enhance their aptitude for effective collaboration and leadership. These programs are firmly rooted in the principles and proficiencies of social intelligence (SI) and emotional intelligence (EQ), which stand as the bedrock of successful teamwork and leadership.
The most effective way for leaders to enhance their social emotional intelligence is through real-time learning and application.
Research has shown the inadequacy of conventional training methods in cultivating social emotional intelligence. This is precisely why engaging with horses in experiential settings can ensure the grasp of social emotional intelligence leadership concepts and enable actionable outcomes that far outperform any classroom-based session.
