The Power of the Herd (73 page)

It most certainly behooves you to watch how the horses respond to your teacher. Are they engaged, bright-eyed, willing, and relaxed? Or are they disconnected and nervous? (The latter is a red flag, unless the instructor is a guest facilitator at someone else's farm, in which case, watch to see if the horses warm up to the instructor during the clinic — a good sign. If the horses become increasingly nervous or shut down, your teacher may be overattached to a method and less responsive to the needs of individuals from moment to
moment. How he or she treats the horses in this regard most certainly translates to how he or she will treat human clients.)

When you or your fellow students ask questions, need assistance in performing a task, or challenge the instructor for some legitimate reason, does your teacher act dismissive or dominant, shame the client outright, make more subtle sarcastic comments, or perhaps even demean the client verbally or nonverbally for not “cooperating” with the method? If so, his interpersonal skills are sorely lacking. This facilitator may actually be a decent horse trainer, but equine-facilitated learning demands people skills as well as horse skills. Masterful instructors spend significant time developing both.

And just as innovators like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Steve Jobs were self-taught in their respective fields of expertise, advanced academic degrees and certifications do not guarantee greatness in the field of equine-facilitated learning. A balance of experience, training, mindfulness, compassion, high ethical standards, curiosity, flexibility, ingenuity, and constant self-improvement are needed for instructors to truly excel. And if you are a trauma survivor, I highly recommend working with a facilitator who is also a therapist experienced with the kind of challenge you are facing (war-related post–traumatic stress disorder, childhood sexual abuse, adult physical or emotional abuse, and so on). Because of the personal nature of these issues, equinefacilitated therapy sessions should always be separated from teambuilding activities, though you will sometimes find an instructor qualified to do both.

On the Eponaquest Worldwide website, for instance, instructors trained in our approach are listed geographically with their specialties, degrees, certifications, and other areas of expertise next to their names. Some are counselors specializing in trauma, addiction, or family and relationship issues. Others are educators offering personal development or creativity-boosting programs. Still others specialize in leadership training. Instructors with the “POH” (Power of the Herd) designation have had advanced training in how to teach the Twelve Guiding Principles presented in this book. Additionally, while nearly two hundred people graduated from our multiweek apprenticeship program between 2003 and 2012, our website presents the contact information of only those instructors who have agreed to uphold the Eponaquest Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice, recently updated by a representative group of experienced instructors and overseen by the Eponaquest Ethics Committee. (These standards can be accessed at
www.eponaquest.com
.)

For those seeking leadership training, I offer an additional caution: People with psychological or psychiatric degrees and experience do not necessarily make good leadership- and team-building facilitators. Some techniques used in
therapeutic contexts, including group therapy, bring up personal issues that are not appropriate for the workplace. Any facilitator who has a dual counseling and leadership-training orientation should be able to clearly state the difference between her therapeutic practice and her team-building programs.

The results of blurring these two indiscriminately can be destructive. Over the years, I've talked with a number of people who felt that their reputations and already-tenuous work relationships were damaged by attending company-sponsored events designed to boost emotional intelligence, led by counselors trying to break into the lucrative corporate-training market. These activities sometimes got too personal too quickly. Other times people felt deeply humiliated by activities that promoted confrontation or confession in the name of authenticity. Some people felt publicly shamed — and lost the respect of their team members as a result. This is an occasional problem not only in the equine-facilitated learning field. Bob Wall's
Coaching for Emotional Intelligence
offers a number of examples of the detrimental effects he's witnessed in other leadership and team-building contexts.

Whether horses, ropes courses, hot coals, wilderness, or other off-site experiences are involved, many of these programs do little more than put people in frustrating or somewhat threatening situations and discuss participants' reactions afterward. This is usually done under the guise of making people conscious of unproductive attitudes and interpersonal habits or encouraging people to “face their fears” and experience some sort of catharsis. Such programs, however, are
not
sufficiently well developed to be truly productive. The best programs teach specific
skills
in addition to inspiring individuals to become aware of their previously unrecognized challenges
and
hidden strengths. Masterful programs help the participant
translate
those skills to human situations. In evaluating any equine-facilitated leadership program, ask what your employees or team members will learn, how they will learn it, and how it will benefit them in the workplace. If the program still sounds too vague, sensational, or confrontational, it probably is.

Finally, it's important to understand why you would select equine-facilitated leadership training over other options. As my friend and colleague Barbara Rector, founder of Adventures in Awareness, asks, if these sensitive animals are merely being used as obstacles to overcome, then “why bother the horse?” Treating any living being as a tool or obstacle reinforces the destructive yet still common practice of objectifying humans. Even if you're interested purely in the bottom line, it's important to note that cynical, disengaged, or apathetic employees whose talents are never tapped, who give up and “retire in place” because they're treated like replaceable cogs in a wheel, block everyone's
ability to get the job done, let alone excel. Furthermore, managers and coworkers who release their resulting frustration through aggressive or passive-aggressive behavior create a toxic corporate and political environment precisely because they don't know how to use power effectively and collaboratively.

As highly social, intensely mindful, nonpredatory power animals, horses are quite simply best equipped to help our species master the nonverbal nuances of leadership and social intelligence. If you choose an instructor who knows how to draw these long-neglected skills out of the shadows and into the light of day through activities that respect the client's and the horse's talents and integrity, your goals for an off-site leadership or team-building training will be met and most likely exceeded.

T
he Power of the Herd
would not exist if it weren't for the efforts of my agent Felicia Eth, who somehow talked me into writing another book in 2008, and my editor Jason Gardner, who immediately supported the idea. It seemed like a reasonable little project at the time: a survey of what horses can teach us about power and freedom-through-relationship if we're willing to really listen. However, researching the horse's impact on innovative leaders throughout history turned out to be a much richer endeavor than I ever imagined; the simplest questions led me to unexpected views of culture, nature, science, and social evolution. Thank you, Jason, for the deadline extensions and your expertise in editing the manuscript. It's always a pleasure to work with you! I also thank copyeditor Bonita Hurd and proofreader Karen Stough.

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, it took tremendous concentration to configure this material into a coherent narrative. Completing this project would not have been possible without the expert assistance of staff members who handled the myriad details of running the horse operation and putting on numerous workshops (where the principles introduced in this book were tested and constantly improved). I'm deeply grateful to barn manager Elysa Ginsburg, office manager Sue Smades, and workshop assistant Kathleen McGarry, all of whom are Eponaquest Instructors willing to do whatever is necessary to keep our horses happy while also inspiring our clients. The personal support I received from these powerful, compassionate women felt like a miracle at times.

I'm also indebted to Eponaquest faculty members who lived the principle
of emotional heroism, transforming numerous challenges into strengths over the past decade and helping the work to evolve in the process. Mary-Louise Gould, Shelley Rosenberg, Carol Roush, Nancy Coyne, and Kathleen Barry Ingram were integral to the creation and continued improvement of our multiweek apprenticeship programs and the development of the Eponaquest approach to equine-facilitated learning internationally. These talented women now travel extensively, creating new programs that draw upon their many gifts, and they continue to facilitate programs with me at times. I also thank Mary-Louise, Shelley, and Carol for reading early versions of the manuscript and helping me to clarify important points. The section on shame and guilt, in particular, owes much to their insights on how these emotions have long affected our clients.

I'm so very proud of and inspired by our Eponaquest Instructors worldwide, who have answered the call of the horse and taken this wisdom to heart, adding their own unique talents and perspectives, continually expanding the scope and power of this work.

Special thanks to Shelley Rosenberg for believing in my dream of socializing Midnight Merlin to live with his own herd. I could not have rehabilitated and bred such a powerful, agile stallion without her expertise, adaptability, and enthusiasm for this unconventional task. She skillfully assisted in the resultant births and the continued training of the black horse family he sired: his sons, Spirit, Indigo Moon, and Orion; and his granddaughter, Artemis. At the same time, Merlin's transformation would not have been possible without the enthusiastic yet most certainly risky efforts of my mares Tabula Rasa and Comet's Promise, who, amazingly, helped him heal through the magic of empowered relationship. Now that Rasa, Merlin, and Comet are with the Ancestors, their children are teaching us even more sophisticated lessons: namely, how to collaborate with an entire herd of intelligent, highly sensitive, self-actualized horses who have no fear of humans, other horses, or life, for that matter. But that's another story, one I hope to write someday.

In the meantime, there are many other people to thank for the book you now hold in your hands. Significant credit goes to the people who joined the
Power of the Herd
web symposium in fall 2011 and, most especially, to Mark Mottershead, my cocreator of that endeavor. Realizing the book was taking longer to write than I had expected, I was eager to share the research, insights, and practical tools I was accessing. For an entire year, participants from around the world read early drafts of the chapters, made comments, and asked questions during in-depth conversations on each chapter, all of which were recorded and posted on the symposium's website (
www.poweroftheherd.com
).

I had no idea how fruitful this web-based educational program would be. Mark (a British entrepreneur who lives in Germany) is a masterful interviewer and moderator. His questions, interwoven with those of the subscribers, led to greater clarity in the finished manuscript. What's more, the idea of adding the Twelve Guiding Principles came from Mark and Ian Rowcliffe, a Portugal-based symposium participant. This of course necessitated an additional six months of writing, but these practical chapters were integral in translating horse wisdom to human contexts.

Many participants shared thought-provoking insights and personal experiences that not only inspired me but also raised my spirits, giving me the energy to complete this intricate book. While I'm grateful to every member of this symposium, I would also like to cite a few people who more directly affected the book's content. Susan Garvin and Nancy Proulx helped me deepen the material through their questions and comments on several issues. I also thank two Eponaquest Instructors who became faithful symposium participants: Josselien Janssens from the Netherlands brought up the issue of envy and jealousy in the workplace, leading me to decipher the useful messages behind these notoriously troublesome emotions. Thea Fast from Canada introduced me to Kropotkin's work on mutual aid as a factor of evolution, which became a significant topic in
chapter 6
.

The
Power of the Herd
web symposium is still available online, offering people who may not be able to attend equine-facilitated workshops as often as they'd like the opportunity to gain some additional insights into the material presented in this book. The symposium will continue to host new conversations, including some with other experts featured in this book, as well as address questions on specific challenges participants are facing in the workplace and in other contexts where leadership and emotional and social intelligence are significant factors.

I also thank the dedicated professionals who helped establish the Epona-Quest Foundation, which was originally envisioned as the nonprofit division of Eponaquest Worldwide. As the field of equine-facilitated learning (EFL) evolved, however, I felt the need to expand the scope of the foundation to serve the EFL community at large by raising funds to do research on the efficacy of this work, as well as to develop curricula based on this research, offer scholarships to participants who would otherwise not be able to participate in EFL activities, and create ethical standards and best practices that would affect the entire field, no matter what training or professional organizations facilitators are associated with. Discussions I had with the founding board members of the EponaQuest Foundation influenced material presented in the book on the horse's role in
teaching human development skills, as well as on the ethics, evolution, and potential of this field.