Transformational Leadership with Your Horse

When we built our summer home on Prince Edward Island (PEI), we also built a shed with a stall and a paddock so when we come for vacation every summer I can bring a horse with me and ride on the beach. There is something about riding on a beach that soothes my soul and the two weeks I do this every year is the highlight of my year.

Today was Kalimo’s return to PEI after his first visit last year. He knew exactly where we were going this morning for our early morning ride. Normally quiet and patient to be tacked up, this morning he was impatient. He was definitely “up” when I mounted and as we headed out for the ten-minute walk to the beach we had several conversations in which he suggested that a fast trot was in order and I suggested walk would be better. We compromised on a very fast walk. Kalimo is a powerful Andalusian stallion so when he is “up” he is a lot of horse to ride. I kept calm and grounded and just guided him to the beach, consistently letting him know that fake piaffe down the clay road was not the plan. He relaxed as soon as we reached the beach with a few mighty snorts.

At the beach, I let him explore. He sniffed the air and seaweed. He chased a retreating wave and ran backwards when it came crashing back towards him. He splashed in a tide pool and tried to dig a hole in it, soaking us both. Then it was time to ask him to cross the flowing stream which he had pointedly avoided since coming to the beach. But by crossing it we would have access to a much larger expanse of sand, perfect for a good gallop.

There is a tidal pond by the beach and since the tide was high and just going out, the stream was flowing faster than he had seen before. It is not a deep stream (only about halfway to his knees at the deepest part), about 12-15 feet across, with somewhat “squishy” sand along the edges in some places. Kalimo was not sure this was a good idea. As we approached he tried to impress me with his half pass skills to convince me that lateral work was a better idea than trying to cross that running water.

“Well buddy,” I said, “here’s the deal. We are definitely crossing this stream. I don’t care how you do it or when you do it. The end goal is the other side and you figure out how you get us there.” And that is just what he did. I kept my intent clear the whole time, focused on the other side. He approached in one area, found the sand too squishy, tried another place, didn’t like it and so on.  Within three minutes we were across the stream.  When we came back to the stream about 30 minutes later we did the same thing. It looked different because the tide had gone out further. He investigated a few places and this time decided to stride out into the ocean a bit and go around the end of it. He preened just a little bit at his cleverness.

After we returned home I was reflected on how much fun we had together. And about leadership. I recently coached a new manager about the difference between transactional and transformational leadership and my experience with Kalimo today stood out as an example of how I try to be the latter. Transactional leaders tend to be task and outcome oriented within a defined approach, and use rewards and punishments to promote performance that meets expectations. Transformational leaders create the vision, focus on the strengths of those they lead, and create situations that enable people to find their own path to the outcome, leaving people feeling more empowered and with stronger capacities as a result.

Today I created the vision for Kalimo (crossing the stream), encouraged him to figure out the way across without any expectation of where or how we would get there – only that we would get there. And we did, even though he did not choose to cross where I thought might have been the best place. Whether we are helping our horses learn to cross a stream, learn a shoulder in, or execute a correct flying change, we are leading them through this process and have a choice about whether we are a transactional leader or a transformational one.  I believe the latter is not always the easiest but is ultimately the path to the greatest success.

Take Home Message for Riding Instructors

Are you a transactional leader with your riding students or a transformational leader? A riding instructor who is a transactional leader will teach a “command” lesson with most of the lesson being a series of instructions (turn left, now shoulderb-in, change the rein, lower your hands, etc). The transactional riding instructor tends to talk a lot during a lesson. The transformational leader will also use commands, but there will be periods of silence as she allows the rider to feel what is happening or she may work the horse in- hand with the rider mounted so the rider can experience a particular movement and then go try it on her own. If we use a transformational leadership style while coaching as much as possible, we will have a better chance of creating curious riders who are able to work through riding questions and problems.

Would You Want to Be Your Horse?

Now here is an interesting question to contemplate the next time you ride.  Would you like to be your horse right now if that meant carrying you on your back?  I heard a clinician recently ask this question and I thought it was brilliant. She was speaking to someone who was very stuck in her hip joints and was not following the movement of the horse.  She was also stuck in the shoulders so her hands were not softly following the horse’s head movement, and every time his head moved as he walked his mouth banged against the immobile bit.

The question was not asked in a negative insulting way, but rather in a supportive way that really encouraged the rider to think about how her horse was feeling in response to what she was or was not doing.  The rider thought briefly about the question and shortly afterward answered “no”.  The clinician asked her to describe why and she quickly identified her stuck seat and stuck hands.  It didn’t take long for her to refocus her awareness to these issues and correct them.

I spoke to the rider after her lesson and she was amazed.  She said that she has been told many times by instructors to “soften her hands” and “loosen her seat” and she tries to do as they request believing she has accomplished it.  Only to be told the exact same thing the next lesson.  For some reason, she observed, despite her best intentions she just couldn’t seem to make the positive changes she made stick beyond a lesson.  Being asked to consider whether or not she would like to be her horse was like someone switched on a lightbulb for her.  She was even more amazed the next day when she approached her riding from this perspective and was able to keep her seat less tight and her hands softer.

What if everyone applied this question to their riding all of the time?  And then made an effort to change whatever it is that would make it undesirable to be your horse, whether it be riding position, tack or something else.  I think we would find more people with better awareness of their own balance (would you like to carry around a knapsack weighing one tenth of your weight that is lopsided?).  I think we would see closer attention paid to saddle fit, girth over-tightening and bit fitting. For example, have you ever held a bit in one hand that has leather reins attached to the bit ring and a bit in the other hand that has reins clipped to the bit ring by a metal clip?  Try it, and get someone to jiggle the reins.  The difference is remarkable.  The harshness of the metal clip on the metal bit ring travels through the bit and is horrible compared to the leather on the bit ring.  Many people use these types of reins for convenience, but if they thought about which reins their horse would choose if he could, their choice would likely be different.

So, periodically as you ride ask yourself “Would I want to be my horse right now?”  If the answer is no, make a change that would enable you to answer yes.

Take home message for equestrian educators

As equestrian educators we have as much responsibility for the welfare of the horses that help us teach our students as we do for the students.  Therefore, we should take every opportunity to foster empathy for horses in our students.  I asked a similar question to the one above to a student of mine once.  We had been working on a lesson program over several months to help her horse move less on the forehand.  He was coming back to riding after being laid off due to a lameness issue that was exacerbated by being ridden on the forehand.  He was gradually beginning to develop a stronger back and hind end muscles through lots of slow-paced careful work in hand and under saddle.  One day I came out to the arena and to my surprise, I saw my student riding her horse at a very fast trot with a hollow back.  The student was smiling and the horse looked miserable.  He was clearly uncomfortable.  Although it was not a lesson night I stopped her and asked her what she was doing. 

She replied that she just really felt like going fast tonight for the first time in a long while because she finds it more fun to go fast.  I asked her “how do you think your horse feels about that?”  She was quiet for a moment and then she identified that this was probably not the best thing for him right now. I agreed and left them to the rest of their ride, which she refocused on work that was both more comfortable and more beneficial for her horse.  Later, she found me in the stable and thanked me for stopping her.  She identified that she had not been thinking of her horse first and that was wrong.

There was no question in my mind that I had to try and intervene in that circumstance for the benefit of the horse.  Doing it in a way that asked the student to think about how her horse was feeling proved to be a useful way to refocus her thinking and an opportunity to try and improve her empathy.

Teaching an Old Brain New Tricks

Many of us have seen or experienced this scenario.  The riding student finishes her lesson with her riding instructor and as she leads her horse back to the barn, she is feeling frustrated.  She wonders why after five lessons where it seems the instructor is teaching exactly the same skill, she cannot seem to adequately perform this one simple thing.

We all know that it takes time to learn something new.  And that children seem to learn new things faster than adults. But why is that?  It has to do with something called “neuroplasticity.”  Our brains actually physically reorganize themselves as we learn new things.  New connections happen between the neurons in your brain as you learn something new, and existing connections are sometimes reorganized.  This appears to happen faster with children compared to adults.

There is a great video produced by Smarter Every Day that demonstrates this concept brilliantly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0  In the video, an engineer designs a bicycle that works opposite to the way that normal bikes work.  When you turn the handlebars left, the front wheel turns right and vice versa.  Everyone who knows how to ride a bike simply cannot keep their balance on this bike.  Two people who practice daily finally master the skill, only to find out that they now cannot ride a normal bicycle – because their brain has reorganized neural pathways to learn the new way.

There is also evidence that experts in a particular skill have larger parts of the brain associated with that skill when compared to non-experts.  Dr. Pascale Michelon*notes that professional musicians who practice at least one hour a day have a larger brain cortex than amateur or non-musicians.

Neuroplasticity has several implications for people who ride and for people who teach riders.  Sometimes we get frustrated with ourselves when we cannot master a skill we are taught in one lesson, or two lessons, or ten lessons.  But the reality is that it takes time for your brain to reorganize itself to learn new skills, and everyone’s brain grows new neural pathways at different speeds.  Accepting that it takes time to learn can help reduce frustration, and reducing frustration is important because it is a great impediment to riding for a whole host a reasons.

The fact that it takes time to learn also explains the importance of regular practice.  This is true of every skill.  However, often in the equestrian world I come across people who ride once a week and are frustrated that their skills are not progressing.  In order to build new neural pathways, regular practice is critical, and that means riding often to practice specific skills.  If riding more than once a week is not possible, then it is important to adjust expectations about progress to match what is physically possible for your brain.

Take home message for equestrian educators:

We have to be creative in helping our students learn the art of riding, to ensure that we teach in ways that match the learning style of each rider.  But we also must be aware that learning involves a physical change process in the brain.  It may take some students many months to learn a new skill, and that may have absolutely nothing to do with how well they listen to your instructions or focus while in a lesson. It may have everything to do with the fact that their brain is taking time to develop new neural pathways, and this is why it is important that instructors not get frustrated with students if it sometimes feels like you are teaching the same lesson over and over again to the same student.  Sometimes that repetition is necessary to support the growth of new neural connections.  And then one day – voila!  The connection will be established, the skill will be there and the student will have what we often call an “aha!” moment.

*http://sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/02/26/brain-plasticity-how-learning-changes-your-brain/

Why Do You Ride?

Whenever I ask this question of an equestrian, I usually get a brief “because I love horses,” “because I love working in partnership with such a powerful animal,” “because I love those moments when we feel like we are moving as one,” or similar answers.  While these are fine reasons to ride, I think that for many of us, there is a much deeper reason. A reason that speaks to a deeper internal reward.  And if we understand that deeper reason, it is a resource we can turn to in times when we are frustrated in our riding journey.

As part of my own reflective practice I have come to understand that for me, being with horses and in particular riding one of my own horses, is a key to finding my inner peace and understanding of my connection to the world around me.  To find those beautiful moments of togetherness with my horses, I must learn to clear my mind of all the noise of work and life stresses, ignore the distractions of the hundreds of tasks that need doing, and devote my entire awareness to the relationship with another being in the universe – the horse that I am with.  Being with my horses helps me find joy in the present moment and after spending time with my horses I feel refreshed, renewed and rebalanced.

Sure I have riding goals and I always want to advance my ability as a rider.  I enjoy the challenge of riding.  And just like everyone else, I have times when I feel frustrated that my horse and I cannot seem get past a particular sticky spot in our training.  When I reach that place of frustration, if I pause for a few days and reflect on the question “why do I ride?” I come to the same understanding every time: I ride because riding is a pathway to inner peace for me.  Then the fact that we have not been able to accomplish a particular goal becomes much less important.  Answering this question inevitably allows me to free myself from the bondage of goal-driven frustration and negative self-talk and enables me to return to listening to my horse and finding other pathways that ultimately always lead me to accomplish the goal I set out to achieve in the first place.

Why do YOU ride?

Take home message for equestrian educators

Help your students understand their reason for riding.  I have stopped many students in the middle of a lesson when it is apparent that they are becoming overwhelmed with frustration and I have asked them this question.  They always give me a quick answer like those I listed above. I try to help them reflect a little deeper with responses like “you can enjoy working in partnership with a horse without riding” or “you can love horses without riding them” or ”you can have beautiful moments moving as one with a horse by doing work in hand.”  I suggest to them that they can do all of these things without riding.  I encourage them to dig a little deeper - so why do you RIDE? 

What fabulous discussions I have had with students when we explore this together and they increase their own awareness of why they do what they do.  Frustration evaporates, the horse relaxes and the lesson proceeds in a whole other way.  Once I have had this discussion with a student, in future lessons when I see frustration growing, all I have to do is ask them to take a walk break and reflect on why they ride.  It works every time.

Who IS That Talking in My Head?

“What is the matter with you?  Just do as you were taught by the instructor! ”

“Why can’t you just seem to do this one little thing correctly?”

“You are such an idiot.  Can’t you figure this out?”

“Don’t be such a dummy. Everyone ELSE can do this. Why can’t you?”

Sound familiar? Almost every rider has heard these questions, or similar versions.  And we (hopefully) don’t hear them from anyone other than ourselves.  We pick at ourselves endlessly with negative self-talk and expect unrealistic and unattainable perfection.  Why do we do this?  And more importantly, how do we stop doing it?

The Ohio Center for Sports Psychology lists 9 mental skills for successful athletes.  One of them is positive self-talk.  They suggest that successful athletes train the voice in their head to talk to them just like they would talk to their own best friend.  When you use positive self-talk, you reframe the conversation you have in your head from negative to encouraging. You highlight the positive, identify what’s not working and figure out a positive plan forward.  Just like your best friend who offers encouragement and suggestions.

When our ego gets involved in our riding, we get focused on the end product as the reward, rather than the process or journey as the reward.  The only thing that satisfies the ego is the end reward.  I want to ride a shoulder –in.  Therefore the reward and only acceptable outcome to the ego is executing a perfect shoulder-in.  And if I don’t achieve it, the ego starts nattering away at us telling us what a bad job we are doing.  The ego is that persistent voice in your head that constantly makes us worry whether we or what we do is good enough by our own or someone else’s standards.

Negative self-talk produces frustration and negative energy, both of which are counter-productive to effective riding.  But we can train the ego to be our friend instead of our foe by learning how to stop negative self-talk and use positive self-talk.  There are lots of self-help books and articles on the internet that offer ideas for how to use positive self-talk.  For the students that I have worked with on this issue, the first most important thing they must do is recognize when their ego is getting in the way with negative self-talk.  Negative self-talk becomes a habit that we fall into and don’t even realize the impact it has upon us or our horse.  Once we recognize “that is negative self-talk!” we can then use something called a pattern interrupt to stop it and help us reframe our self-talk to be positive.

To create a pattern interrupt, you need to pick an image that is not at all related to riding.  I had one student pick an image of a refrigerator.  Every time she caught herself using negative self-talk she would think of the image of a refrigerator to stop the pattern of negative thought.  Once you stop negative thinking you can shape your thoughts in a different way that help you move forward more positively and productively. Give yourself advice. “Well that exercise didn’t go so well.  Let’s experiment to see what I can change to see if we can make it better next time.”  This approach changes the energy to be more positive, where past mistakes become opportunities for learning and further inquiry.  Your horse will thank you for your reduced frustration level, which will help reduce the tension he feels in your body.

Example of Reframing Negative Self Talk

Heave sigh.  I have been working on learning the shoulder-in for weeks and weeks now and I am still not getting it.  I am so BAD at this.  I cannot even mange to get my horse to understand what I want.  And then when we finally get close to performing a shoulder in, I go and ruin it every time by pulling on the inside rein.

“Wait a minute, what am I doing? REFRIGERATOR!

More Positive Approach

Hmm.  We had really great rhythm going in that trot.  But when we tried the shoulder in again we lost the rhythm again.  I wonder happened to disrupt the rhythm? Let’s try that again and see if I can keep my body moving freely with my horse as we prepare for shoulder-in.  Let’s try and see what happens. It is an experiment and if it doesn’t work we will try something else.”

*Reference: https://www.sportpsych.org/nine-mental-skills-overview

Finding the Off Switch – Turning Off the Overthink

I am reading an interesting book that a friend gave to me called “The Art of Thinking Clearly” by Rolf Dobelli.  It is a great collection of short chapters about the simple errors we make in our day to day thinking that impact our choices and our happiness in big ways.  Several of his observations have a direct connection to riding. The one that most immediately stood out for me was the chapter on overthinking. Most of us riders are guilty of this at some point; some riders are challenged by this every time they ride.

Dobelli says “Essentially if you think too much, you cut off your mind from the wisdom of your feelings.”  Think about that for a minute.  Achieving a harmonious horse-rider relationship is primarily about a human learning to feel the horse underneath them.  Learning to feel the movement of the horse, the balance of the horse, the tension of the horse, and the flow of energy between the horse and rider.  How then can we achieve this if the mind is busy thinking about a checklist of technical things related to riding?  The answer: we can’t.

This then raises the question when do you use your thinking mind and when do you focus on feel?  Because let’s face it. Most riders need some level of technical detail that requires them to think about how to use their body and how to communicate with the horse.  Most of us are not born with that innate ability.  We don’t just put beginners on a horse and say there you are – go feel the horse and you will figure it out.  That’s not fair to the horse or the rider.  So there is a place in riding for the thinking part of our mind that asks us questions like “is my contact through the reins steady enough? Are my reins too long? Are my legs in the right place?” And so on.  It becomes a problem when this mental chatter is constant throughout the entire ride.

So how do we turn off the mental chatter?  One approach is to tune into and experience your senses.  What are your ears telling you?  What is your sense of touch telling you? How is the horse’s body moving underneath you? What’s happening all around you right now (not five minutes ago or possibly in the next five minutes – but right now)?  Another approach is to smile and laugh during your ride.  The benefit of smiling and laughter to our health and well-being are enormous, including the ability to stop overthinking. Knowing how to and practicing effectively turning off “the overthink” is essential to enabling us to maximize the potential of our relationship with our horses.

Take Home Message for Equestrian Educators

Riding instructors have two main responsibilities in helping their riders stop overthinking. The first is recognizing it when it happens during lessons, so we can alert the student to the fact they are overthinking and invite them to try a different approach.  Some of the signs of overthinking are increased tension in horse and rider, hardening of the rider’s jaw, shallow breathing, increasing frustration, or the tendency to ride around and around the outside of the schooling arena without any schooling figures.

The second responsibility riding instructors have is to not teach in a manner that promotes overthinking.  A lesson in which an instructor constantly issues commands to the rider does not allow the rider any time to feel.  Such a lesson is all about doing, and we need to think in order to do.  An endless sequence of commands like “move your leg back, drop your hands, more leg, half halt” and so on does not give the student time to feel.  Offer technical instructions, but also allow ample quiet time so horse and rider can experience the feeling of new movements.  We must build in times throughout the lesson that are dedicated to feeling not thinking.