Leadership is about showing direction, taking the lead, walking ahead of your team and guiding them to the success of your business.
Good leaders motivate their team to perform at their best. But how do we motivate our team? how do we know what makes them tick? If you looked up the word motivation in a dictionary, you would find “Enthusiasm for doing something – the need or reason for doing something”.
Enthusiasm is a feeling of energetic interest in a particular subject or activity and an eagerness to be involved in it. Great leaders get to know their team and understand what interests them and makes them want to get involved. By getting to know what gets a team member to feel an energetic interest in something is the task of leadership.
So where do horses fit here? to the non-equestrian, perhaps I should start by introducing some very basic facts about horses. Horses are herd animals that rely on each other for their survival and safety. They follow the leader (a mare or female horse) who has gained their trust, ensured their safety, guided them to the best sources of feed and water.
When we as riders start training horses, the first step is to gain their trust. Horses are easily motivated by what is known in psychology as “pressure and release” – or in simple terms, I want you to Do this and I Don’t want you do that. A rider can’t force a horse to perform the beautiful, fluid and harmonious moves of dressage. A great rider will imbue the horse with an energetic interest in performing the moves of harmony. A motivated horse is eager to please her rider; a great rider has earned the trust of her horse and found exactly how to continue motivating the horse and encouraging the horse.
Leaders in the same way explain to their team, in a very clear and succinct manor, what they want them to Do and what they want them to refrain from doing. Communicating what needs to be done, how it should be done and how it will be recognised when accomplished, are just the first steps of good leadership. Great leaders make it their mission to gain the trust of their team. They would never bully their team into performing tasks, nor would they resort to Management by Fear.