8 ways to improve your leadership qualities with horses

By: Nestor Imberti Posted: 30/10/2017

Riding can increase your success in leading positions

Being with horses gives us positive feelings, increases our self-esteem, improves our understanding of body language and empowers our confidence that we can reach our goals.

For these reasons, equine based coaching can be interesting for business people and managers to learn leadership and communication techniques and skills.

Why with horses?

Horses are prey animals, this is why their „instinctive“ behaviour is an immediate reaction to humans, they are our mirrors; equines can perceive our feelings and thoughts and reflect them immediately in their body language. By observing the horse’s reactions to our commands, we learn to communicate in a more effective way, to face our fears and control our feelings.

What are leadership qualities and what are they good for?

A real leader or guide knows how to motive a team to achieve together the goals they have set. Positive leadership is based on various attributes: the guiding of individuals and a whole team, the distribution of tasks and motivating each member and the team as a whole to be able to work efficiently and goal-oriented.

A rider needs to be tactful, harmonic and patient to lead and guide a horse. These qualities are also important for leaders and managers at work and this is why the horse based coaching is a great possibility to improve these aspects and skills:

1. Building trust and confidence: Working with horses requires confidence and trust in each other.
2. Teamwork: Both horses and humans must work side by side to reach the goals that have been set.
3. Making decisions: The rider guides the horse and decides where to go and how fast.
4. Execution and capacity: The rider needs the “know how“, to be able to decide direction and speed.
5. Knowledge: You need to know the environment to take the easiest and most comfortable path.
6. Order and priorities: Riding also means to respect rules and protocols, a basic requirement to guarantee the safety of horses and riders.
7. Enthusiasm: Enthusiasm and passion for a new task is fundamental.
8. Gratefulness: After a trail ride or a training lesson with the horse we know, that we have reached our goal together as a team what strengthens our relationship to the horses and the team spirit.

“Coaching” with horses

When we work with horses, we need to make sure that the horse feels save and motivated. The feelings we express and the tone of our voice determine the well-being of the horses.

The training unit is not that important, but it is essential to focus on the feelings of the horses so that they feel save.

Horses learn quickly in a harmonic environment and the training is much more effective.

Riding, especially outside in the nature, increases your qualities as a leader, yet without these you would not be able to guide your horse correctly and get the best out of it.

The more you train your skills, the better you will understand your horse and be able to create a balanced environment for both of you.

What could be better than riding in beautiful landscapes and learn that much about yourself thanks to your coach, the horse!

Have you made experiences with equine assisted coaching? Tell us about it!

Are you passionate about horses, too? Do you want to learn how to train them?

Download our free eBook Horse training step by step. When you see how your horse learns and begins to understand your signs and aids, you will be filled with joy.

And if you want to be a professional horse trainer and get field-based training, you should check out our training program. You will have the opportunity to live in our equestrian centre and experience our full training process with young horses.

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