Horses, the mirror of human behavior. Horses have a special structure in their herds just like a human group which is why, the horses will only accept those horses as leaders who are confident, understanding and best at communication. If there is any tension around, the leader will pick it up from the air which is why they need a confident and strong leader to guide them.

A survey showed that how an organization with the help of the horses improved the leadership skills of their leaders. Below attached are the pointers the team learned from the horses.

• Improve understanding and observation:

A group of horse is left in a ground to run and a group of leaders are supposed to observe their behavior. Just like human groups, a herd of horses also have a social structure. Each of the horse has its own unique personality and their own place in the group. The team of leaders has to observe who the leader is and who the followers are, which horse sets the pace and which one is distracted or slagging off for the playtime.

This exercise will help the leader improve their observation skills. This will help them better understand each employee’s personality and nature to see who can motivate the team and who needs some extra attention.

• Improve delegation:

Delegation of work is easy but to get the work done is not easy. When a leader assigns a task to their group member, he/she can only keep making sure that he/she encourages the employee and shows him the right direction to get the work done but in doing so, he/she has to make sure they don’t overstep.

To make sure the leaders learn this skill, the leader is given a flag and asked to stand in the center of the circle and lead the horse to run two to three rounds. Now, obviously the horse cannot understand your language, but he/she can understand your body language and your voice tone. So, it is the task of the leader to begin the horse with walking, then running and then to finally stop. Now the leader can only do that verbally or by the body language or move around a little within the radius of 3 meters from the center of the circle. Now, as you can see the leader can do nothing but to guide the horse what he/she is supposed to do, this will help the leader to improve its delegation skill.

• Improve collaboration:

When the top manager assigns any project to its junior, the manager is always in the fear that will the junior be able to pull it through? Will he/she be able to find the right path of the project? Hence one manager has been asked to sit on the horse and junior is asked to lead the horse with its rein. This way, the leader who is seated on the horse will have to trust the junior for leading the horse in the right direction and reaching the final destination. This will improve the relationship between the leader and its subordinates. And will help to build the trust between them.

• Improve communication:

Many times we have seen this that in a few situations, the leader is unaware of the results seeing which the team starts to lose the trust in the leader. But here, in a circle, 3 people are placed. Two blind folded and one with open eyes to direct. Those who are blind folded are the leaders and the teammate along with the horse. In this, the person who is not blind folded is supposed to lead the team to reach the destination but just by his instructions. And the leader is supposed to lead the horse and the teammate. This way, the teammate will start developing the trust for the leader that even when the leader is not sure of the results, he/she has the power to pull it through.

Hence, as you can see having an exercise with the horse will help us a lot in terms to build a strong leadership qualities and further strengthen the relationship with our fellow group members.

COmpiled by Faber Priyal & Faber Mayuri