What We Can Learn from Horses, with Jackie Stevenson

Please join me in being captivated by Jackie Stevenson, founder and CEO of Spirit of Leadership LLC, as she eloquently describes what can be learned from the planet's oldest living mammals. I'm sure you'll notice my enthusiastic exclamations and appreciative murmurings throughout this short episode.

If you have 10 minutes to spare, you'll learn important lessons about trust and respect, appreciation, cooperation and more. 

My son and I spent three hours with Jackie one summer day. It was fun and  enlightening. Thank you, Jackie, and many thanks to the Pebble Ledge Ranch herd: Majestic, Lucky, Raven, Tikka, Reggie and Toby!

By the way, in 2018, Jackie published a book about members of the herd and the work that they do. Titled "Someday We'll Live Like Horses: Authentic Presence in Leadership and Life," it's available on the Spirit of Leadership website and on Amazon. Jackie also has a beautiful deck of Horse Spirit Wisdom cards, also available on her site.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to The Gale Hill Radio Hour!

The show is available in Apple and Google Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast directories. Also on Substack and YouTube; Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Transcript

[00:00:25.410] - Kate

Hello, and welcome to The Gale Hill Radio Hour. I’m your host, Kate Jones, here to talk about the lessons that horses can teach us about leadership and being in harmony with our human herd, whether at work or at home. Actually, Jackie Stevenson is the one who will tell you about that. She's the founder and CEO of Spirit of Leadership, LLC, which provides leadership training for businesses, organizations and individuals. Along with Jackie and another human facilitator, the true trainers are the six horses in residence at Pebble Ledge Ranch, an incredibly beautiful stretch of property in Novelty, Ohio. Recently, my son and I visited Jackie at the ranch where she and her husband, Herb, live. We spent three enriching hours there, time well spent indeed. It was a unique experience that gave us much to reflect upon. Now I'll stop talking and let Jackie take over to explain her work to you.

[00:01:33.070] - Jackie

Actually, there are probably a number of people that do this kind of work, but ours is unique in that instead of bringing horses into the human world, we're bringing people into the world of horse and herd. And it's an ancient lineage. They're the oldest living mammal. Their DNA goes back 65 million years. And I think they've thrived through the generations, through their DNA in a couple of ways. One is that they work together as a team and each individual benefits when the herd is strong, and the herd is strong when individuals benefit. So it's very collaborative and cooperative. The other thing is that they are hugely optimistic. They're never looking over their shoulder for regret. They're always looking for the next best place to be, which is greener grass, a buddy, shade. So that as people, if we could not focus on what didn't work, but what did work and what could be. So I think that's another reason. And the other is that their whole ecosystem is in harmony. So they live in harmony with themselves, with each other and the environment. And I think the other last thing is that I've noticed is that they are always looking out for the next generation.

[00:02:56.650] - Jackie

So they live in a way that provides the best outcome for the generations to come. So they're taking care of the young, they breed with who have the strongest DNA. And so they're very in tune with survival of the generation. So they probably would never pollute the planet because they need it to be healthy for their offspring. That's a little bit about the horses. So when we bring people into their world, those are the kinds of things we can think about. The other thing is that they are very quiet, they don't make a lot of noise, they're very silent. And they communicate through body language and movement. And so we can be more aware of our presence, the presence we bring in our embodied way, how we walk our talk, how we enter space, how welcoming we are, how accepting we are of differences of another being. So whether it's a horse or a human, our body language communicates our intention of engagement. And so we start out by having people come to the horse pasture gate, much like Margaret Mead enters a new culture. And we have people pause and wait and check their intention and to let the horses know they're coming and ask for permission, ask for permission to enter.

[00:04:29.270] - Jackie

Be gracious in how you enter and not just move into space. And that really carries over to emails, to how we enter people's office space, how we accept new ideas, how we enter space of new ideas. So it's all about starting with respect. And once you have respect, you can begin to build trust. And from trust you can build a positive relationship and maybe even love. So that's the sequence of the day is how are you going to establish trust? How can you be trustworthy? And how can you trust yourself? How can you trust your fellow teammates to have your back as you enter into this world? And then we have a series of — we might have people share from their heart to the horse's heart, a dream or a vision. We might ask them, think about not how you want your life to live, but how your life wants you to live. And have a conversation from your heart to the horse's heart, and then share it with your human partner. And so we do that. As you share some of your inner world, some of what's really important to you, you begin to move from respect to trust.

[00:05:38.810] - Jackie

And once we know a little bit about what matters to people, when we get back to the workplace, we have more regard for them as people. We're more likely to be generous, we're more likely to be kind, we're more likely to be understanding and compassionate. And especially during conflict, we have more resources because we care about them. They're not “its,” they're not objects, they're people that matter to us. They're our fellow herd members and they often call themselves herd members when they leave. So we have a series of what I call reflective exercises. The horses are just like you see, they're at liberty, they're not tied, they can leave, they can approach, they don't have to stand still. Because we want to model the relationship with the horse organic to how they might want to think about relationships with each other. How free are they in their ideas? How much space do they give people to be who they are? How can they appreciate them for who they are? And they'll notice differences among the horses and even just being in a place where you slow down, pay attention to your body language, unhook from technology, it's such a different environment that people can really stretch into more of their best selves because they're not stressed.

[00:07:09.090] - Jackie

This is a stress free, shame free, blame free. And so we tell them you can't do anything wrong. There's only learning. And if it didn't go the way you thought, try something different. If you don't like the ending, start a new story. And maybe that's also true in your life. And throughout the day, when we have an experience with the horses, we circle up, we do what I call a wisdom gathering, and people can share their reflections. And then I might ask, and how might you take that reflection back with you? And what difference would your work look like if that's something that you integrated into the wisdom of your work? So that's pretty much it. And then we do, at the very end, usually one team building where all the horses are free. We ask for a volunteer horse that they build what we call a course of possibilities. So they come up with what a goal is and what are the strengths they're going to need to get there and the obstacles they're going to need to clear. And they build a representation of those obstacles. And then as a team, they work with a horse to overcome those obstacles and use their strengths to get to their goal.

[00:08:24.050] - Jackie

And what do they learn on that journey? So that's really the only thing where there is one of the horses that's on a lead line and the rest of the horses engage, and sometimes they're the barriers and sometimes they nip the other horse and get it going and help the team move forward. Yeah, so it's really kind of fun. And everyone on the team has a job, so someone's in charge of safety, someone's in charge of having fun, someone's in charge of making sure no one gets left behind, and someone's in charge of showing the way and someone's in charge of leading the horse. So everybody's got a role to play that's equally important, even though it may not be the one out front. And so the lessons are inherent in the experience. We don't say, this is what you're going to learn. Now try this. It's have this experience. And what are you learning about leadership, about presence, about what matters to you, about what it means to be part of a team. So it's experience, reflection, and then dialogue.

[00:09:27.830] - Kate

This is Kate again. In 2018, Jackie published a book titled “Someday We'll Live Like Horses: Authentic Presence in Leadership and Life.” It has wonderful stories from the perspectives of both humans and horses. I'm reading it now and highly recommend it. It's available on Jackie's website and on Amazon. This is Kate Jones with The Gale Hill Radio Hour. Until next time. Thanks for joining us. Please share this episode with anyone who wants to be better member of the herd.