Programs for Leaders

Horse Sense Leadership Programs go beyond theory to applying the principles of transformational leadership to real challenges resulting in breakthrough learning in leadership, coaching, team and employee-development skills.

Leadership Accelerator

One day of breakthrough learning in the skills that leaders need to truly inspire, motivate and align others.

Resolving Leadership Dilemmas

Resolve complex issues quickly and effectively is aA critical skill for today's business leaders, however most issues that leaders deal with rarely have one "right" answer. This program helps participants learn how to identify, analyze, and skillfully manage the critical dilemmas they face on the job.  The core polarities faced by all leaders – directive leadership vs empowerment, stability vs change and individual performance vs team are worked with in detail.

Resolving Leadership Dilemmas program brochure

Trust based Leadership

Trust is so integral to our relationships that we often take it for granted - yet Trust has a bottom-line impact on results and that when trust goes up, speed goes up while costs come down. This principle applies not only in our professional relationships with customers, business partners, and team members but also in our personal relationships.

By experiencing trust building with horses participants have an opportunity to learn the skills of trust-inspiring leaders, such as demonstrating respect, creating transparency, righting wrongs, delivering results and practicing accountability.

Leading with Emotional Intelligence - going beyond EQ

The best leaders create resonance—in their units and amongst their staff. Resonant leaders weave together the logical and emotional sides of people to create commitment that consistently generates superior results.

This program goes beyond the basics of Emotional Intelligence to answer the question "How do you develop into a resonant leader?" through in depth understanding of the four characteristics of highly effective emotionally intelligent leaders: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management.

Beyond Effective Communication

Effective communication is more than active listening. By learning to hold a conversation with a non human sentient species we have a perfect lens for understanding mental models, the impact of body language and cruicial impact of self accountability and "above the line" communication.

Leading High Performance Teams

The transition from "subject matter expert" to "team leader" is one of the hardest for people to make. The techical expertise that built success in the past can easily get in the way of becoming a "big picture" leader. In this program leaders have the opportunity to work with a team and a tough customer (a horse!) as they understand the dynamics of building high performance teams and move "off the stage and onto the balcony".

Coaching for Performance

We have had many clients comment on how the strength based coaching process we use in our Horse Sense programs is a key component the accelerated learning process. So much that we now offer a program that focuses on our five step coaching model.

How do you know that someone is a leader?

Barry Z. Posner, PhD
author of The Leadership Challenge says:

"While several hundred definitions exist in the literature, the most frequent and uncomplicated response is that "this person has followers." Within this simple observation is the powerful discovery that, fundamentally, leaders are defined by their followers.

Leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow, and any discussion of leadership must attend to the dynamics of this relationship. Strategies, tactics, skills, and practices are hollow unless we understand the fundamental human aspirations that connect leaders and their constituents."

You can try to teach people about building relationships - but it's just not a topic that a bunch of powerpoint slides are suited to. 

True learning requires experience - yet building relationships takes time.  In our Horse Sense programs we accelerate the process of building relationships - both leader/follower relationships and team relationships. 

We give people the opportunity to see the impact of their behaviour on another sentient being (the horse) and learn which behaviours build relationships - and which do not. 

The results are amazing - and the reports we get back from clients prove that the process really works. 

People often tell us that we have positively impacted their lives at work and at home.