The Elephant in the Room - Part 2

In the vein of thinking about personal examples of great leadership another wonderful and inspiring story came from the same clinic from my friend Helle in Denmark.....

She has kindly written it for us here.....  (thank you Helle!)

My Old Boss….  

In 2002 I had the privilege to start working for ”my old Boss” in the top end of Denmark… at that time I was 25 years old, and needed a year’s work to finish my apprenticeship as a dairy farmer. My Old Boss was 54 at the time, and going to the job interview was the beginning of an ongoing relation based on genuine friendship, acknowledgement, and deep respect going both ways. I was the ”girly-type” girl in farming (I thought) - I was really good with all sorts of animals, and because of that I hadn’t really had the chance to drive any machinery outside the stables with my former bosses.

Feeling obliged to tell the truth, I was only 10 minutes into my job interview when I promised him that I was the best card on the hand with his beautiful Red Danish dairy cows, and I could drive the machinery needed to do this, but NOT very handy with field machinery… not that I wouldn’t give it a go, but just pretty confident that he could chase up better people for these assignments. He just nodded his head and started asking me all sorts of other questions.

I got the job, and a month later I had my first day at work. The Old Boss’s place had 80 Red Danish dairy Cows and about 80 ha. This was a suitable size for one apprentice and the boss. A couple of hours into my first day, again I started feeling obliged to tell the truth - this time that I suffered really badly from Arachnophobia. This is often confused with people just being scared of spiders - but I was terrified, from several bad experiences in school etc, so it was very important to me to work on this - but also working in a cow stable is not the best spot for phobias of this sort!

I grabbed the bull by the horns and decided to tell him…I spent the next two hours working out how! I finally came across it about lunchtime, feeling pretty darn childish I tried to make the most of it, and to my complete surprise once again he just nodded his head (Danes from the north often talk slow) and after a short brake he just looked at me and said: “Well that’s understandable- I’ll make you a deal, I’m shit scared of mice - how about you do the ”Micey” jobs, and I do the ”Spidery” jobs??” That solved that one, and from that day on my old boss would sweep down cobwebs, and check for spiders at my tiniest suggestion….. and I carried old bags out- and checked for mice….and fairdinkum –I once saw him pull on a rain suit in the stable - and ALSO watched him jump out of it ever so elegantly when a mouse dropped out of one leg!! Time went by and spring came, with all the paddock work that needs to be done. I was driving tractors and big front end loaders in the stable and felt right at home doing it, but dreaded the suspicion that I might get set with paddock work. Here he took me by surprise - one day he came up to me and in the most normal tone he said; Helle I’ve hooked the Mulcher on the Ferguson tractor, do you think you can take it to the front paddock and have a go at mulching that paddock? 

Now - what’s the answer to a question like that?? I was completely surprised to hear myself answer a big clear “Yeah I can do that!” Thinking back this question did not have “No” as an option….he was merely asking me to TRY- That was the least I could do! My old boss just had that way about him, he would always ask if I could “Give It A Go”, and of course I could! Through that year I was mulching, plowing, pulling tree stumps, loading big bales of straw, driving huge big straw trailers around the sharpest corners, and reversing them all the way back to be unloaded. For this bloke I would give it a go anytime!

It didn’t take long before he started having me do the hard stuff - like padding down the fresh grass for silage - with big front end loaders, working very precisely with putting down concrete blocks for the road around the stable and so on. He would simply come up and ask me If I could give it a go, and then he did not hesitate to let me know that now he was actually asking me this because I could do the job better than him!

On the other hand, this boss also admitted when he was wrong. I remember one day when I had a black heifer that got sick. She had just calved one or two days before, and starting having vaginal discharge, but very smelly. I told my boss that I separated her from the rest of the cows, and that my gut feeling was that she needed treatment (not all do). He didn’t agree with me, and besides it was out of phone hours at the vet. During the day she got a bit worse- the smell got heaps worse, and I talked to him again - and again he did not agree. Heaps of cows get this and its easily treated, and not very aggressive. He reckoned that she could wait until the morning. Just about an hour later she got really bad, started laying down and uneasy, so I went to my boss and put my foot down and said to him that she needed the vet today if he wanted her to live till tomorrow. He called the vet but NOT overly convinced - until the vet came, and concluded that this was an unusually aggressive vaginal discharge after calving, and that the heifer wouldn’t have lasted until the next day!

Now I wasn’t there, but was passing when they were doing the examinations and the talk. As I passed my old boss stopped me, looked at the vet, and said; Well then I have my apprentice to thank for this - she has been saying what you just said, all day!

So what’s the sum of all this cow talk?

I have had the privilege to work for one great personality, that showed me only opportunities, and kept me safe from any defeats I couldn’t handle. By accepting my spider issue, he had me brushing down cobwebs at the end of the year. By merely asking for The Try - he had me succeeding at great tasks, and developing from ”no good ”, to ”confident and knowing ”. By acknowledging his own mistakes, and giving me credits when it was mine to claim, he showed me respect.

My old boss is a bloke to whom I owe a lot more than he will ever admit too. I’m very proud to consider him my friend, and have close contact with him and his family still. He was splendid at developing exactly what I thought to be my weak spots, and he always went about it in the softest way without any fuss. He took part in shitty jobs, and he listened  intensely to my suggestions….he never lost his temper, had a mountain of patience….but if you ask me Would he put his foot down? The answer is Yes! He never had too, but not one single moment did I ever doubt that he would….he just didn’t need to - and to that there is a great difference!

The Elephant in the Room (don’t mention the ‘L’ word)

I was in the arena working with Judy and her bay gelding, Sam.  It was coming to the end of the last of our sessions together at the end of a three day clinic.  She had come to the clinic wanting to work on some issues she was having with her horse when they were riding out in the countryside together, Sam had a tendency to spin and spook and got particularly upset when they passed other horses on the trail.

Although its hard to work directly on this sort of issue while in a totally enclosed indoor arena there were plenty of issues that did come to light that seemed as if they might be closely connected with the problems Judy was having.  Throughout all our sessions I made many references to leadership, and I was talking about the clarity of Judy’s leadership of her horse.   My plan was to use some exercises to show Judy that if she were to get sure about some boundaries with her horse and showed him how fast to go, where to go and which way to go (speed, direction and destination) then there was every chance that she would quickly find some improvements in the situations she was encountering out on the trail.

We were just about to finish up when Judy said something that really got me thinking; “You know”, she said, “I really don’t feel comfortable using the word ‘leadership’ in relation to my horse”.

I think Judy’s honest comment reflects a widely held view, certainly among women in the horse riding community and it does not matter if I talk to people in the UK, US or mainland Europe, I think this feeling is fairly common.

So why is the ‘L’ word the elephant in the room with us?  (Saying that the elephant is in the room with us is an English expression for an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed.) I think leadership has become a dirty word in many riding circles because of heavy handed or dominance based work that we have all seen at demos, on DVDs or in some clinics where the trainer is attempting to establish some kind of dominant control over a horse in the name of leadership.  For many of us women, lacking the skill or physical strength that is demonstrated in that sort of demo, we see a picture that we don’t want to copy in our own horsemanship and so reject the whole picture, including the label that goes with it: “Leadership”.

So, its really easy to focus on the things that we don’t want, but it isn’t the whole concept of leadership that’s flawed but just one particular interpretation that some of us are not comfortable with.  So what interpretation are we happy with?

A clinics recently I have been getting right in to have a good look at the elephant right from the start of the clinic at the group dismounted session.  What I ask participants to do is to find one example of a great leader they have come across at some point and in some area of their lives.  This might be a teacher, a friend, a work colleague or boss, it could even be someone on the TV, a national figure, a fictional character or an animal.  I ask people to think about what it is about this leadership style that they really like and to sum up the most important characteristics of this style in just a few words. 

Here is an example of one of the leadership stories that we discussed at a clinic, this is about an English teacher, kindly shared here by Steine. 

Kirsten Mcguire was an exceptional woman and teacher. She possessed so many admirable qualities that did not only influence the way we were taught but the way we lived. First of all she was a calm and balanced woman. She never lost her self control, never raised her voice and never seemed annoyed. No matter what happened she was always in complete balance. You might think we could do as we pleased since she never corrected us, but she possessed a large amount of authority which made us respect her, we had no doubt that she could put her foot down if necessary and for exactly that reason it never became necessary.
Beside this she was highly motivating. Especially because she had the amazing ability to meet each individual where they were. This made everybody feel good enough and encouraged a positive development because she would always focus on the things you did well. She was so enthusiastic that you could not help but being caught by her joy.
When it all comes down to it she was an encouraging teacher who gave us all trust in ourselves, she was dependable, a steady rock to lean on. She was consistent and present and she made the classes a sanctuary for us all.
I never thought about leadership back then, but the moment I was asked to think about one person whom I looked upon as a great leader she was the one just coming to my mind. She possessed every value which is important to me, and most importantly she made everybody feel accepted and good enough, made them comfortable and to me this is the greatest thing to do for another person.

From this story we can establish certain values that are important to this person, for example; calm, balance, authority, motivation, the ability to meet people where they are, consistency, presence, dependability, trust and acceptance.   Its really useful to know what your values are as they are associated with worth, meaning and desire for you.  They are the primary source of motivation and when values are met people feel a sense of satisfaction and harmony, when they are not met the feelings are often the opposite.  Note that our values are very personal to us.  Other typical values identified by others on the same clinic were achievement, creativity, integrity, caring and freedom.

Any time someone encourages you to adopt someone else’s leadership style, and the values which go with it, then its likely that the elephant will continue to stand quietly in the room with us.  However it is worth noting that leaders do just that, they do lead effectively so on some level our great leaders do need to have an ability to find authority and present things in a way that we actually want to follow.

Our job it to design a personal and effective leadership style which incorporates these qualities and is going to have integrity and congruence for us.  We may need to learn some new skills that are going to help us to do that in all situations with a horse but just a change in attitude and acceptance that leadership can be a positive idea can turn around many human - horse relationships for the better.