“When we work apart, the space between us fills up with assumptions. The only way to keep trust alive is to talk more, not less.”

— Patrick Lencioni, At The Table Podcast

This quote really lands for me — and it beautifully connects to what I see in our equine-assisted leadership sessions. Whether in a team meeting, a relationship, or a round yard with a horse, assumptions are the silent saboteurs of trust.

The Space Between

When humans work apart — physically, emotionally, or even just mentally checked out — we tend to fill in the blanks. We make up stories to explain what someone meant, why they didn’t reply, or what’s really going on.

Sometimes we get it right. More often, we don’t.

In leadership, those little gaps of misunderstanding can grow into wide spaces of mistrust. Lencioni’s advice — to talk more, not less — is a call to bridge that gap with conversation, curiosity, and courage.

What Horses Teach Us About Communication

Now, if we step into the arena for a moment, horses show us something fascinating. They don’t use words at all, yet they communicate constantly — through body language, energy, and intention. Their “conversations” are silent but incredibly clear.

A horse knows in an instant whether another horse means what it says — because its body, breathing, and energy always give it away. There’s no mixed messaging in a herd. Clarity is survival.

Humans, on the other hand, rely heavily on words. We explain, justify, and rationalise. But our bodies — our tone, posture, facial expressions — still broadcast the truth of what we’re really feeling. Horses read this effortlessly. When our words and our body language don’t match, they simply don’t buy it.

Congruence Builds Trust

In equine-assisted learning, we often talk about congruence — that beautiful alignment between what we say, what we do, and what we feel. Horses seek congruence because it helps them feel safe. Humans seek it too, even if we don’t consciously realise it.

When we’re congruent, others can relax around us. When we’re not, people (and horses) pick up on the disconnect, and trust erodes — even if no one can quite put their finger on why.

Talking More — and Listening Differently

So how do we “talk more” in a way that keeps trust alive?

It’s not about filling the air with noise or endless meetings. It’s about genuine connection: asking questions, checking assumptions, and being willing to reveal our intentions.

In the arena, the same applies. A horse doesn’t need us to chatter — they need us to show up authentically. To listen with our whole body. To match our intention with our action.

That’s the sweet spot of communication — where trust lives and assumptions dissolve.

What space in your team or relationships might need a little more honest conversation?

Based on the insightful article, “How to Become an Agile Learner”, from the Harvard Business Review by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis, it’s clear that mastering the three building blocks of agile learning: navigating newness, understanding others, and self-awareness, is crucial in today’s dynamic work environment​​. Equine assisted learning (EAL) activities intentionally designed to meet professional development objectives are gaining recognition as a unique and impactful method to bring to life these aspects of agile learning for leaders and their teams.

The article defines the three core building blocks of agile learning in summary as follows:

1. Navigating Newness: Agile learners thrive in fresh, complex scenarios even without a blueprint, embracing the ambiguity as an opportunity rather than a barrier.
2. Understanding Others: They excel at empathizing and anticipating varying perspectives, fostering a collaborative and open-minded approach to problem-solving.
3. Self-awareness: With high levels of self-awareness, agile learners are proactive in seeking feedback and continuously curious, embodying a growth mindset​​.

Equine enhanced professional development activities enable participants to put these building blocks into practice and experience their impact first-hand and in real time:

1. Navigating Newness: By interacting with horses in intentionally designed activities, leaders step into uncharted territory, which significantly enhances their comfort level with ambiguity and nurtures their ability to navigate through new situations.
2. Understanding Others: The program enhances empathy and understanding of non-verbal communication through interaction with horses, and enhances verbal communication between the human participants, preparing individuals to better appreciate and engage with diverse perspectives in the workplace.
3. Self-awareness: Equine enhanced activities prompt reflection and self-insight, fostering a heightened sense of self-awareness crucial for personal and professional development.

One of our clients from Bluefin Resources, sums up her experience with us as; “Horses thrive on clear direction, effective communication, and trust to navigate challenges and perform at their best. They also have an extraordinary ability to sense energy and assess their surroundings. As a leader, they’ll immediately pick up on your confidence and ability, or lack of! Trust me, you can’t make a 500kg horse move without taking charge, making them feel safe, and earning their trust. It’s all about authentic leadership in action, and I was amazed at how much this mirrors real world team dynamics.” Rebekah Crichton, Senior Divisional Manager & Executive Consultant – Change Management, HR, People Strategy, L&D & Organisational Design at Bluefin Resources.

Integrating equine assisted learning into your organisational training could be a step towards building a more agile, empathetic, and self-aware workforce, ready to thrive in the face of new challenges.

Setting personal boundaries is crucial for your sense of psychological safety and overall wellbeing. Equally important is respecting others’ boundaries. It’s a vital part of successful leadership and maintaining effective working relationships.

Horses are excellent at setting and respecting boundaries. It is actually part of their way of life. They instinctively know that if an individual can set and maintain boundaries, they can keep themselves safe and are not a liability to the safety and unity of the herd. When we work with horses, they expect the same from us.

While discovering and enforcing our boundaries is empowering, it’s not often easy to do for us humans. We must learn to have confidence in ourselves, and to communicate our boundaries to others. On the flipside, we also need to recognise and respect the boundaries of others.

Some ways you can ensure you are respecting the boundaries of others include:

• Good communication skills including active listening, clear articulation and non-verbal cues.
• Empathy to see situations from the point of view of others.
• Self-awareness so you can understand how your behaviour is interpreted by others.

Is setting boundaries something you’re good at? How do you cope when someone crosses a boundary with you? Have you ever unintentionally crossed someone else’s boundaries? How did you handle it?

We all know the important role body language plays in effective communication. And we’ve all heard the statistic that the majority of human communication is actually non-verbal.

Yet, we are obsessed with speaking, and generally terrible at listening. And we are often unaware of the ways our body language is communicating louder than our words.

So how do we become more aware of our body language and the impact that has on our overall ability to communicate with others effectively?

We have help here at Leading Edge in the form of our horses. As prey and herd animals whose communication is largely non-verbal, they make us acutely aware of our own non-verbal signals. They respond to incongruent cues between words and actions that we humans emit. A French study in 2020 showed that horses can recognise and interpret our facial expressions. And it makes perfect sense as horses’ survival depends on their ability to sense even the slightest change in those around them and their environment.

There are great leadership lessons in this. To be trusted as a leader, our inside and outside need to match. And our body language can give us away – where are our eyes, are we fidgeting, what tone are we using, how is our posture, what are we doing with our hands.

During one of our team coaching programs, project manager, Sally, had given verbal directions to her team on how to tackle the task at hand. It sounded clear enough to everyone listening, but for some reason, horse team member, Vinnie, just wouldn’t move. Turns out that Sally really wasn’t so sure but thought she start the ball rolling. And her team wasn’t 100% sure either. How did Vinnie know? We can’t ask him, of course. But horses pick up on even the most subtle signs. Sally hesitated slightly and kept looking down and back indicating doubt in her suggestion. All it took was a quick team discussion to tweak Sally’s plan and have the whole team on the same page.

Do you think about your body language and its role in how effectively?

How do we effectively manage conflict in our teams?

While there are many different answers, I like to think first about how everyone has their own unique communication style and how understanding this goes a long way in managing conflict. Afterall, conflict is most often caused by miscommunication.

We have our clients do the MiRo assessment that indicates their leading and supporting modes of communication and behaviour. You’d be astonished how much team conflict can be resolved by being aware of the communication style of others. And working with our horses brings these findings to life, highlighting the dynamics of a team and how it functions.  

Here’s a quick run-down on the leading modes courtesy of my horses. If they were people this my interpretation of them…

🐎 Legs is a real driver. He just wants to get the job done and will happily take the lead. However, he’ll also be led when he feels there’s a strong manager.

🐎 Kylie is the energiser of the group. This beautiful team member wants everyone else to feel good. However, it’s important to remember that she needs to feel valued herself.

🐎 Opal is the organiser. She maintains an excellent overall view of everyone’s roles and makes sure they are all clear on what they need to do and where they need to be.

🐎 Bart is the analyser. He needs to know all the facts to feel comfortable. Don’t try and get anything past this guy – you can’t fool him!

Are you a Legs, Kylie, Opal or Bart?

*Photo credit: Brumbies after the Bushfires, Chris Munro, My Australia DownUnder **Horses rarely fight seriously – only for leadership of the herd or mating purposes.

“Words shrink things that seem timeless in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.” Stephen King, Author.

When a horse is feeling that something isn’t quite right, you’ll know it. They’ll swish their tails, turn their heads or stomp their feet. This comes back to their wild instincts and particularly survival of their herd – there’s no purpose in hiding anything from other horses.

🤐 Humans, by contrast, have complicated social contracts which mean we tend to push down our true feelings rather than communicating them, particularly in workplace settings. This is for a variety of reasons including being concerned about damaging our relationship with others or fear of looking stupid. However, it can have deep consequences for team wellbeing and harmony.

That’s why developing interpersonal skills is a critical step to improving your leadership.

Having the confidence to read situations, understand the feelings and motivations of others as well as the bravery to communicate honestly will reap benefits and also inspire a team.

How good is your interpersonal savvy? Can you think of where you could improve?

A horse is a horse of course of course

And no one can talk to a horse of course.

That is of course unless the horse

Is the famous Mister Ed!

🎵 Who is singing along, nostalgic for the old 60s show Mister Ed?

I feel like Wilbur from the TV show sometimes, listening to my horses. Not literally of course, but through their body language. They teach me so much about communication and listening, because if you don’t listen to what they’re telling you they will make sure you do by, for example, giving you a nudge or simply walking away.

For something that we do day in day out, listening takes a surprising amount of practice, particularly active listening. Done well, it helps your emotional connection with others no end.

Ask yourself, do you pay attention to what someone is saying, or just wait for them to finish speaking so you can add your own comment?

Is listening a skill you can practice? I believe it absolutely is.

Engaging team members is always one of the challenges of leadership. An engaged team is far more likely to be happier and more motivated to succeed. However, leaders need to up their game on engaging employees, especially at the moment. It’s not enough for communication to be one-way – teams need to feel truly involved and safe to voice their opinion.

When people ask my advice about what leaders should be doing to retain their staff right now, I have three words for them: engagement, engagement and engagement.

As someone who trains leaders and works with teams all the time (human and horse), I see first-hand the impact of leaders sparking true staff engagement. An engaged team is a happy team that works well together, feels motivated and as a result adds genuine value in their role.

This leadership and employee engagement is more important than ever now for so many reasons. Many of us have come out of lockdown after working remotely and teams need to reconnect. Everyone is talking about skills shortages – the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that job vacancies are 46.5% higher than before the pandemic, while at the same time, reports say around 40% of Aussies are planning to leave their jobs in the next year.

In this environment, leaders need to seriously look at how they are engaging their teams and genuinely seek to improve. The occasional check-in or email is not enough. It’s not about the leader telling everyone else what is happening. Rather, it’s a carefully-cultivated process of fostering two-way communication and then giving each other the space to develop their ideas and fulfill their role.

People need to feel they’re being understood and heard. They want work in an environment where it is safe to speak up, voice their opinion and input into solving problems.

In other words, it’s time for serious thought about staff engagement.

Taking it to the next level

So, how do you really up your game on staff engagement? For me, a good place to start is to first recognise and then celebrate differences. It’s finding a space to understand everyone’s behaviour, without judgement. That’s what I like so much about working with horses – they never label anyone, but you’d be surprised how much they teach a team about each other and also themselves.

A part of this is of course looking at your own leadership. Always remember that who you are impacts on others. It’s not something to be taken to heart, even though it’s easy to do this, as after all it does arise from your personality. For example, if you realise your team is engagement is not optimal because you are not communicating clearly enough with them, then you can take a step back and understand it’s not a judgement on who you are, but rather a skill that needs to be developed. It’s not about placing blame but looking for improvement.

We’ve had lots of personal moments like this in our training. We had one leader who openly declared at the end of one of our courses that he needed to be more empathetic. You could instantly sense the relief from the rest of his team. They would have found it difficult to tell him this directly, but his realisation – which he came to himself, rather than it being planted – was a turning point for this team and their engagement with each other.

You’d be amazed at how quickly teamwork and engagement starts to improve after working with horses to wipe the slate clean and start responding to fresh situations.

Re-thinking communication

Coming back to two-way communication as a mentioned earlier. Once again, the horses will subtly show everyone the areas where they need to improve. Too bossy? The horse won’t co-operate. Not assertive enough? The horse won’t co-operate. Trying to yell at the horse? Just won’t work.

‘This all sounds good in theory, but how do I go about it?’ you might be thinking. And you have a point. It’s not easy.

That’s why we like to use a range of tools in our training. This includes our MiRo psychometric testing, alongside some theory and problem solving and team-building exercises with our horses.

So, if you need any help in working out a team engagement program, then please get in touch. I’d be happy to talk to you and work out a solution that will improve your team dynamics immeasurably. 

If you’re interested in learning more about our unique leadership training with horses, email info@leadingedgelifeskills.com.au.