This is one of the Equus workshop horses who was a little distracted by the left over hay just outside of the pen but still within reach. Hey, who doesn’t like to snack? 🙂
From the moment I was asked, I knew that it would be amazing for me to volunteer to help another, more experienced coach, with her Equus workshop in Asheville, NC. I was honored to be asked. Even though I paid my own expenses and had to make arrangements to be away from caring for my family and my own horses, I could feel it in my gut that I had to say yes. So I did.
I’ve participated in a few workshops like this over the past year as part of my Equus Coach training so I went there feeling like I knew how the event would go. I was curious and excited to see firsthand how another coach would run this kind of team building workshop.
When I got to the ranch, after a drive up some seriously winding mountain roads (that made me a little car sick!), things started to look very different from what I envisioned. The horses were trained in a specific manner so that when you go into the pen, they come to you. This surprised me because most horses, being flighty animals, have a natural tendency to walk away.
I wondered how this would work with the Equus coaching process, and how we’d be able to create the experience for the group that I was familiar with. Usually a horse is sniffing, curious and will often come up to you while you’re talking with the coach because it’s a moment where you’re being your true self, where your actions are in alignment with your intentions. In this case, I worried it would be hard to get that experience because the horses were already in your space.
After I saw the coaching in action, those worries melted away. For this thirty-something entrepreneur who brought his team with him, they had no expectations about how the horses would be trained, or act. They had little to no horse experience so all this difference in what I was used to with horses never hit even their radar.
It was great because it allowed them to be very present, in the moment, and open to getting the most out the coaching experience. They really were able to learn more about themselves while also finding ways where they could work together as a better and more efficient team to reach their business goals.
So much so that three of the six found themselves tearing up during their individual coaching. Not from being scared about being in the pen with the horses or from the coach pushing them in any way, but from their discussions and the awareness that the coaching brought up. They’d discovered internal ah-ha moments that came from the process.
It was AMAZING.
New understandings came up around how they work together as a cohesive group, too. One example is of a non-verbal herding exercise where the owner of the company was paired with one of his employees. They had 12 minutes to work together to try to get the horse to go through some obstacles—all without talking. The goal was to work together.
After the exercise, they noticed the owner took charge and the team member followed. It showed they weren’t working together as well as they could have. The takeaway for them was that he needed to check in with her so they could be working towards the same goals at the same time to help their sales. Had they connected more with one another, they would have accomplished more. This showed how they can work better together back at the office.
I had a few takeaways from this experience, too. I left with a new awareness of my own expectations for this kind of event, since I’ll be hosting my own soon, and how to check those expectations. I always try my best to be in the moment and know now that I can trust that if I follow my process, even if it’s different from other coaches, I’ll get my private clients and group participants the results and experience that they were looking for.
Hiccups and distractions, like horses who are a wee bit distracted by eating leftover hay in the pen, happen no matter where you’re located. If you’re the host or the participant, unexpected things happen. Trusting in the Equus coaching process works, even if it might look a little different from what you expected at first.
How do you deal with a situation when things don’t go as expected? Does it make your mind spin? Do you begin to doubt the process and question your thoughts? Leave a comment to let me know how this has worked for you in the past and if it was positive experience or a bit tougher.
With much gratitude,
Gretchen
P.S. Do you know someone else who would enjoy reading this? Please forward this post to them. I’d be forever grateful.
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