Enhancing Life’s Relationships Through the Color Tool

The barn was chilly and the lighting dim. Small puffs of dust rose up from the horse’s hooves as my friend, Janie, led the gelding around the indoor arena. The owner of the horse and I watched from the sidelines as the pair went through a leading exercise. Apparently, the horse did not have a lot of ground training. He wasn’t jumpy, nervous or excited; he was simply disrespectful. The gelding stepped into Janie’s space and ignored her signals to move away. Janie led the horse in my direction, and they came to an undisciplined stop, the horse lagging behind.“He’s awfully red sorrel,” Janie said, glancing at me while keeping the horse in her vision.“Actually, I believe he’s gray,” I replied.

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Overcoming Leadership Crimes: Motivating Your Horse Toward Its Best Performance

As a human resources manager and a horse trainer, I value this quote by Marian Anderson: “Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.” It resonates with me because I think clear expectations make for happy, willing employees in the work place and happy, willing horses in and out of the show ring.At work, I’m concerned about how to keep employees happy and productive. My job is to listen to the things employees say are important to them and provide them to the extent that my resources allow. This is called answering the employee’s What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) question. Employees have certain things that motivate them. Motivators might be money, flexible hours, autonomy, clear expectations or many other things. As a leader, if I can identify what motivates them and provide it, then I will get better performance from them.

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Are You a Nelly or a Sally? Scenarios to Strengthen Your Leadership Ability

At MM Training and Consulting, we always strive to learn and grow. We also continually strive to create new ways to explain our concepts to you, our clients. In the following article, I explain some of our new terminology. Plus, I will give you some fun scenarios that will hopefully help you grasp and remember these concepts.

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Lessons Learned

“I bet you want me to saddle that horse for you,” Grandpa said with a sigh as he dusted off the bits of hay from his daily chores. Under the heavy lids of his eyes, I saw a twinkle of excitement. Oh, how I loved to ride my horse and even though Grandpa was exhausted from his labored day, his recliner would wait. Grandma would tell him, “Just tell her you are too tired,” but he would always take me back to the barn where he would place me in the manger as he went about saddling and grooming.

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Connection...What Does it Look Like?

As many of you know, we have addressed the topic of “connection” between horse and handler for years now. Yes, it has evolved over the years, but it is something, to some degree, that I have always done with horses since I was a child. Although I didn’t call it such, my awareness about “connection” started many years ago after an observer asked me, “Why do you blow at your horse?” As with many trainers who have worked with horses their whole lives, I had no idea why I did it. I just did it. And frankly, at the time, I was a little embarrassed that someone noticed that I did it. Since I’m a former Marine and grew up a cowgirl, you can only imagine how it might have seemed a little too “touchy feely” for me. But blowing at my horses was such a part of me, as a horseman, I kept doing it. And after some time of thinking, I concluded that I did it because horses really responded to it and liked it. And I could have simply left it at that. Right?

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