28/06/2026
What the horses can teach us . . .
The first thing we ask people to do on our leadership courses is to ask the horse to walk and stop and be specific about it. Sounds simple right? We teach our horses to walk one arm’s length behind us when we lead them. This is for three reasons; to establish respect and boundaries and to keep us safe.
And people can really struggle with it.
We start by having them face the horse and then start walking backwards, staying several strides in front of the horse and then when they want to stop, letting the horse know by raising one arm to shoulder level, keeping the elbow straight and the hand held up in a stop signal. (See picture)
This is to tell the horse that he must stop when asked and that it is not ok to come right up into your space. With people, we do this when we put our hand out to shake hands. It is one of the first boundaries we set when meeting someone for the first time.
And it usually shows up the people pleasers straight away, because if the horse ignores the hand signal and keeps walking up to the person, they tend to back away and accommodate the horse. So the horse will keep walking into them and end up pushing them around.
Someone else with stronger boundaries will pull on the rope, make the horse stop and even back it up to the point at which it was asked to stop i.e reinforce the boundary.
Interestingly our habits in relationships don’t tend to change whether it’s horses or people you are interacting with. We video part of the sessions with the horses and play them back to look at our body language and what it says to the horse. One lady, many years ago, watched exactly this happen on her video and burst into tears: “ That is my life all over” she said “My husband walks all over me, my kids walk all over me, everyone at work walks all over me.” She knew deep down she was a people pleaser and rarely if ever set and reinforced boundaries but hadn’t wanted to admit it. It was hard to see it on the screen but it meant she couldn’t hide it anymore. After a break, lunch and some discussion about setting and maintaining boundaries, she got in the arena again and wow was there a change. She had decided that was no longer how she wanted to live and began practising reinforcing boundaries with her horse. She found it uncomfortable but when we showed her the video of her afternoon session and she saw the change for herself, her confidence soared. Self awareness and taking ownership of her behaviour meant she had the chance to make massive life changes and become a way better leader.
This is what we mean when we call horses a mirror, they show us our habits by the way they respond to us but they are kind enough to let us change those habits and still work with us.
