I enjoyed working as a team including the horses and being part of a herd!  this was a great opportunity to work as a team in a very different environment – both challenging and fun.  I saw a very different side to myself and my team.

Nicki Kavanagh, Managing Director, The Juniper Company

]]> http://www.chrysalisld.com/2010/02/05/i-enjoyed-being-part-of-the-herd/feed/ 0 http://www.chrysalisld.com/2009/12/22/horses-for-courses/ http://www.chrysalisld.com/2009/12/22/horses-for-courses/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:55:35 +0000 sandra http://www.chrysalisld.com/?p=370 Read a case study about clients’ experience of eTEAM.

Wouldn’t you like to challenge yourself and your team with innovative and honest learning that can get to the root of your issues, fast? Well, now you can. And you won’t be nodding off in a stuffy seminar room or building a raft.

This training is different. And dangerous. Not because you’ll end up in hospital, but you’ll find out some surprising and perhaps unsettling things about yourself, and others. This training involves undertaking practical exercises with facilitators who understand you quickly. Who reflect back to you your own behaviour. And who have more legs than you. These facilitators are horses.

Through their eTEAM programme, Sandra Coley, Director of Chrysalis Learning and Development works with Aurele Hedley of the Harp Partnership to provide business people with the benefits of Equine Assisted Coaching (EAC), a dynamic and innovative approach to improving leadership, lateral thinking and developing effective teams. Sandra says “Horses and people have more in common than you might think. Both are social animals that operate with defined roles within hierarchies. People and horses have personalities, moods, attitudes. In any herd of horses, or team of people, you will find the explorer, the comedian, the challenger, the leader. Horse behaviour reflects people behaviour. Working with horses gives a great opportunity for metaphorical learning.”

And it’s honest. “Horses don’t recognise people hierarchy,” continues Sandra. “You may be the chairman or the cleaner but to horses you are just a person. So there is no hiding behind roles. Horses are honest communicators.”

Hélène Evans, a partner at the Avenue Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Clinic at Camberley, attended an eTEAM session. “For many years in previous roles I’ve been involved in delivering training, and been on the receiving end myself. I’d never come across EAC before and was intrigued. I thought that because it’s so different, it’s got to work! We are all warned about working with children and animals – you can never guarantee what will happen.”

Joanna Brewer agrees. Joanna is Implementation Manager at Enterprise Rent-a-Car where she is responsible for new partnerships and projects. Joanna says

“I enjoyed the fact that as we were working with animals there were no guarantees of how any particular exercise would turn out. I also knew that the horse’s reactions were natural and genuine and not fixed to a manufactured result. For me this meant that we were testing our management skills, style and teamwork abilities with the horses and obtaining true unbiased reactions from them. This was quite different to any training or awareness course I had attended before, where so often the results are premeditated and therefore you’re less convinced it actually works.”

So what happens? First, eTEAM is not a riding lesson. All activities take place on the ground, and no knowledge or experience of horses is assumed or expected. Activities and learning outcomes are geared towards what the participants want or need. The blend of Chrysalis Learning and Development’s strong management and organisational development and training record together with the HARP Partnership’s years of experience with learning with horses, enables them to offer a unique experiential learning opportunity tailor made for the business community. They know what they’re doing.

Joanna says “Throughout the day we were split into groups and asked to persuade the horses to do various tasks without any physical contact with the horse. Often one group looked on whilst the other tried to ‘manage’ the horse. The exercises were effective as I was able to relate them back to my role in Enterprise, my particular management style and how I interact with my customers and colleagues.”

Depending on clients’ needs, the activities focus on exercises that generate learning not just around traditional business issues such as leadership skills and goal setting but around more personal matters like tolerance and patience, emotional intelligence, creativity and lateral thinking as well as overcoming fears.

Hélène suggests that

“The training put us in safe but vulnerable situation. Our sensitivities were heightened. Our powers of observation were sharpened. It worked more powerfully because we were caught off our guard and we were more ourselves. It was very raw – we could see the lessons unfolding in front of our faces. We could see how we handle ourselves and others in different situations very clearly.”

Joanna agrees. “We are always told that with a good team, positive attitude and clear goals you can achieve your target,” she says.

“Working with the horse and my team and also watching the other team work with their horse really helped me to visualise how management style and employee interaction is vital in helping you achieve your goals. The course highlighted areas for improvement, as well as strengths I could be proud of – I can be quite competitive! The single biggest takeaway for me was realising that the truth behind perception is projection. We can all choose our attitude and that has a direct impact on those around you.”

Louise Etheridge
Lightswitch Communications

Essentially you can take any business issue and apply our plan, do, review approach to it. It’s about getting the strategy right, enhancing employee engagement, improving management effectiveness and evaluating what’s working best so you can continuously improve performance.”

Investors in People UK (2009)

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This workshop proved to be a very rewarding and cost effective corporate training experience.

Not only did we get a fresh template for engaging our demanding professionals, but we benefited collectively as a team and as individuals in terms of enhancing our leadership and communication skills. Performing group tasks with horses in a risk-free environment gave me a very effective platform to observe my team in action and identify their specific strengths and weaknesses outside their typical “comfort zone”.

The follow-up report and action plan developed with the professional psychologist on the
programme helped me think through how to translate the key learnings of the away-day into the daily business routine and Lighthouse’s team development roadmap.
James Edsberg, Director, Lighthouse Global (Management Consulting Services)

Summary of Research Findings

The main findings of this research are that:

• The most substantial results from personal development programmes come over a year after the training.

• Although there are remarkable instant results, organisations need to allow time for the maximum benefits
  to work their way through.

• Participants sustain their progress over very long periods of time – up to and beyond ten years after the training, with the peak period for progress being between one and five years. People are maintaining their progress, commitment and activities many years after the initial training. Networking is surprisingly active with 20% of Springboard participants still meeting with the group they met on the course, between 4 to 5 years after the training. An extraordinary 11% of Springboard participants are still meeting with their group over 10 years after their training.

• Personal development training directly provides tangible business benefits.  For example:
  (a) A third of respondents can provide evidence of saving costs at work.
  (b) Two thirds of respondents can provide evidence of using resources better at work.
  (c) Three quarters of respondents can provide evidence of their improved problem solving

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“It was a rewarding and enjoyable generative learning experience which was also fun”

Learning and Development Manager, Engineering Consultancy

“The course was very well delivered and structured”

A recent NLP Client

“Sandra made me realise that I have lots of tools in my tool kit and that I should make use of them as much as possible. She gave me the confidence and motivation to start to realise my ambitions.”

Career Coaching Client

“I gained much from our session. It seems to have cleared the way for a new and positive approach. I’ve come away with a lot to work on and put into practice.”

Director, Production Company

“The most useful course I have been on”

A recent NLP Client