Team-Building & Leadership Training
with HorsesFostering Personal and Business Success through
Communication, Collaboration, & Leadership Training
Accomplishing corporate goals requires a team effort. When your group experiences Teambuilding with Horses, they'll have more of what they need to effectively work together and overcome difficult obstacles. Important goals can quickly become reality.
Each Teambuilding with Horses Workshop is led by a team of Instructors who guide Participants through powerful, memorable learning experiences with horses. Our horses teach workshop Participants their perfected and proven approaches to leadership, communication and teamwork. Team members will be able to immediately understand and apply these principles in their lives and on the job.
A Teambuilding with Horses Workshop can help:
• Teams become more productive by learning new ways to collaborate
• Teams who need to reach higher levels of effectiveness through better communication
• A team that is ready to kick off a new working relationship.
• Groups working through diversity issues.
• Groups who are bogged down with the old way of doing things.
Where Did You Learn About Teamwork?
Teamwork is more often modeled than taught. Our early experiences with teams may come from participating in sports like baseball and soccer during childhood. We may have had opportunities to collaborate on projects in the classroom, and experience the production of a school play. Later we're expected to behave like a “team player” when perhaps no one has ever clearly defined that term.
Teamwork that is taught from flawed human models doesn't work for long. As soon as the model is stressed, it falls apart. Let's face it, we all know what we SHOULD do, but on the job, reality is much different. Desired team behavior is disrupted by:
• Positioning and politics.
• “What's in it for ME?”
• Fear of change.
• Mixed messages coming from our leaders and our peers.
• Threats, stress, confusion.
It's no wonder teams have problems!
Adventure courses that use tools and exercises to engender trust and teach team principles fail to integrate them into a wholistic approach that produces proven, lasting results. Instead, Teambuilding With Horses allows Participants to observe and learn from the perfect working model - the horse herd. Participants are given the opportunity to absorb and transfer skills -- horse to human -- and immediately apply them in a human context and environment.
Instill Leadership
What makes a leader? Followers. A leader can't lead unless people are willing to follow.
Leadership is different from management. Management is about command and authority. Leadership is about willingness. People willingly follow a leader who:
• Has the needs of the group in mind.
• Accepts responsibility for making decisions.
• Can communicate a clear vision.
• Has earned the trust of the group.
• Delivers hope through personal commitment.
Horses can teach us these things! A herd will accept one of their own as the de facto leader, a mantle not dependent on title, or seniority, or stock ownership. Since the survival of the herd depends on the success of its leadership, the selection of the leader is not taken lightly.
As a Participant in this Workshop, you will learn about leadership by working directly with one of our horses. In every human/horse interaction, the horse wants to know who is going to lead whom. For you to be successful with your Horse, you'll need to demonstrate the qualities of Leadership, all of them. Only when you give up any vestiges of command-and-control management style will the Horse respond to you. And when you succeed (and you will -- this IS a workshop!), the result is pure joy -- for the Participant and Horses alike (horses REALLY appreciate a good leader, because they know their survival is assured!).
The smiling faces you'll see at the end of your Workshop reflect the joy and appreciation for what has been accomplished during a single day. Every Participant will have learned how to lead, and be confident in that fact because they've seen themselves actually demonstrate leadership through a 1,000 pound mirror that can't help but tell Participants the truth about themselves.
Enhance Communication
What are you listening to? More than you think. Research has shown that words carry less than 10% of a message's meaning. Effective communication demands that we pay attention to the other 90% -- and horses will help us do that!
We all know that actions speak louder than words. While our lips are talking, our body is screaming, using language that includes:
• Posture
• Movement
• Eye contact
• Physical Contact
• Orientation and distance
• Expressions of attitude and mood
In the business world we are evaluated on our use of words - our written and verbal communications skills, whereas with horses none of that matters. To have a successful partnership with a horse, an in-depth understanding of body language is essential.
From the moment you enter a horse's field of vision, they size you up to determine if you are a threat. They make decisions about you based on how you walk, your posture, how you sound, and even your mood and attitude. If the horse isn't behaving the way you want, it's not the horse's fault. It's only responding to what you are communicating.
Your horse will teach you to be clear in your communications. You can talk nice to your horse all you want, but they're only paying attention to your non-verbal cues. If you send mixed messages and are not consistent in how you behave, the horse will be confused and non-responsive. Once you learn to speak clearly through your actions, the fun begins! Your horse will trust you and follow your lead. As our horses make you aware of your non-verbal communications, you'll learn that you can consciously change your behavior and deliver the clear messages that will get you the results you want.
Participants in this Workshop quickly learn that words can be trusted only if actions are consistent with them. Over the course of a single day, confidence in personal communications skills will move from apprehension to awe.
Foster Teamwork and Collaboration
We like to be on teams. We're social animals who enjoy interaction with other people.
Teams can provide us with:• Opportunities to showcase our strengths.
• Recognition and validation of self-worth.
• Opportunities to learn from others.
• A feeling of belonging (yes, we want to be part of a herd, too!).
• Offsets for personal weaknesses.
Teams can also provide us with fear. Will I fit in? Will my contributions be valued? Will my weaknesses make me vulnerable? Will I be rejected or ridiculed? Will I be able to adapt to the group and the situation?
Boost your confidence in yourself by seeing what you are really capable of.
At the Teambuilding With Horses Workshop, you'll team up with our horses - to learn how to adapt and overcome fears. You'll learn firsthand how a human can team up with an intimidating, 1,000 pound animal to accomplish things neither of you could do alone. In a very short time, you'll learn how to connect, communicate, and develop a partnership in which both of you benefit.
Our Horses will help you quickly become aware of behaviors that don't support a partnership so you can adapt and change your behavior to achieve success. As fear is relieved and tensions relax, your whole team will experience heightened creativity, respect for diversity within the group, and a strong sense of comfort and unity.
Participants gain new knowledge and skills for blending strengths and weaknesses that not only make them more willing and effective teammates on the job, but better partners all through life. They learn that every contribution counts. They learn that everyone can deliver value. Every participant learns to celebrate success - often, and together!
Your Workshop Experience
This workshop uses experiential learning principles to deliver and reinforce concepts. We'll combine verbal information, visual aids, and demonstrations to make it easy for participants to quickly understand, internalize, and apply workshop content.
Participants need no experience with horses. Each participant will be working one-on-one with a horse. Comfortable, casual clothing and sturdy shoes are recommended.
Here's what you'll experience during your one-day Teambuilding with Horses Workshop:
• Before the workshop begins, we'll take a few minutes to learn about your objectives for the workshop and the special needs of the Participants so that the experience is both enjoyable and productive for the team.
• The workshop begins with an introduction to “animal communication” To gain benefit from the feedback that horses give us, we have to understand how they communicate!
• We will also conduct an orientation session. Participants will begin learning firsthand about communications skills they didn't know they had!
• Next, Participants will begin working one-on-one with their Horses to hone their leadership and communications skills.
• Each Participant will then team up with their Horse and learn how to work together to overcome obstacles and achieve objectives.
• Later we'll turn up the excitement a notch by engaging in some games with the horses. Your team will be surprised and thrilled with the practical application of their newfound abilities.
• At day's end, we'll conduct a debriefing session to capture observations of the group, identify action items for follow-up, and answer any remaining questions.
• After the workshop day, we'll confer with you to review the results of the debriefing and suggest ways to ensure application of what your team learned during the Workshop.
Participants will get hands-on experience about what teamwork is all about. During the process, they'll explore the role of leadership within teams and observe the impact of communications on teams. Plus, they'll boost confidence in themselves and gain a greater sense of well-being as they see themselves through the all knowing eyes of a horse!
To Contact us
By E-mail: swancenter@mindspring.com
By Phone: 970-468-0924
By Mail: P.O. Box 24325 Silverthorne, Colorado 80497
