A STORY: Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover
A CORPORATE EXPERIENCE: Change and the Nature of Leadership
Monty Roberts’s Ideas to Live By
Corporations That Have Visited Flag Is Up Farms
It took almost my business lifetime to begin to understand the tremendous power that can be leveraged when people’s individualism, creativity and wisdom are unleashed.
In recent years there has been a growing appreciation of enlightened forms of leadership that seek to engage, involve and inspire, as opposed to the long-standing practices of “direct and control.”
Meeting Monty Roberts and absorbing his philosophy was a really magical moment for me—I am inspired by his beliefs and impressed by his actions. He clearly demonstrates that kindness and respect for the horse are superior to the traditional breaking of the animal’s spirit. Monty’s notion that the teacher (or leader) must create an environment in which the student can learn and grow is simple, direct and honest—it fit perfectly with a style of leadership that I have been experimenting with since the early eighties.
Monty Roberts certainly listens to horses but, in my humble opinion, he delivers a powerful message to people and, in particular, people at all levels of leadership. What he achieves with a horse is a metaphor for a style of management—employees will produce exceptional results if they are treated with dignity, respect and honesty.
In the world of organizations and business we make the mistake of putting people in boxes and limiting their abilities and creativity—we need to find a means of changing the way people think about themselves, their jobs and how they work as individuals and in teams. I suggest you couldn’t start anywhere better than this book.
CLIVE WARRILOW
Volkswagen North America
CEO and President
I am not usually to be found kicking up the sawdust of a riding ring, especially if it means taking a long drive to get there. My encounters with horses have been limited to having them step on my feet on hot summer camp mornings nearly forty years ago. As an adult, I look at them as not much more than a one-horse power motorcycle with a mind for unpredictability. I once spent a ludicrous amount of money to ride a horse named “Cheesehead” while I looked, dry-mouthed, down a thousand-foot drop in Yosemite National Park convinced that my mount was more interested in biting the rear end of the horse in front of me than concentrating on his footing. I have never grasped why so many people, including gaggles of little girls, have such a big thing for these creatures of tonnage that can decide to run like a demented rabbit just because a piece of paper blows across the trail.
So again, I wonder why I am standing in sawdust while people with big shiny belt buckles, jeans and pointy boots mill around me. The loudspeakers are playing full orchestral renditions of “Don’t Fence Me In” and “Tumbling Tumble Weeds.” With my nondescript beige pants (khakis?) and T-shirt I must look out of place. I am also too fat to ride horses. I’m surrounded by opposites, hundreds of gangly men and tiny women. Like the horse they appear to love so deeply, they are a different species.
Oddly enough we are all here to see the only other person in the place who doesn’t look like he ever rides a horse, Monty Roberts. I’m here to see a man who deciphered the horse’s natural language, Equus. By demonstrating its application he is spreading the word about how to rid the world of outmoded concepts about the violent domination of horses. I rather suspect he has simply invented a way to convince a horse that it is in its best interest to allow itself to be ridden. Sure, he is kind of a Jane Goodall or Dian Fossey of the horse world, but I would just as soon watch that kind of thing on PBS.
Why am I here? Why has his best-selling book The Man Who Listens to Horses been read by millions of people like me who would just as soon never deal with a horse? The music stops and Monty walks into a circular metal fenced ring. He looks like a London cabby. This is the man who was a child prodigy, a wonder rider. Arguably he knows more about horses than any other person on this earth. His eyes are pale and full of life; yet ironically he is completely color-blind. At sixty-one he has the clarity and cadence of voice of a thirty-year-old. He’s not wearing a cowboy hat. There’s no denim, just a nondescript jacket.
This is the man who listens to horses. For his first act, he takes a horse that has never been ridden. He communicates with it by using a fascinating body language, all the while talking on a wireless to a hushed crowd. The horse moves nervously around the ring while he allows it, he tells us, to go the usual distance it would if a predator were trying to chase it down. Monty freely admits that he is the predator and gently induces a little anxiety that puts the horse into a trotting flight around the ring. Then Monty does his magic.
The Join-Up begins. Through a series of bossy postures and motions he actually communicates to the horse in Equus and the horse has an amazing change of heart: Monty is not a predator—Monty is now not only a friend, but a powerful one with experience and savvy, offering protection and companionship. The worst fear of every prey herd animal is isolation. Monty has taken advantage of this fear. Within twenty minutes not only has Monty communicated that he isn’t a retractable-clawed killing machine, but that he is an in-the-know, all-protective alpha partner. The horse, now “joined-up” with Monty, shows some apprehension if separated from him, like a two-year-old human child trying to keep constant contact with a parent.
Monty’s communication with this animal creates a trust that is astonishing. Before the demonstration I sarcastically made the comment to my wife that Monty