By the time I met Merlin, he’d been abandoned at a Tucson boarding stable and confined to an isolated corral. Though lonely and even depressed as a result, he was unable to control his own traumatized nervous system in the presence of horses or humans. A vicious cycle of terror and destruction swirled around him like a monsoon storm gathering force in foreboding yet unpredictable ways. Merely taking him for a walk was an ordeal few people were willing to face more than once. You could actually feel the thunder rumbling under the surface of his sometimes-calm demeanor. You just knew that lightning was bound to strike at any moment.
Thankfully, Merlin’s tendency to rear up and attack without provocation lessened over the years of our association, and at times he was quite sweet. In the process of forging a partnership with him, however, I was forced to delve into the instinctual subtleties of dominance and leadership — and reflect on the ways in which both could be used to either build or destroy trust and cooperation.
This was initially a huge paradox for me. I was taught that power led to tyranny or, in women especially, ostracism. I spent years honing the tenuous combination of courage, compassion, mindfulness, and assertiveness that Merlin needed from me in order to find balance. It absolutely boggled my mind to realize that I was unable to tap the stallion’s latent gentleness unless I could enter his corral with a strong yet caring presence, one that simultaneously didn’t suffer fools, didn’t hold grudges, and didn’t take tantrums personally.
Yet just when I thought I had a handle on these issues, Merlin’s sons came along and showed me that his tantrums were not, at their root, a reaction to abuse. These violent outbursts were more specifically an age-old call for skillful elders capable of helping younger generations socialize their own vast, untapped, all-too-often-misunderstood resources of personal and collective power.
Like their father, Spirit and Indigo were highly sensitive, naturally dominant, and extremely intelligent. For a time, they were even scarier than Merlin precisely because they had been raised in a secure environment. They had no fear of humans and were actually attracted to new things and experiences that would send the average horse running. Consequently, they would rear and kick and bite for fun, testing their strength and mine, but without the surge of anger I was able to sense in Merlin right before he would attack.
And so, it seemed, I reentered the school of hard knocks and scary stallions. Practicing various ways of channeling this tremendous energy and intelligence in productive ways — without lapsing into the negative, intimidation-based techniques that made Merlin such a troubled character — opened my eyes to a sophisticated, highly effective way of working with free, empowered humans.
Over time, I was able to translate the skills I had learned from my most challenging herd members into safe, efficient, yet exciting ground activities with gentler horses. I began teaching these tools to the executive teams, entrepreneurs, students, teachers, parents, clergy, and counselors who came to study leadership at my ranch in Arizona. In the process, I developed a nature-based model that helped people relate what they learned at the barn back to their offices, homes, churches, and schools.
As Spirit and Indigo Moon grew to adulthood, the once-aggressive colts became exceptional teachers of advanced students who wanted to tap the wisdom of these large nonpredatory power animals. All of us, the horses included, became more adventurous and collaborative as we learned to juggle the Master Herder’s five roles. My clients were especially intrigued to discover that this innovative “new” approach was actually very old — as ancient as the human-animal bond itself.
The Fittest to Lead
Charles Darwin’s work suggests that it’s not the strongest or the most intelligent of the species that survive, but the ones most responsive to change.
That means us, now, in this crucial, promising, yet precarious stage of our own species’ development.
The sedentary, hierarchical, dominance-submission models of leadership the “civilized” world has relied on for the last few thousand years have outlived their usefulness. Ironically, the very technological advances this system once nurtured have given birth to an increasingly nomadic lifestyle where freedom, autonomy, and constant adaptation challenge all the previous rules of social engagement.
In the January 2015 article “20/20 Visions,” Entrepreneur magazine asked leading futurists and cultural anthropologists to predict “how the next five years will revolutionize business.” Brian Solis joined other members of the panel in emphasizing that “things are not only changing, but are so radically different that the business models we have today cannot support a much more dynamic approach to the market.”
Shifting value systems demand innovation, not only in technology, but also in leadership as network-based organizational structures emerge. Younger generations are “very entrepreneurial and tend to have a lot of global connectivity,” Bob Johansen observed. “They’re very interested in environmental issues and sustainability.” They also “want authenticity, they want transparency.”
It makes sense. These are the people who will endure the effects of climate change and raise children in the face of dwindling resources. At the same time, their fluency in social media calls for collaborative business models that take advantage of “mutual benefit partnering on a global scale,” or what Johansen calls (in his book by the same title) “the reciprocity advantage.” For anyone born after 1990, hierarchical, highly competitive, slash-and-burn styles of corporate conquest are not only ineffective, they’re simply less relevant. The most successful CEOs of the last forty years cannot model, and quite possibly cannot even imagine, the leadership and social intelligence skills the next generation will need to thrive in this brave new world.
Power and Collaboration
While some corporate and political regimes still strive to disempower others for personal gain, relentless waves of technological, economic, and cultural innovation are eroding dictatorial resolve. In his book The Third Industrial Revolution, Jeremy Rifkin speaks of “an emerging collaborative age” in which “lateral power organized nodally across society” is “fundamentally restructuring human relationships, from top to bottom to side to side, with profound implications for the future of society.”
There’s one major issue we face in this transition: Far too many people experience power and collaboration as opposites, as if one must be sacrificed in favor of the other. Those who value power are more inclined to suppress collaboration to fulfill ambitious goals or reinforce the status quo. Those deeply committed to collaboration sometimes neglect assertiveness for fear of damaging relationships, even when a clear, directive, humane use of power may be necessary to motivate widespread positive change.
I once belonged to the latter category. Growing up female in the 1960s, before the women’s rights movement gathered force and floated more gently toward my small, Midwestern city, I was encouraged to develop the nurturing arts at the expense of leadership. As I graduated college and entered the workforce, I was desperately untrained in the skillful use of power and influence, except through those genteel, primarily unconscious, passive-aggressive moves “the weaker sex” developed through five thousand years of subjugation.
In the 1980s, equal opportunity opened things up a bit. I could use intelligence, vision, enthusiasm, and degrees or certifications to be promoted, and I excelled at inspiring and collaborating with others — especially when working with self-motivated, caring people. But whenever it was necessary to make tough decisions, motivate uncooperative employees, deal with feuding factions, or lead others into controversial or uncomfortable areas, I tended to avoid conflict, at times abdicating authority when I needed to stand strong.
More dominant colleagues had no problem pulling rank, handling dissent, and herding others toward short-term goals, but these command-and-control-style managers were less effective over time. Many crossed the line between assertiveness and intimidation, losing trust along the way. Some withheld