“Self-awareness, self-confidence and self-belief are foundations for leading through uncertainty.”
“Pick me,” the horse seemed to be saying.
I had gone to see a horse called Gio, and my eyes were drawn to the large black horse in the stable at the end. His eyes locked onto mine, and I hoped it would be him. The yard owner, Julie, led me down the yard and indeed, the beautiful black horse was Gio. I entered his stable. His heart was racing with anxiety, and he was trying to hold it all together. I wasn’t sure he was suitable to work with me and my clients. I didn’t want an anxious horse. My horses need to be confident in their own skin because clients are often anxious when they arrive.
I looked Gio in the eye and felt the depth of his connection as he drew me in. My heart desperately wanted to say yes, I’ll take him, but my head overruled my emotion because I couldn’t risk taking on an anxious horse. I already had a horse called Tiffin, who gets overwhelmed with anxious clients. It was too big a risk. All logic and reasoning made it clear that Gio was not the horse for me.
Meanwhile, my heart was telling me a different story. In the course of my work, I often help leaders reduce their anxiety and find a place of greater calm in uncertainty. I wanted to help Gio find his new home so he could relax and be less anxious, and I found myself committing to him that I would help him. It felt like a crazy thing to do to tell a horse I would help him find the right home. I had no idea how I might do that, and I didn’t exactly have the time to keep going to visit him either. But somehow it felt the right thing to do. There was something about him that kept me going back.
Each time I returned, Gio was pleased to see me. On one occasion, he was out in the field, and nobody had been able to get near him with a head collar. We thought he had become semi-feral since being out in the field with no human interaction. I went out with a head collar, thinking if the experienced grooms could not get near him, there was no way I would, as a novice horse owner.
I approached the gate of the field where he was grazing with three other horses. As I walked through the gate, he looked up and trotted over to me. Clearly he recognised me. I put the head collar over his head, convinced he wouldn’t leave without the other horses. Horses are herd animals and find their safety with other horses, so sometimes a young horse will not go on their own. He walked with me without faltering. He had decided I was his new owner, and he would not go with anyone else!
Horses are highly sensitive creatures, as people are. The uncertainty about Gio’s future made him anxious. He seemed to know that I was willing to help him, and he became less anxious as a result. I decided I would take a risk with him after all. In hindsight, I was Gio’s last chance at life, and he seemed to know it, too.
I’d integrated the wisdom of my head, heart and gut and found the ideal solution for both of us. Gio has turned out to be amazing at working with clients. He’s huge at 17.2 hands tall (approx. 1.78m to the top of his shoulder), but extremely gentle. He seems to recognise that he could trample us and is extraordinarily sensitive and respectful around people. I liken it to being a human being not wanting to step on a cat! Gio is a natural connector, wanting to be with people and yearning for a job. Since settling into his new life with me, he has a purpose for the first time in his seven years, and his anxiety has reduced as his life has become more certain. Uncertainty creates anxiety in other species, not just humans.
Thinking and feeling
Gio’s anxiety over the uncertainty of his future almost prevented me from taking him on. His emotions almost derailed his opportunity for a new role working with me. That’s the challenge of leading through uncertainty. Uncertainty puts everyone under pressure, and emotions become more difficult to manage under pressure. This is the crux of the challenge we face in business today. We cannot pretend emotions don’t exist because they are a fundamental part of what it is to be human. Uncertainty magnifies them.
My rational brain had decided Gio was not suitable as he lacked confidence. It was only when I was willing to look beyond this and try to make sense of him and his emotions that I was able to recognise that he had potential and could grow in confidence. As I created more certainty for him, his anxiety reduced, his confidence increased, and I realised that he was in fact perfect to work with me and my clients.
We have historically made logical reasoning more important than emotions. The most effective leaders integrate the two. Most people have done psychological assessments and used personality profiling tools that identify habits and behaviours. The either/or approach puts people in boxes and labels their behaviour. While it is a useful to create a starting point of self-awareness, people sometimes use labels as an excuse for behaviour and get stuck in a loop of doing things a particular way. Our personality is not permanently fixed. We can learn to expand upon our default habits and behaviours and in so doing develop our leadership.
We are emotional and intellectual beings. We have the capacity to both think and feel, and we are at our most effective when we bridge the gap between the two. Most people have developed the muscle of one over the other, yet truly effective decisions integrate both critical thinking and emotional feelings.
Horses invite us to integrate. If we fail to think through what we want from them, the lack of clarity makes it unsafe for them to follow. Equally, unless we establish an emotional connection, they refuse to come with us. The absence of emotion is incongruent and makes horses feel unsafe. People will come based on rank and authority, but in those moments you are not leading, and the cooperation is not sustainable. Horses provide feedback on how integrated our leadership is. They need clarity through rational thought, integrated with emotional connection. So do your team. While your team may come with you because of a hierarchy, horses make it clear when your leadership is fully integrated, following you when it is and refusing to move when it is not.
Are your team cooperating because they have to or because they want to?
The power of thought provides us with the capability to analyse data and information and make sense of it. This is something that computers and robots can be programmed to do. Computers can process data far quicker than human beings can, and we have the potential to use them to alleviate the stress and workload for the human race.
However, at the moment, robots cannot feel. Our emotional response is at the heart of what it is to be human – the desire to take care of one another, to build community, to nurture and support, to fall in and out of love. All of these human experiences are driven by your emotional responses – your feelings. Feelings create uncertainty too as they cannot always be rationalised. We’ve learned to shut them down in business and replace them with the drive for results. With the increased uncertainty at work, emotions run high under the surface, regardless of whether we acknowledge them. We need to redress the balance and integrate both thinking and feeling so that we can make decisions wisely and effectively.
Emotional judgement
Many people I work with say that their biggest challenge is getting people to do what they need them to do. Often they use logic and reasoning to persuade and influence. Conversely, people engage emotionally. Effective use of emotions therefore can encourage connection and cooperation.
Emotions are part of the human experience. When we meet someone for the first time, we instantly make an emotional decision about them. We decide whether we trust them or not, whether they are credible or not, whether they are good at their job or not. We make instant decisions with a handshake. We can change that decision, but once an opinion has been formed emotionally, we use logic and reasoning later to justify our initial judgement.
If you feel an instant dislike for someone on first meeting, or you think they are not credible, it’s typically a decision based on emotions or gut instinct. Everything you see in the next days, week, months and years