Consent required (a.k.a. "Look but don't touch")

I've lost count of how many times I have read an interview of a well-known rider and how they got started, and at some point it involves illicit rides on a pony in a field. No one ever seem to comment on this or tell it from the side of the owner of that illicitly-used pony.

Just recently I've been thinking about the whole "stealing a ride" phenomena from their point of view.

Over the summer, a person who had very rarely helped groom ponies some years before turned up on my father's doorstep asking if they could take a non-UK visitor of theirs to "look at" the ponies. No problem - though my father was in the middle of something so didn't go down to the field with them.

Not long after, it was feed time for the ponies anyway, so he went down to the field. At which point he discovered that not only had these folk got a head collar out of the store to catch the pony (Rosie) who lives in the school, but the young visitor was *sitting* on the pony (without a hat). And they proceeded to ask if they could ride her around the school ! The answer, of course, was no.

I only found out about this when I got home from work. I have problems with it on so many levels(*), but they all lead back to one major issue - they did this without any kind of consent from us. They had permission to look. Not to catch, sit, ride, or anything else.

[*Did they not even stop to think why that pony was living in the sand arena rather than out in the field with the others ? Did they rummage around until they found a head collar which they just assumed would do ? The girl had no hat. The person "in charge" is in a profession which regularly has to fill out risk assessments - did it not even occur to her to think about what might go wrong ? and so on and so forth]

Don't get me wrong, I can still remember the pre-horse owning hope that someone would let me sit on their pony. And not only were there some very kind people who said yes, but I have paid that forward and let Rosie be ridden by a number of other people. So to repeat - this is not about protecting Rosie or being territorial, it is about consent.

Why is it that people think it is ok to wander into a field and get on a pony they don't own, without the permission of the owner/keeper ?

We don't think it is ok to walk into someone else's home, snap a lead on their dog and take it for a walk ?

Or pick up their keys and take their car for a drive ?

Or use their kitchen to cook a meal ? 

Or take their children off without a word ?

Why any ponies fair game when so no one would consider "borrowing" these other things ?

There are so many practical reasons why the borrowing without permission is wrong, including safety. But what makes it unacceptable rather than merely foolish and unsafe is that these horses are our equine partners; we spend time building trust and partnership with them. 

Would you wander into Carl Hester's yard and just hop on to Valegro ? Is my pony any less precious to me ?

What gives them the *right* to use something that belongs to someone else without that person's consent ? Why do these people think they have a "right" to take with no associated responsibility ?

Forward thinking

I've been pondering another pair of posts.... this time on boundaries. But I need to work on it to get it straight in my head, And in the meantime an interesting discussion came up in a riding lesson at the weekend.

The question posed (by the instructor) was about the difference between "forward" and "forward thinking".

You may be wondering what this has to do with the office environment... but bear with me....

When we are talking about a horse being "forward", we don't mean they are making inappropriate advances .... just that they are moving in a forward direction.  Normally in response to a stimulus or cue - a leg aid, a lunge whip, a vocal command. 

Forward is about movement; it implies a direction, and a speed (probably fast). It has a sense of energy. It is about the "what" is happening. The upside is there is energy, movement, momentum that you can work with. The downside is it can be rushed, tense, lack control or elevation.

Forward-thinking is subtly different. Synonyms include "dynamic", "progressive", "positive".

We talked about there being a willingness involved. But you can be forward-thinking and slow. Forward-thinking is about attitude, it's about the "how". It's about a willingness, about being motivated.

In a work sense, I see people around me who are in "forward" mode. They are always doing something - normally at speed. These are the folk who will head straight into task-mode. Yes, they are action-orientated and no, that isn't a bad thing. But it has it's risks. In going straight for "doing", they run the risk of solving the wrong problem, and of leaving their team behind. They may know an "answer", but they don't take the time to discuss, so they don't know if there are other answers available. 

You can end up with a lot of activity, but that at least some of the activity is noise and not genuinely contributing to progressing towards the objectives of the team, organisation, business.

But if we can take that energy, that activity..... and focus it, direct it, guide it.... Now then we start to get somewhere. And going in the right direction slowly gets you there sooner than randomly rushing around..... well most of the time anyway !

Leadership (part 2 of 2)

Part one of this series of two was about trust. It originally became a bee-in-my-bonnet over a year ago, when some of the behaviour at work was proving interesting. I struggled to write something that was anything like coherent initially, because of the intensity of the situation.

 Time and a different employer gave some distance and perspective, and I began to wonder if trust really was the issue. Certainly there was a trust issue – but was that cause or effect ? Or was there something else … like leadership ?

 If you look up leadership, you’ll find it talks about leading – so not much information added there. Mark Rashid talks about the horse “turning over the decision making” to the rider/handler. And it strikes me that this is a pretty good model to use.

 For there to be leadership, there needs to be guidance/decisions, and there needs to be someone making them.

 The leader is the one who is making the decisions.

The follower is the one who is accepting and acting on those decisions.

 To turn over the decision making in a particular situation/context, I would propose you need to trust whoever is going to make those decisions.

 My old pony (“Red”) was fast both physically and mentally. He was always one step ahead of me. If I had lacked confidence, that might have been a bad scenario. But he and I just sort of “clicked” and  I trusted his abilities. That meant I could leave a big proportion of the detail (how we got over a jump) to him, while I provided the direction (which jump was next, what to expect *after* the jump – water, a drop etc). And our successes built on that trust and confidence. He listened to me, I listened to him. When other people took him out in his later days, that caused problems as he would “ask” whether he should go faster – but the rider wouldn’t realise what was going on and would get taken home at speed ! To me we were the perfect team, and there were only 2 occasions I can think of where “equal” partnership resulted in a problem. The first was in our heyday and in hindsight I think he must have been feeling under the weather. It took a rare stop at a jump before I realised and helped him out more than usual. The second was in his semi-retirement, where his view of his abilities had not adjusted to his age, and I went along with his decision (to take the option of a bigger jump). Once again, it just took that one time for me to realise I had to take a bit more of the decision-making. If you were using the situation leadership model, this was probably a “delegating” style.

It was a big change to start working with Fi who, as I commented last time, needed a very different type of leadership from me. To accept that leadership, she needed to be able to hand over the majority of the decision-making to me. From the “big” stuff like where and when we worked together, to the “little” stuff like speed, direction and destination.  She still got to offer me what she could, and as her acceptance and confidence in “us” grew, she could and would offer more. But she needed a lot of directing and we probably started in a Directive and moved into a Coaching style sometimes.

Conversely Rosie challenged *everything*. Actually it is quite a breakthrough for me to write that in the past tense rather than present ! She would challenge speed, destination AND direction – and any change to any of those. One of the trainers I worked with back in those days commented that “most” horses quickly learnt that it took more energy to object that collaborate. And conserving energy is a survival trait. But Rosie…. Nooooo…. She would challenge for prolonged periods of time, and when you went back the next time, she would challenge the same things all over again. I had to be stronger with her than I was really comfortable about – I had to insist, and in a way that meant she realised collaboration was the best option. And *how* you were strong was key – any attempt to just dominate with sheer force just got more challenge and a really peeved pony. I needed to stay calm, insistent, persistent. But still recognise and reward the smallest try.  It isn’t easy to be that strong and still listen hard enough to hear that tiny “whisper” of a try. But over time things started to get better. And once again we had that virtuous curve where the better things got, the less I had to insist, the more I could ask and reward. The more she tried, the more I could reward. And the more I asked and rewarded, the happier she was ! I’m still not quite sure where our partnership will end up – collaborative (like Red) or directive (like Fi). Or something else. And I’m not sure how we will end up splitting the decisions between us – but for the interim I have needed to take on more of that just to get her to accept turning *any* decisions over.

But in a work role I am more usually in the Follower role, which means I need to be capable of what  I ask of my horses – turning the decisions over to someone else. If stepping up to a stronger kind of leadership was tough, what is it like to be on the other side of the fence ?

I think my natural preference for a collaborative/delegative style is probably not a surprise from how I worked with Red. I suspect I am probably as demanding and challenging of my “leaders” as Fi and Rosie have been of me. Do I challenge ? Yes, although I aim to make it relevant and timely (but of course will not always get that right).

So where can it go wrong ?

Well I found some more quotes ;)

“Trust is earned, respect is given, and loyalty is demonstrated. Betrayal of any one of those is to lose all three.”  Ziad K. Abdelnour,

And one from that prolific author “unknown”

“Honesty is the foundation for trust; without one you can’t have the other”

I also understand (although I confess I don’t have the reference) that when you research what people are looking for from their leaders, year after year the aspect of “authenticity” (or “consistency” – basically doing what you say and vice versa) comes up in the top 3.

Hmmm. So as a rider/handler/leader with horses I need to be consistent.

And as a follower at work I look for honesty and consistency from my leaders, in order that I can trust and respect them. Or as a leader, within the hierarchy, I need to offer the same as I ask for.

Of course a leader could be consistently bad as well as consistently good. In one of Mark Rashid's blogs he talks about the horse learning  as much from "absence of direction" - all those things we'd really rather they didn't learn but they do. 

One last definition to close the loop. A certain Natural Horseman came up with a definition of respect as “an appropriate response to pressure”. That may work for horses, but it also works in the office.

If the leadership is inconsistent, and the trust and respect are lacking, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise if the response to pressure may at times be…. “Inappropriate” ?!

Trust (part 1 of 2)

I've had something on the subject of trust bumping around in my head now for over a year, but not been able to really get to grips with it. For a while I thought maybe it was leadership I needed to put pen to paper about. Actually I think it is both, and this is part one of two.

There is an quote (source unknown) “Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.”

 I’m not sure I entirely agree….

 Trust is defined as a “belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something”, and a belief is “an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof”.

So when we talk about Trust being earned or built, I’m not sure we’re talking about the right thing. An acceptance based on experience is something slightly different. Trust requires that leap of faith, to accept that something “is” without prior experience or knowledge.

 Trust can be granted very quickly, which is where first impression count. Or trust can be about the confidence of the trustee, what their appetite for risk is. A horse and rider place trust in each other as soon as they start to work together. They have to – their safety depends on the other.

 That initial trust will be bolstered by good experiences, which reinforce the faith you have placed on whatever or whoever you are trusting. Even a neutral “nothing bad happening” will back the trust up with experience.

 But it is equally true that trust can be lost as quickly as it is given.  A misplaced word or step, and the trust starts to be broken down. Depending on the degree of the “break”, it can be catastrophic or simply eroded. And breaking that trust often takes you past zero into the negative; you are going to need to earn your way back to the start point before you can even think about rebuilding what you lost.

 When we give a “second chance”, we’re often looking for reassurance that the breaking of trust was a one-off and will not happen again. Every betrayal of trust makes it harder to repair. And yet we will persevere, looking for reasons to continue to trust. The failure of trust isn’t just about the something/someone that has proved untrustworthy; it is also about the trustee needing to adjust their value system for that breaking of trust. And we don’t really like to do that.

 I trusted someone for over a decade, and only found out after he had gone that my trust had been misplaced. It led me to question whether I had missed the signs, missed chances to expose what was going on. In this particular situation, the trust was being deliberately broken and my behaviour was consistent with my values.  But while I don’t think I could have done anything differently before uncovering the trust-breaking, it does leave a legacy. I am less likely to accept that things are as they seem on the surface, more likely to question. Despite that I am still not likely to micro-manage the situation to prevent the possibility of trust being broken. After all, how do I know if I can trust that person if I never put them in a situation where trust is required ?

And yet that is exactly what I did with my horse (“Fi”) – micro-manage the situation. We didn’t start with a trust issue. I was confident that I was a good enough rider for her, and could handle her anxiety or lack of confidence. But I was used to a partnership that was fairly even – a 55/45 type of deal – with my previous horse. Fi doesn’t really work that way. If someone isn’t obviously making all the decisions for her, her anxiety goes up and she starts to feel she has to take responsibility for everything, and everything becomes a risk. She needed me to go in with more like a 90/10 deal, and I didn’t realise that at first. So I was under-delivering – 55 vs the 90 she was looking for. It led to a few bad experiences for us both,  which meant the trust started to break down between us. By the time I realised she needed me to step up to the mark (at 90% or more), my confidence was dented and that made it even harder for me.

 I started to micro-manage so that we didn’t have any more train wrecks. But that only worked short term because it meant the communication was all one way – me telling her. I wasn’t listening, and that made me a bad leader, even at the required 90%.

 Being 90% responsible for the decisions includes understanding your partner and knowing what *not* to ask of them. My current equestrian partner (“Rosie”) was very unconfident but also very opinionated. She didn’t really see the point of all that hard work; asking nicely wasn’t going to hack it, but asking (too) strongly was just seen as rude and unreasonable. The gap in between those two was incredibly small at first. As I have found ways to motivate her, she has realised that I *will* listen. And when it really is about confidence rather than “can’t, shan’t won’t”, I will find a way to make it safer and easier for her. As she has come to expect that from me, the “can’t, shan’t, won’t” has slowly decreased over time and she’s now regularly trying her heart out for me.

 So it turns out you can turn a vicious circle into a virtuous one. With Fi what I needed to do was set some physical boundaries in terms of what we did (for example, we stopped hacking out), and by stepping up to that 90% ask within those boundaries, we started to rebuild the mutual trust and confidence. And the interesting thing is that as that confidence grew, Fi could get to the point she could accept less than 90% from me. Which meant I was less out of my comfort zone. But she always has to know I am capable of being there at 90% of the team/leadership for her. As long as I *am* capable of 90%, I don’t have to be ! Fi has now retired, but it was the learning she gave me that helped me with Rosie.