Horse Sense for People

When the horse drops his head and trots along bouncing it near the soil, he is acting out a very similar gesture to that of bowing in traditional Japanese culture: the person who achieves the lower position in this gesture of greeting is in fact asking the other to lead the conversation. This is virtually a direct translation of what the horse is saying: “Please suggest the agenda for this meeting. I don’t necessarily want to be subservient to you, but one of us has to play the lead role and I would like it to be you.”

The Join-Up moment is what any successful human conversation tries to achieve. It represents the coming together of two people, a meeting of the minds and of mutual respect and understanding. It advances the thought that I am happy to be with you and that I hope our time together will be one of mutual enjoyment. I place enormous importance on the fact that it is volunteered. With people, as with horses, I believe it is vital to achieve that same feeling of Join-Up. It is not possible to Join-Up when either participant feels pressure to accomplish it. It is not that we agreed to do it; it is that we want to do it.

Follow-Up is when I walk away from the horse after Join-Up. He will follow me only if he has a true desire to be with me. Horses have no ability to contrive. They simply cannot fake it. When I walk away, if he has any reticence about being with me, he certainly will not follow. Isn’t this similar to forming a close association with another person, nurturing that association and then waiting to see if your new friend makes any effort to come to you? If none is made, perhaps you need a bit more time to convince this individual that you have a meaningful role to play in his or her life. In my opinion, this is the same whether in business or personal relationships.

At the conclusion of a Join-Up session with a horse I make a point of doing something that is generally fun for both my audience and me. I take my horse to one side of the round pen, then run to the opposite side and ask my audience to applaud for the horse’s performance. The horse will virtually always perceive noise as frightening and will rush to be close to me. The crowd will at once realize that my horse has learned to seek a position near me when danger is perceived, thus validating my concepts.

I mentioned that during each of my Join-Up procedures I stroke the horse with both hands in what I call his vulnerable areas, those spots most often attacked by predators, then walk away. I do this to convince the horse that I intend him no harm. No predator walks away from its prey once it has access to the vulnerable areas. This builds trust. People are much the same, and while vulnerability may be either physical or psychological, you build trust when you are in a position where you could do harm but you don’t: the same is true when you protect another person from something you believe could be harmful. In turn, you know that if the same is done for you, it will increase your level of trust for the person involved. This gesture confirms the trust that began to develop at the first greeting. This trust-building tool is one of the most powerful in the world of commerce—the sharing of personal experiences between colleagues helps to create an environment in which people can work at a closer and more efficient level.

To further build this trust, I pick up each of the horse’s feet, hold it for a few seconds, put it down and walk away. The horses’ legs and feet are virtually their only weapons against predators. Their first choice is to flee using those powerful legs, but they will fight as a last resort. The strike of a front hoof or the kick of a back one can often mean life for the horse instead of death. When a horse chooses to allow me control of his hooves, he is in fact entrusting me with his weapons. Isn’t it true in the human spectrum that before we can go forward in a trust-based relationship, we are obligated to lay down our weapons? It isn’t until both parties feel no need for armament that we can truly work in unison.

The saddle pad corresponds in human terms to a tentative step toward shouldering first responsibility. The question asked of us might be: “Are you going to be responsible for your own decisions?” It is useful to find out how people will react to the idea of responsibility before it is given. For example: engagement before marriage, internship before becoming a practitioner and apprenticeship before achieving professional status.

The saddle continues the testing and accepting. It is literally about carrying responsibility; “being saddled with” describes the assignment of a task. Acceptance of the saddle is a metaphor for facing up to responsibility and accepting the responsibility of further challenges.

The bridle is used to guide the horse. Taking the bit between the teeth means, in human terms, to put energy into something, to be purposeful. The bridle is used for gentle guidance, not to control. If a horse wanted to do something, a bridle would not stop him. Among people, guidance—or the willing acceptance of guidance—suggests that a trust mechanism is in place and that one person is listening to another. The bridle represents purpose and direction based upon communication and trust. Cohesive direction and good communication create teamwork, which we rely upon to achieve shared goals.

The rider is the ultimate responsibility for the horse—a commitment akin to that of a partnership or marriage. The partnership of horse and rider represents the mutual acceptance of responsibility between employer and employee, teacher and student, husband and wife. Trust between horse and human can be seen when the two partners are relaxed and at peace together, where there is no force or stress involved.

It cannot be overemphasized that any violence will undo the processes I’ve just described above.

JOIN-UP: THE JOURNEY

Join-Up is a tool, like a fine chisel. With it, you can carve a stable environment that enables communication. The tool must be used with skill, which may take years to perfect, but in its basic form Join-Up can be learned quickly.

It is, though, a procedure that must be precisely followed; there are no shortcuts. Each step is distinct and necessary. Join-Up may bring out conflict and perceived resistance or ambivalence. It is imperative that anyone using Join-Up be totally responsible for his own actions while allowing the other party to be responsible for his.

A raw horse that quickly accepts saddle, bridle and rider does so, in part, because he has been offered freedom of choice. The “trainer” simply moves through the process, keeping the conversation alive, always allowing the horse time to respond.

It is therefore response-based, not demand-based. You have to learn to open the doors of opportunity and be confident that Join-Up will work. You may have to wait until the horse responds favorably—the same holds true in human relationships.

Join-Up works at any stage of a relationship, whether a new one or one of long standing. It heralds an end to isolation by establishing bonding through communication. Join-Up is the result of deep communication in a shared language; it is a bond based on trust and marks the beginning of a fifty-fifty partnership, sustained through continued adherence to Join-Up’s principles and techniques. It is nonviolent, noncoercive and can only be achieved if both partners have willingly entered into the process. Join-Up means stepping into the other person’s world, by observing his or her needs, conditions, rules and by working within his framework and communicating in his language. It is not created by a particular environment, nor is it a formula to overcome an inability to communicate. It cannot be faked.

On the other hand, it can be formulated and taught; at heart it’s a simple process. Once you understand the formula, the path is clear to successful and mutually enjoyable conversation.

Follow-Up is the confirmation of Join-Up. With horses, this process allows the trainer to reestablish the trust bond. If the bond is not firm enough, the trainer simply goes back through the process until Join-Up is reestablished. Join-Up’s strength is its simplicity.

Join-Up is pivotal to a balanced existence, encouraging trust, reliability and comfort from others, but it can only occur when an underlying desire for partnership exists on both sides. My training provides a step-by-step guide to building a trust-based partnership, which is essential for horses and humans in order to eliminate violence.

With humans, as with horses, communication enables Join-Up. Trust keeps the process alive.

JOIN-UP IN THE WORKPLACE

Fear and mistrust can be delivered to you by two distinctly different messengers. First “the familiar” and second “the unfamiliar.” Horses bring about fear in people, generally because they are unfamiliar with them. People simply have not taken the time to get to know that, although horses are large and fast, they have no agenda to hurt without cause. Fear of a parent, your spouse or your boss might be established out of familiarity and a knowledge that they have a propensity to “act out” violently.

I tell people who express great fear of horses to get to know them, to study their true patterns of behavior and understand more clearly what the horse wants out of life before branding them as dangerous.

As I examine my own patterns of fear and distrust, it seems utterly foreign to think that I might fear a horse. It is a joke for me to think that I might fear this flight animal more than the man walking on the other side of the street or the person approaching in an automobile. It seems ridiculous to me that a horse could be perceived as more dangerous than an airplane, train, truck or even that awesome instrument of terror, the computer.

What the horses are telling me is that if you can remove fear from the environment, both learning and innovation spiral upward. There is no more fearful situation than when people in the workplace are faced with change. Predictability and routine are all important in the stress-filled world of business. If you take away that predictability, change the routine, you alter the environment in which people work. Change, however, is with us. The speed of change in today’s high-tech world is frightening. One of the most important jobs a manager has is to create an environment in which change occurs without production loss. This can be accomplished by creating an environment in which people are willing to change. Obtaining people’s willingness to embrace change is therefore a catalyst in the process of change.

I ask my raw horse to change from being an uncooperative animal to being a partner with me in a new venture. I do not use force—horses Join-Up with me of their own free will. It should be the same with a workforce. Without willingness, work suffers and the whole organization is crippled. Take the simple situation of lunch and coffee breaks, time off and bonus benefits. If a manager is fearful that the company’s goodwill is being abused, he may try to control the situation forcefully. What he should do is concentrate on making the working environment pleasant and building motivation so that the employee is actually happy to stay busy. If the executive gets his formula right, he may well find that his attention will need to be directed to seeing to it that his people take sufficient time off so as to freshen them for the task. Suddenly you have employees hungry to volunteer their loyalty, in the same way that horses lick and chew to signal their willingness to cooperate. People, like horses, perform much better if they are willing partners.

While attending a conference I noticed that one company put its management team in one hotel and its executives in another more upscale establishment. If cooperation and communication are desirable, then segregation is destructive. In my own organization, I attempt at all times to keep travel and living accommodation the same for all staff to promote the feeling of being a member of the team. I work to create an environment that communicates this theme: each position on the team is important if we are to achieve a successful outcome on tour and at our demonstrations.

On another occasion, a well-known organization came to Flag Is Up Farms for a demonstration. The employees filed up onto the round pen viewing platform. Three of the executives stood by the buses—I was told they were the bosses and we would have to wait for them before I could start. I took no notice and began my introduction. I didn’t see why 98 percent of the people should have to wait for the 2 percent. As the crowd hushed and the sound system came on, I could see the three men had come up the steps and were standing to the rear of the onlookers. In an oblique way I began to describe how corporate families find ways to intimidate and pull rank on their workforce. I didn’t name the men, but I made my position clear to everyone. Remaining on the theme throughout the evening worked like a charm and, at the end, each of those men came to me and told me how much they had learned that night.

A CORPORATE EXPERIENCE Paradyne

Paradyne employs more than 800 people at its corporate headquarters in the Tampa Bay area of Florida in the United States and has regional offices around the world. Paradyne is a pioneer in high-speed network access and is revolutionizing the data communications industry. More than 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and businesses in more than 125 countries, have chosen Paradyne.

In 1997, Paradyne had a huge challenge on its hands. The company needed to adopt a new information management system, and get it up and working in eighteen months or less. The company had an archaic information system. It was necessary to install a new system, which would change everything they were doing, from giving a quote to organizing payment at the other end. John Guest of Paradyne brought in management consultants. They put together a team of people in charge of getting change under way and titled it “the foundation team.” The consultants showed the foundation team my Join-Up video. They were not at all sure how the film would be accepted—after all, I was a cowboy talking about horses.

The consultants needed to stir up creativity and willingness, and began by exposing the team to metaphors from the horse world. Time was limited: they had only two days to put the team together. To take an hour out of those critical days to see a video about a horseman was a bold step for these consultants. Would the foundation team see the connection between the nonconfrontational methods I use with horses and its need for people to accept a completely new information system? The team was asked to write down all the connections they saw between the project in front of them and the film. Within two minutes people were nodding, then busy writing and listing the connections as they saw them—more than a hundred in all, including: a nontraumatic, noncoercive environment; allowing bucking to occur; expecting resistance; keeping the pulse rate down; establishing trust; and keeping the dialogue flowing. They recognized the value of never taking out their frustrations on a colleague.

The consultant team sat back at this point, breathed a deep sigh of relief and realized the message was getting through. Join-Up became a metaphor for the willing acceptance of change that the team sought.

The film helped to establish the tone of the workshops and the changeover to the new system went well. In record time, Paradyne was reaping the benefits of change, with a level of acceptance its executives had previously not considered possible.

In 1999, I was in Texas meeting with my friend Flip Flippen about his work with the school systems in parts of that state. And as an aid to our conversation he told me about an interesting experience he had with Transit Mix.

A CORPORATE EXPERIENCE Transit Mix

Join-Up has the power to transform a workplace in terms of efficiency and employees’ motivation and satisfaction. Turns out Transit Mix Concrete & Material Corporation was in real need of all three.

It faced mounting costs caused by high turnover among the drivers of trucks used to deliver concrete and materials. It was costing the firm $2,200 to train a driver and the turnover rate was a staggering 72 percent every six months. The cost of accidents also cut deeply into its profits.

Flip Flippen of M. B. Flippen Associates was brought in by Mark Stiles, president of Transit Mix, to meet company executives and improve performance. Flip is a psychotherapist who owns one of the most successful teacher-educator companies in America. In 1997 he was lying in bed reading alongside his wife, Susan, who was watching a PBS special, a documentary on my gentling of the wild mustang Shy Boy in the high desert. Half listening, at first he thought the program was about kids, not horses, but he soon sat up and listened attentively to the rest of the documentary.

Later, he bought a copy of the video and asked some of his staff to watch it. They were fascinated but didn’t get its relevance to their work until Flip asked them to close their eyes and listen. “Tell me,” he asked. “Is he talking about horses or kids?”

Flip became a close friend and we later collaborated on a video used for instructional purposes in the school system. Although I had developed my approach from my work with horses and his had grown from his knowledge of children and teachers, there was a strong relationship between my concepts and his teaching methods. Although his work is primarily educating teachers who work with children, he and I had been collaborating for about a year when he got the call from Transit Mix, which asked him if he could use his renowned skills for improving educational performance to help solve its corporate problems. Flip took a hard look at the driver problem. Cement trucks carry a heavy load that rides high over the truck’s mainframe. With that high center of gravity, these vehicles are prone to overturn at the slightest miscue. The drivers are in charge of loading and unloading, washing the truck after each off-loading and preparing their unit for the next trip. The work is strenuous and the scheduling tension-packed. And when drivers quit, qualified replacements were scarce—in part due to a construction boom and an all-time low unemployment rate in Texas.

Another area of concern was property damage. Because of high turnover, competent operation of the vehicles was at a low level. Backing into someone’s building or crunching the contractor’s Mercedes was an expensive proposition.

After a few days of observation, Flip had identified what he believed was the primary problem. “The company and these drivers,” he said, “have not joined-up. I found a window, up high in the office building where I could see a large portion of the operation. I watched the drivers arriving in the morning, parking their cars, taking over their trucks and starting their day. They never talked to anybody and no one spoke to them. When their truck was loaded, off they went, getting directions from a dispatcher on their CB radios.”

Flip concluded that the drivers were seen as little more than robots. When he met them to hear their concerns, he discovered that they were completely disengaged from the company. Their basic concern was “When is pay day and how much do I get?”

Flip and I had discussed the fact that every time I do Join-Up with a horse, I give him a rub between the eyes; I let him know that I care; then I communicate with him, form a relationship and earn his trust and respect. Flip then put in place the EXCEL Leadership Model, which he uses with teachers. It consists of a series of steps almost identical to my own in the round pen. As in Join-Up, first comes the welcome—one of the most important phases of building trust. My rubbing of the horse’s forehead is analogous to offering a handshake, saying “hello” and exchanging pleasantries. Flip told Transit Mix executives that they had to listen to the needs of their employees, much as I listen to my horses.

Flip spent considerable time with the executives and established their individual needs and wishes, both for their working lives and for the company—he literally joined-up with them and urged them to engage with their drivers in the same fashion. He went around the room shaking their hands, asking them if they had ever shaken the hands of their drivers. Each had to admit that he had not, and all agreed to give the plan their best shot. This was vital, because it is impossible to make significant change in a company unless you have agreement at the top level.

The executives had to convey concern, interest and commitment to the truck drivers and let them know that they were important and respected employees. They started meeting the drivers every morning, shaking their hands and exchanging a few words about their plans for the day. A new company attitude began to take shape.

New drivers and their families, many of whom spoke Spanish as their first language, experienced difficulties when first coming to town. So the company hired a social worker to help relocating families with telephone or electrical hookups, in registering children in school or finding a doctor. The social worker even went to workers’ homes to discuss with spouses things such as job benefits and preschool classes, how to find tutoring services or set up car pools, since the head of the household often drove the family’s only vehicle to work. Taking a lot of the stress out of matters at home left the men better able to concentrate on work. The social worker’s job was equivalent to Follow-Up, which enables the trainer to create a bond of trust with the horse. The workers had found a safe place, which enabled them to respect their managers and give their commitment to the partnership.

At one point, the child of a driver became seriously ill. The company helped out and it was astonishing how many other drivers showed up to help the family as well. Transit Mix suddenly had a team.

Flip then decided to bring company executives to watch one of my demonstrations where they too learned the power of Join-Up. Managers went back to work with a new enthusiasm, which they communicated to employees, and goodwill flourished. Shop mechanics would shake hands with drivers; there was a new willingness to work harder to resolve problems.

At the same time Transit Mix executives, Bill McWhirter, president, and Haywood Walker, COO, under Flip’s guidance, instituted a certified professional driver program. After a thorough training course, certified drivers got a bonus, a raise and a patch for their uniforms. This created an elite corps within the drivers’ group. Men who were proud to do a good job were rewarded for their efforts.

Competition for the certification courses encouraged drivers to stay with Transit Mix. There were even competitions between plants to select the most outstanding driver. The company discovered the value of giving positive rewards for positive actions. Employees’ efforts were rewarded with care and commitment. To anyone who has watched me work with a horse in a round pen, it all sounds familiar.

Most of the drivers came to the company with lots of baggage. They had spent their lives relegated to low-paying jobs and they were not used to being treated with respect. At first they were skeptical; they were unaccustomed to a handshake from the bosses, but it wasn’t long before they saw the workplace as a safe place and their effort increased dramatically.

Mark Stiles, group president, set the tone and direction for a successful future. The driver turnover rate dropped from 72 percent to 47 percent in just over fourteen months. The dropout rate among certified drivers was less than 1 percent. Transit Mix is confident that the dropout rate will continue to fall sharply. Meanwhile, the company now serves as a model for the trucking industry, and Transit Mix is more profitable than ever.