I love horses as much as the next person, but I was listening to a story on NPR the other day that really made me wince. It was about how horses were being used in corporate training. The trainers basically brought employees into a barn and gave them a task they had to accomplish with a horse. In the example I've excerpted below, two women were asked to get a horse to jump over a fence and they didn't know what to do, so the horse just trotted away. The trainer then talks about how horses "mirror your intentions" and the employees then find great meaning in the horse's actions. I don't know about you, but this all sounds like unsupported claims (I'm not familiar with research on horses - do they really "mirror your intentions"?) and our tendency to read meaning into whatever happens.
Maybe I have too much critical thinking on the brain, but take a listen or read the transcript below and let me know what you think. Here's the link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94415776 and here's part of the transcript: ___ "If you think the horse is going to stay there, it's going to stay there," Stockl says. "If you think the horse is going to walk away, it's going to walk away. It never fails." "They mirror you; the horses mirror your intentions, which is fascinating," Stockl says. "Because these horses we observe with every group, they always have a different behavior. They are you at this point." The horses ran away, she says, because the women hadn't thought through how to handle the task before they started. Jan Monks, the head insurance agent, says the exercise has made her think about the way she manages people how she has to be clear about what she wants. It's something she confesses is not always easy to do. "I can't just expect they're going to intuitively know what I'm expecting," Monks says. "It was surprising ... this whole exercise has made me stop and analyze myself and things that I do in business." Companies that use equine-assisted learning say horses are so good at reflecting human behavior, because they can help teach people something about themselves. And that, they say, can be a useful tool for understanding the workplace. ___ What do you think? Michael -- Michael Britt, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
