Fuel your business with horse sense

​Get to the heart of the matter with Equine Assisted Coaching

Whether traditional coaching approaches aren’t delivering the results you need, or you’re looking for something a bit different to inspire as well as deliver, the emerging field of Equine Assisted Coaching could be what you are looking for.

Equine assisted coaching isn’t about riding or horsemanship. It’s about creating a space in which structured contact with horses acts as a powerful stimulus for feedback and coaching leading to actions which can be immediately implemented back in the workplace.

If you haven’t come across equine assisted coaching before (and the chances are you may well not have done) it can be hard to understand how a horse can help you deal with the challenges you, your business, your team are facing. The reality is that it’s actually a far more immediate and effective way of drilling down to the heart of the matter than more conventional coaching techniques.

The key is the way horses work as individuals and as pack animals. They react to what they sense without that sense being clouded by social niceties, without fear of ‘upsetting’ someone. If you try to make a horse follow you somewhere you don’t want to go, the horse will sense this and no amount of cajoling will persuade him otherwise. Using this intuition is the key to equine assisted coaching, and it achieves some startling results. Time and again, we see horses pick up on the ‘real’ issue – regardless of attempts to conceal it. Equally startlingly, because this feedback is delivered without judgment, we see those being coached respond and embrace the feedback far more readily than in more conventional coaching scenarios.

Horses provide instant feedback – there’s no pussyfooting around an issue. As coaches working with the horses and with teams or individuals – business leaders, entrepreneurs – we are trained to understand and interpret the reactions the horses display in any situation, which in turn facilitates open discussion. Results that might take a number of sessions using conventional coaching and paper-based assessments can often be delivered from one, tailored, equine assisted coaching session.
Crucially, equine assisted coaching the way we deliver it is structured and tailored to the challenges you are facing. We discuss your issues and objectives and plan your session accordingly. Our human coaches, and our horses, are flexible and professional and can reshape the session in real time if the answers that are coming out highlight that a different issue needs to be addressed.
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You can find out more about equine assisted coaching from our governing body the International Association for Horse Assisted Education http://www.eahae.org/, and we’d be delighted to answer your questions about equine assisted coaching and benefits for your business.