“A
Equicoaching: learn to lead people by learning to lead a horse
horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
William Shakespeare, Richard III, 1594
This phrase has taken on new meaning over the last decade or two. Some people, who probably love horses, have made a business out of ‘equicoaching’ or learning to lead a horse as a way to… become a better leader.
The idea is that if you understand how to deal with a horse, you will learn how to better deal with people as a leader, or so says their claim.
Key words
Horses, coaching, leadership, whinnying, interspecies communication.
What is equicoaching?
Equicoaching is an alleged coaching technique that supposedly leads to faster problemsolving by the power of the horse. It is very popular in Belgium, Sweden, and the Netherlands, though I have also found proponents in the United States. It is not to be confused with forms of Animal Assisted Therapy, such as riding therapy for disabled children. It doesn’t seek to cure the person dealing with the horse, although some claims lean towards pathological descriptions (“repressive emotions”).
Some of its proponents say it can improve your leadership skills and assertiveness and can boost conflict resolution and commercial skills. Moreover, it promotes collaborative leadership in place of autocratic leadership. Dealing with the horse is supposed to help the learner adapt his/her behavior as a leader of his/her employees. One website says: “The horse helps us to test the proposed action immediately and make adjustments where necessary. The horse feels immediately whether the man’s thinking, feeling and doing are on the same line. This confrontation leads us to new insights” (www.qcstables.com)
And another says: “Deeply instinctive and authentic, horses are very receptive to repressed emotions, non-verbal communication (which tends to reveal more than it hides), the unsaid, emotional blocks, contradictory behavior, as well as words themselves.” And “In effect, a horse can mirror our emotions, helping us to identify and come to terms with our own disharmony in a non-confrontational or threatening environment. Equally, their sensitivity can inspire and drive us to dig deep and re-discover our innate skills to cope, and to get better. In a nutshell; horses are healers.” (www.equireliance.com)
Some call it also “equine assisted coaching” or “equine guided coaching.” Like any form of coaching, equicoaching is of course also accepted by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). The ICF is an organization for which I have absolutely no respect: it seems they are willing to accredit anyone just to make a profit from the subscription fee.
What is the training about? You work with a horse under the supervision of a ‘skilled horseman or horsewoman,’ and no prior experience is needed to participate. In one report (Andersen, 2009, p. 78), one can read how it works:
● Prior to the first coaching session with the horse, an introductory session is held to provide information on how to handle the horse and what to expect.
● In the first session, the participant is likely to “experience initial uncertainties.”
● The participant will gradually disarm and become emotionally prepared for coaching.
● Each session consists of several exercises. The coach pays close attention to the participant’s words and body language. The coach may also give instructions based on his/her observations.
● Before and after each session, the participant is briefed or debriefed.
■ Executive Summary Theory
The idea that one can learn to lead people better by learning to lead a horse is a very unusual theory indeed. The theory has many untestable assumptions and is highly implausible from a biological perspective. For example, how could one get “direct feedback from the horse without interpretation”?
There is also no explanation how the ‘transfer’ of learning from one species to another occurs. Even serious experimentation attempts with our closest relatives, chimps, have demonstrated large problems with ‘interspecies encounters.’
Empirical data
● There is zero evidence.
● We can simply dismiss the theory as there is a total absence of evidence.
Theoretical/empirical grid
Conclusion
Don’t risk your life, and your money, on equicoaching. If you are determined to spend your money, bet on horses, or even better, give it to a good cause. If you want to learn from animals and you have a pet dog: use your dog. He will be loyal, bark from time to time, walk on the leash, and appreciate the food you serve him.
Moral Assessment
Wasting company or government money on equicoaching is shameful and only benefits the cynical proponents who obviously feel no shame in selling their scam. It is also unethical to inflict stress on horses when they are required to meet unknown humans.
Discussion
■ Theoretical soundness
I found no explanation as to what mechanisms would guarantee ‘leadership transfer’ from one species (the horse) to another species (the human). By transfer I mean how a leader could, for example, transfer what he learned from dealing with the horse back to his/her position as a leader of human employees.
Since the horse brain is very different from the human brain, it is highly implausible that this could ever work. Perhaps you’ve heard of the famous species-to-species interaction called ‘project Nim.’ In this project, humans tried to raise a young male chimpanzee (named Nim Chimpsky) as if it were a human infant. He caused a lot of trouble, aggressively attacking his caretakers once adolescence began to transform him into a strong adult male, and the project had to be aborted. If we can’t succeed in establishing communication with our closest genetically-related species, how on earth could we establish good communication and feedback with horses? Sure, we can try reading their verbal (snorting, whinnying) and nonverbal communications (head jerks, etc.). And I have no doubt that a horse lover can tell you how different characters or temperaments horses can have.
The curious case of… species-to-species feedback I found some ‘research’ papers, mainly dissertations from students in… agriculture, and some coaching education programs, that can teach us a lot about their views: “What differentiates humans and horses is that horses do not consciously interpret what they experience as humans do. Results from scientific investigations show that the brain of the horse does not have the resources to interpret, or consider deeper, an act or experiences. Horses just react immediately to what they experience (Lehmann, 2009, p. 23). This gives people the possibility to get a direct feedback from the horse without interpretation.” (Vibeke Anderson, dissertation, 2009, p. 9)
Get direct feedback from the horse? Mm, is this feedback expressed using words or whinnying? Or is it through the horse’s facial expressions or through body language? Or maybe through the obscure process of quantum mechanics? I can imagine that people who work with horses a lot can read the body language of a horse quite well, but a lay person?
Vibeke Anderson, a Danish horse lover and founder of ISAR, an equicoaching company, interviewed 9 participants of an equicoaching session. She ‘found’ that participants who had this subjective experience “found the leader within” and that “the interaction with the horse contributed to taking leadership in their own life” (2009, p. 79). It comes as no surprise that interviewed participants think it made them better. This is the Forer effect once again in all its glory: people readily accept vague explanations, especially if they are framed with
a positive effect. If you have committed yourself to be an equicoach, or have taken a ‘development’ course as all participants did, then you want to be consistent with yourself (Cialdini, 2009). Needless to say, Anderson’s study did not comply with the highest research standards. It used neither a control group (e.g. a control group that received no training or a control group that received a classical coaching method), nor another evidence-based methodology. Only 9 people were included in the ‘study.’ Of the 9 interviewed participants, 8 were female and 6 had a “close relation to horses” (whatever that means—no, don’t even go there). That’s far from random sampling. I found that Vebike Anderson graduated in agronomy and later on attended an equicoaching training in Arizona (she reported that Ariana Strozzi at SkyHorse trained her in the equicoaching techniques). Then she followed up with a training in coaching and development and wrote her dissertation titled “Equine guided coaching.” Confirmation bias? Highly likely.
But it’s true that one can always do better at their job. A Swedish agriculturalist named Josefin Fransson interviewed a mere 5 women (bye-bye statistical power and random sampling) about their experience with equicoaching for her master’s thesis in economics and management (part of an agricultural program). Her examiner was Karin Hakelius, also from the Agricultural Science department. I couldn’t help but notice they are all women (apart from the supervisor Richard Ferguson). If it weren’t a sexist remark, one would begin to suspect that women are especially vulnerable to the bullshit117 promoted by equicoaching fanatics. Maybe it’s a hypothesis worth investigating: are female horse-lovers more prone to believing in equicoaching?
You may think equicoaching is a fringe HR or management phenomenon, but think again! From a Twitter exchange between Jesse Segers (a teacher at a business school) and psychology professor Frederik Anseel, I learned that the Swiss business school IMD offers Equicoaching too. It was a funny exchange, because Segers argued that “because IMD offers it,” it should be investigated. Anseel replied that “business schools largely fail in providing rigorous, evidence-based teaching” and that academics should “not try to prove or disprove every new fad.” I agree, our tax money should not be used to investigate every outrageous claim out there.
What else is wrong with this stuf?
Apart from the obvious dangers of getting hurt when working with horses and the total lack of evidence? Stress for the horse.
There is some serious research (although the sample sizes are always too small) into animal behavior showing that horses exhibit more stress when approached by an unfamiliar human. The explanation is simple: horses are prey animals and experience stress in the face of predators. An unknown human approaching a horse could mimic a predator’s approach. Different ways of handling horses (halter leading, grooming/brushing, lifting feet, lunging and pseudosaddling versus desensitization, yielding to body pressure, lunging and freelunging) mostly don’t show any effects on horses’ emotional reactivity (Fureix et al., 2009) . Habituation of the horse following repeated exposure (over several weeks) is the only way that has been found to date to reduce stress experienced by horses (e.g. Visser et al., 2009). A perhaps interesting fact: horses that experience stress whinny more, snort more, jerk their heads more, grind their teeth more, defecate more, or suddenly trot or gallop. There is no consensus as to whether lip movements point to thirst or stress.
117 Or is it horseshit?
One study with only 29 horses found some evidence that these horses showed a preference for approaching humans that displayed submissive postures rather than dominant postures. The study concluded that the horses were able to discriminate between human body postures, but offered no support that humans learn anything about leadership from this intervention (Smith et al., 2018). The same group of researchers used 28 horses to ‘demonstrate’ that horses can distinguish between happy and angry human faces (Smith et al., 2016). Sadly enough for believers in equicoaching, these studies say nothing about what humans can learn from horses with regards to leadership capacity. I almost feel tempted to say the horses are probably smarter than believers in equicoaching.
What does my Champions League of experts say?
Do you really think they would devote their time and precious resources to this subject?
What does the majority of the feld of experts think?
Not much has been written about this ‘emerging field of coaching.’
I received some comments on my draft of this chapter from some horse-lovers involved in ‘natural horsemanship’ and ‘sympathetic horsemanship.’ They agreed that probably nothing can be learned with regards to leadership style in humans. Getting to know your own (anxiety or stress) limits is, of course, a possible take-away, but they point to several problems and flaws in the reasoning:
● they point out the danger when lay people are afraid of horses or are allergic to them;
● regarding the claim that you would learn more collaborative leadership rather than autocratic leadership, they point out that horses have a very strict hierarchy and the leader sometimes ‘corrects’ other horses by kicking (which is why proponents of natural horsemanship often remove the iron horseshoes to prevent injuries when many horses are put together).
The theoretical score: -5. The theory is full of (many untestable) assumptions. From a biological perspective, it is highly unlikely that from learning to lead a horse in such a fashion that we could become better people leaders (I accept you could become a better horse leader).
■ Empirical findings
What is the level of evidence?
Should it be any wonder that a search for evidence using several scientific databases provided the following results?
I used the terms ‘Equicoaching’ or ‘equine assisted coaching’:
● ProQuest (ABI/INFORM global): “Your search for equicoaching found 0 results.”
● EBSCO (Business source Elite): “No results were found.”
● APA PsycNET: “ equicoaching did not match any documents .” When searching for equine and coaching, I found three articles, but none of them concerned equine assisted coaching.
Only through Google scholar did I find the papers I referred to, but they are not peerreviewed.
There is only one simple conclusion: what can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The empirical score: -1. The methodology used is clearly flawed and inadequate.
Why do people believe equicoaching can ofer them valuable insights?
I don’t know, so I hope my readers can help me out on this. Maybe because people think about the beneficial effects their home pets have on them? Or maybe they’ve heard about dolphin-assisted therapy and think the same beneficial effects could be obtained from horses? At any rate, they don’t seem to realize that the soothing, or even therapeutic, effect of working with animals doesn’t equate to learning to communicate better with other humans or to learning to become better leaders.
Perhaps people get it mixed up with what many dog or horse owners have experienced themselves: how these animals can pick up on our moods or stress levels. This is a phenomenon that occurs between people as well and is called ‘emotional contagion.’ But being able to capture each other’s emotions is not the same as learning how to lead people. Maybe equicoaching could teach you one valuable thing: to control your stress, anxiety, or anger before dealing with animals or fellow humans. But please, forget the idea that horses can feel whether our “thinking and feeling are aligned” or can literally understand the words we use.
One reviewer of an early draft of this chapter told me that he and his trainer had been joking about their personal experiences (not evidence based!): they thought that ‘natural horsemanship’ mostly attracts women over 40 who believe in ‘harmony with nature.’ To those people, I have to say: wake up, because nature is brutal—just think of the everlasting arms race between predator animals (carnivores) and prey species. There is not so much harmony in nature, but rather a lot of brutality.
How likely is it this theory will ever prove to be valid?
Very unlikely, as horses and humans have very different social systems and very different ways of communicating with each other. Species-to-species communication seems to be very difficult, even with our own cousins, chimpanzees.
■ Original sources consulted
Andersen, V. (2009). Equine guided coaching – a critical exploration of the use of horses in coaching. University of Portsmouth. (Dissertation)
Cialdini, R. (2009). Influence - Science and Practice. Fifth edition, New York: Pearson Education. Fransson, J. (2015). Leadership Skills developed through horse experiences and their usefulness for business leaders. (http://stud.epsilon.slu.se)
Fureix, C., Pagès, M. Bon, R., Lasalle, J-M., Kuntz, P., & Gonzales, G. (2009). A preliminary study of the effects of handling type on horses’ emotional reactivity and the human–horse relationship. Behavioural Processes, 82, 202–210.
Smith, A. V., Proops, L., Grounds, K., Wathan, J., & McComb, K. (2016). Functionally relevant responses to human facial expressions of emotion in the domestic horse (Equus caballus). Biology letters, 12(2), 20150907.
Smith, A. V., Wilson, C., McComb, K., & Proops, L. (2018). Domestic horses (Equus caballus) prefer to approach humans displaying a submissive body posture rather than a dominant body posture. Animal cognition, 21(2), 307–312.
Visser, K.E., VanDierendonck, M., Ellis, A.D., Rijksen, C. & Van Reenen, C.G. (2009). A comparison of sympathetic and conventional training methods on responses to initial horse training. The Veterinary Journal, 181, 48–52.