I recently had a chance to catch up with Julie Puentes, one of the graduates of the MSOLE (Masters of Science in Organizational Leadership and Ethics) program at St. Edward's. She's integrated a lifelong love of horses with a passion for authentic leadership to create some amazing development opportunities for leaders. Here are some snippets from our conversation. You can read more about Julie's work at www.LeadershipBridges.com.

I love your work with the horses as a vehicle for developing leadership. I know you love horses but why horses for leadership development?
Horses provide a safe and fun environment to practice and experiment with your emotions, actions, and intuition. They act as feedback agents for us, reacting to our most subtle changes in thoughts, emotions, intention, and focus. The horses are not judgmental in their reactions to us, but they do react in very clear and immediate ways in response to our behavior and feelings, so we cannot help but to become aware of the effect we are having on them and others. It enables people to take a cerebral idea and then bring into an actual experience that can easily be translated back to the workplace and interactions with people. It is also accurate because horses react authentically all the time. It can be much easier to know where you stand with a horse than with people sometimes!

The awareness leaders gain in the exercises with the horses goes a long way in helping them act and communicate from a place of authenticity. Authenticity is important when you talk about leadership effectiveness because it creates resonance among individuals and teams. Resonance means that a leader has struck an emotional chord with others by tapping into their emotions and is thus able to move them in a positive direction.

So getting unfiltered feedback is important to our self-awareness?
Yes, horses help us look at ourselves honestly and give us an accurate portrayal about which of our behaviors work and which ones don’t. They help us utilize our intuition, effectively direct our intention, and give us immediate positive feedback when we are being authentic. So, a leader gets a crash course in building his or her emotional intelligence, develops awareness and the ability to be authentic and create resonance.

Good stuff, Julie. How does that help the leader be more successful?
These skills translate into improving a leader’s ability to run his business because he will be better able to:
• Develop teams that are, congruent and engaged which increases productivity.
• Drive a business culture that fosters open two-way communication and dialogue in which people feel comfortable delivering bad news as well as good news so that everyone has the information they need, including the leader himself.
This open and honest environment promotes better decision-making from the leader and his employees.

No question that this has a huge impact on the bottom-line of the business. This is truly just the tip of the iceberg of what can be achieved with more authenticity in the workplace. The horses are a wonderful, fun, incredibly effective, experiential way to explore this and enhance leadership.

Thanks for sharing these ideas with my blog readers, Julie!

PS. For those of you in Central Texas, Julie is leading an open enrollment workshop at the Crossings, March 31-April 3. Great opportunity to learn more about this wonderful work!

For more information about Julie or her workshops and coaching: www.leadershipbridges.com or jpuentes@leadershipbridges.com.

Labels: interviews, leadership, learning