Monty Roberts; do you understand?

One of the most important contributors to success in personal and business life is the ability to communicate effectively. Communication is about delivering a message to another and we assume that the recipient has a perfect understanding of all the nuances and meanings of our messages. However, often meaning get lost in translation; re-coded and re-interpreted.An area of interest currently is the study of emotional intelligence or EQ as a vital element of any leader. One of the key strands of EQ is the ability to tune into other’s people’s emotional state and with that understand how to communicate with them.

This skill is a rare one indeed battling with the natural ego; ourselves at the centre of our concern. However, the skill is brilliantly illustrated with the practice of Horse Whispering.

Monty Roberts is often called, ‘The Man who talks to horses’. His father broke horses in the traditional way through discipline and often force. Monty practices an entirely different approach where he tunes in to the communication signals of the horse and communicates in the same language. The results of his approach are amazing.

Wild horses enter the training arena; half an hour later, there is a palpable trust between the animals and Monty. You can see the ongoing, non-verbal communication improving the relationship minute by minute.

The principles he discusses during the presentation are these;

• Horses are animals of flight so the first activity is simply to let them run, typically for about ¼ mile, the distance they would run in the wild from a predator.
• He then watches for signals of willingness to communicate from the horse - a turning of the ear to the trainer, chewing and licking, a dropping of the head and the tracing of a smaller circle moving towards the trainer in the arena.
• Then comes the key action Monty terms, ‘joining up’, where he stands at a 45 degree angle with back the horse which encourages that first symbol of trust from the horse, where they walk to the trainer. Typically the horse will then follow the trainer in a relaxed walk wherever they go. One of the learnings is not to challenge the horse by looking them in the eye. When we communicate as humans we seek out eye contact - this is not the way of the horse. And so Monty communicates with horses on their terms, building up such immediate trust that he is able to achieve outstanding results with wild and abused animals.

Watching him carry out a demonstration recently, I was held transfixed for over nearly 4 hours in a freezing arena. The power of his ability to communicate using the horses language and understand what they are communicating is outstanding.

If we can do this across species, then we should be able to communicate effectively within species. Yet we still struggle.