Second Crack – The Leadership Podcast (Episode 38)

This transcript is AI-generated and may contain typos and errors.

[00:41] Gerrit: Dear listeners, a warm welcome to Second Crack, The Leadership Podcast. If you are new to the show, This is where we explore everyday leadership dilemmas and paradoxes, and where we invite you to self reflect. I am Gerrit Pelzer, I work as an executive coach, and I bring to my coaching a combination of Western science and Asian wisdom.

[01:14] Joining me today, as usual, is my dear friend and business partner, Martin Aldergard. specializes in driving change and transformation within organizations. And what we both have in common is that we always put people at the center of our work. Hi, Martin. It's good to be recording again with you.

[01:34] Martin: Hi, Gerrit, likewise. And you know, I need to share with you, when you told me we were going to talk about horses and what leaders can learn about horses in today's episode. I, I feel a healthy amount of skepticism, challenging my 25 years in leadership development and change management. I will try to stay here with an open mind.

[01:58] Gerrit: We'll see if you manage that. Yeah, indeed. Today we have a rather unusual episode talking about what leaders can learn from horses. And I must be honest, I don't know much about horses myself. So to help us talk about horses and leadership, we have a wonderful guest on the show. A warm welcome to you as well, hello, Ed Renshaw. 

[02:22] Ed: Nice to see you, thanks for having me on.

[02:24] Gerrit: Thanks for being with us today. So brief introduction: Ed is an executive coach who also has extensive experience in the learning and development field. He has been supporting large corporates with their talent strategies and rolling out enterprise wide leadership and development programs. But through his own personal development, that has led him also in an interest in exploring alternative interventions to complement the more mainstream approach to developing leaders.

[02:57] And Ed, maybe we should share with our listeners how the two of us met? That was last year in a mindfulness retreat in Plum Village in the south of France. And I think the two of us, we were the only ones among the participants who work in this field of leadership development and executive coaching. So we already discussed a lot about how mindfulness impacts leadership and our coaching. And when you told me about your experience in Equine Assisted Therapy and Leadership Interventions. I got quite curious and thought, well, you know, let's have an episode about this. So as neither Martin nor I are experts on this, why don't you help us maybe telling us a little bit more about yourself and how you ended up working with horses?

[03:51] Ed: Thank you. Thank you, Gerrit. Thank you, Martin. It's, it's wonderful to be on. And yes, that was a, a beautiful experience, that mindfulness retreat. And I always think back to the time of, of using the energy and the mindfulness cultivated in that period when I'm doing my daily work. so let me, let me take you back to a sort of background on my career. So in the 20 odd, year, career, 23 year career I've had. I've really worked in the world of business learning and leadership development, and I've also worked in the NGO world, where I was in and around the United Nations. and what's always intrigued me has been, as you said in the introduction to your piece, it is all about people.

[04:33] And what fascinated me when I started off in business working in sort of training and, international networking events and traveling the world, which really, got the juices flowing in terms of, understanding and being curious around the world around me. Moving into the NGO world where we were lobbying at the United Nations in, Geneva and, and getting involved in a number of initiatives and campaigns around children's and women's rights. It really was all about how do you understand self, how do you understand other, how do you influence, how do you connect with a number of different stakeholders, how do you understand the way in which they're viewing the topic. And I remember working on a, on the UN, Treaty on Business and Human Rights. And it was a classic example of really trying to understand what is it that certain businesses are trying to achieve here? What is it that certain countries are trying to achieve here? What is it that certain, that the UN and other bodies are looking to achieve here? So that increased my curiosity of how do we interact as people to meet the end goal.

[05:33] I came back into, um, into the business sector. 

[05:37] So I spent the last 10 or so years, as you say, working in, learning and leadership development. So I've been working for smaller and larger consultancies around mindset, Strategies, quite experiential times and then in more traditional ways, you know, vast leadership development programs, rolling out women leadership programs and, high potential programs and so on and so forth. And more recently, really. Embedding myself in that movement around coaching and building out a coaching culture. And really starting to engage the top level of organizations to take a coaching approach to empowering their, their people in the organization and driving forward, you know, the individual, but also the enterprise wide cultural change.

[06:21] And when I think around horses, if I think around what I've seen in the mainstream through my time working in, you know, big corporate consultancies and working with big clients, and then I see my own personal development journey. I've like you guys, I'm sure I've seen things done in a very mainstream way. And I've seen things that are a little bit different. And challenged the kind of status quo in terms of, what might that intervention do to take me out of my comfort zone, to provoke me to look at things differently, to change the way that I reflect and become more self aware. and I was very strangely introduced quite bizarrely about seven or eight years ago to this field of, equine assisted learning or equine facilitated learning, which is different to, Equine Therapy, which is very much a therapeutical, clinical approach.

[07:12] Equine Facilitated Learning, Equine Assisted Learning, is really using the power of the horse and the interaction with the horse to draw out insights that a, that a leader or any person can really use to understand themselves further and understand their impact on people around them. 

[07:31] Tell us a little bit more about how does it all work? I mean, I have seen TV reports about how you use  equine assisted therapy with people who have maybe certain, mental problems. How do you use it in the learning piece? So imagine there's somebody who has, has never seen anything like that. How, how do you describe it? What's, what's going on there?

[07:59] I love the way you bring that up, Gerrit, and I can tell in your facial expression the, the curiosity. When I talk about horses, or bring them up in the context of this work, people either think I'm completely mad, or they completely get it. There is, there is no one in between. And you mentioned the point around, you know, mental health conditions and, and my experience of working with horses has been both with leaders and teams and organizations, but also in the physical and mental health side.

[08:35] So we'll focus more today on, on the leadership piece, but it's fast. It's been fascinating to watch also how horses respond to people with physical. disabilities, and interestingly then if we think around where it morphs into mental problems. difficulties around neurodiversity and other areas. Again, the way in which the horse can do a couple of things.

[09:02] One, help individuals or those people or leaders or whoever to regulate their breathing, regulate their emotions, but also to get insights from how they're showing up. But I won't go into the other side, I'll focus back on the leadership piece. A horse is a fight or flight animal. So, a horse by default is going to be scared of a human being unless they know that particular human being. Which means that they are the perfect mirror for human behaviour. So how we show up, and I'm discounting people who have their own horse and are very used to that horse, but when we show up as a stranger, the horse immediately is into fight or flight mode, and they will mirror you according to how you turn up. If you turn up with too much energy and you're too overwhelming, uh, and you're too in your head, they will react. Conversely, and you'll get my point of how this works, if you turn up too relaxed and too unpurposeful, or too undirectional, and I'll come on to explain what I mean by that, the horse won't know whether to follow you or not.

[10:23] Okay, so there's a number of different things that, that play out here. So before we get into the details of how it actually works, I mentioned it's the perfect mirror. A Horse will give you instant feedback into your behavior, your body language, your tone, the way you hold yourself, even seeing through from an energetic level, what's actually going on inside where humans can't, can't do that.

[10:53] They're also, and I'm thinking about some of these things I'm saying in the context of leaders and how leaders show up and how this can be integrated into leadership development programs or behavioral change programs, or even coaching. They are non judgmental, they don't have bias. I'll come on and tell you a story in a bit around how we had a team turn up with a CEO. The horse doesn't care if you're the CEO or the junior salesperson, not, not interested. So there's no, there's no hierarchy, in terms of the way they do that. And then thethird piece here is, horses can gain incredibly quick results or should I say working or interacting with horse can deliver incredibly quick results into shining a light on the way we're showing up, giving you the insights on how and why you might be, you know, a good getting things right or wrong in the workplace, in your personal life, wherever else.

[11:53] In the same way as Gerrit yourself as a coach, myself as a coach, and you know Martin from a leadership development perspective, it can sometimes take seven or eight sessions to really get down to the nitty gritty of what's going on in that person's make-up as to how they're having a tricky relationship with a given stakeholder of how they're struggling within the matrix of a given organization. So horses can get really, you know, can really draw out that insight incredibly quickly.

[12:19] Um, so let me tell you how it works. You can work with the horses in a one to one context or in a group context, right? And largely it would take the format of a, a learning intervention. So, you'd have a pre session, sitting down with the individual, the leader, or with the leader and the leader's team, or with any other individual in a coaching session or a one to one. And you'd run through, what are your goals. You know, you'd run through, what are you looking to achieve through this learning intervention? What are your fears around this learning intervention? Really paying attention to psychological safety and all these pieces, which by the way, and from an ethical standpoint, the horse is part of this agreement. If the horse is not looking comfortable, then the episode stops, the intervention stops immediately, so the horse is very much part of this, not sitting around the table, it's part of this pre session, but it's very much taken into account. 

[13:15] And then what you do is look at those goals and go out into the yard, the horse yard, where you will have a horse that's been selected, and yourself as the practitioner, and the client, or the group, and the horse will engage in an interaction, After that, and I'll come back and explain what that might look like, after that you'll go back into the room and you'll debrief.

[13:40] And there's usually an air of stunned silence. And I'll give you a sense of, you know, Martin, to your initial point, or Gerrit, it might have been you, there's a healthy amount of cynicism in the room beforehand, and, and sort of laughter and, and It's very interesting how the mood changes as they start to work with the horse and some of these insights come up. They don't always come up. You know, there's no, it's no magic bullet. To then the debrief where the, the, the, the energy of the room, the nature of the room can often be, extremely difficult. 

[14:16] So in the context of, let's start with an individual, a leader comes in, the leader's mentioned he's having problems, or challenges working with his team, or his peers, or his managing upwards, downwards, whatever it happens to be. Let's go and take this to the horse, let's see. So then the leader will engage with the horse. The practitioner will stand back and go, go and go and say hello. And the leader sort of looks over and looks at you and goes, what do you mean? I'm not talking to the horse, am I? And it'd be very interesting to see what happens. Does the horse move away? Does the leader go to the head of the horse or to the body of the horse? Is the leader too much in his or her head compared to being grounded? Is the leader's energy very directive? Is it very authoritative or is it very, you know, relaxed? and all sorts of these things can sort of play out, and, and invariably something comes up. And as a practitioner, a coach, uh, an equine assisted coach, you again in coaching format are not judging, you're not directing, you're just saying what you 

[15:26] see. I noticed when you got near the horse, the horse moved away and you didn't know what to do, or something like that.

[15:36] That in itself is, is an insight, but the bigger insight is what was going on for you there as a leader. You can see how the coaching approach comes into this. I'll come back to a group and I'll use some examples here of how it's played out. So a group comes and in the pre session, what do you want to work on today? Well, this is a, we're having a strategy day, we're doing our results, we're doing our forecasting and we're going to work at how we work together better as a team. So in that first meeting, we sort of, as practitioners, how's it working? You know, where are the, where are things not working? oh yeah, I think it's, I think we're okay. I think we're okay. This person does this, this person does that. We're aligned here. We know the vision, all the usual stuff we talk around in, in setting out vision and implementing it. They went to the horse.

[16:25] We set them an exercise. We put some assault course on the ground. Everything's safe for the horse, and I keep reiterating that because it's really important. Here's a smaller assault course. You as a team work together and take the horse around the assault course. Looks pretty easy. You know, the team came into the yard, buoyed, laughter. Right, who's the boss or whatever. Over to you. There was no cohesion. There was no direction. There was no one taking the lead, and ultimately what happened was they all sort of aligned themselves around the horse, looked at each other slightly strangely, and of course what happened when they went to, we set up an obstacle course that here's the start, here's the finish, the finish signifies where you want to get to as a, as an organization or that particular strategy.They went off that way and of course the horse didn't follow them. So that in itself is interesting, what's more interesting is, what's going on here?

[17:22] Gerrit: Yeah.

[17:24] Ed: And as the session went on and then back in the debrief room afterwards. Are we really aligned on the strategy? Are we really bought in? Is that person leading? Do you really believe, does the person who's leading it, do they really believe in the mission? Because a horse wants to be led and the horse wants purposeful leadership. And if you're not showing up as a personal leader or command, you know, with the right energy and the right approach, the horse will not go.

[17:51] And the CEO actually in that particular context sat in the debrief, fairly humbled, fairly vulnerable, and to his great credit, said that was a humbling experience for me, because the horse had shone up, not just the strategy, or lack of cohesive strategy, but it also made him realize how he's interacting with his team and perhaps hasn't got the followership that he probably should have.

[18:18] As you know, with coaching or with leadership programs and so on, we're literally putting people in a certain situation and then saying what's coming up. And it just so happens, this is such an unusual, provocative, vulnerable situation for individuals, leaders, whoever it is to be in, it tends to draw out a reaction, which is then we work, as you guys know, we work on that reaction and how that impacts in the workplace and how we can work with that going forward. 

[18:49] Gerrit: It's, it's amazing and fascinating, and there's a firework of thoughts in my head right now. And I think there were three things that stood out for me. That was the, the perfect mirror, the feedback aspect. Um, there was this about the fight and flight response of the horse and what you said, something like go, go and say hello to the horse.

[19:16] And perhaps if I start with the fight and flight, people who have listened to our podcast know that I'm very interested in also human emotions. And I think that human beings are maybe not so different from horses. Of course, we have this, maybe a different rational mind at work here. But at the end of the day, we're still very much driven by our emotions, often without conscious awareness. And our brain, one of the big tasks of our brain is to ensure survival. So in any given moment, we are, the brain is also checking Am I safe or not? Am I safe or not? Right? And so the, the link that I'm making here is, while it's for an expert like you, so obvious with the horse, I think in the human interactions, we have the same thing. So the moment I meet somebody for the first time, I check actually in an instance, like, am I safe or not? Can I trust this person? And maybe this builds up to what you said, the horse wants to be led, but it wants purposeful leadership. I think the same is true for human beings, right. So many of us want to be led, but we want also a leader who we can trust, who inspires us. And maybe the horse is a better, better and quicker way of checking that. And in fact, I was actually thinking while listening to you, politics everywhere seem to be in so much turmoil. And I think before we go for an election, we should send the politicians, we should observe them with horses and make our decision.

[20:59] And, maybe coming back to the connection piece, I think the other aspect that I see again and again neglected in professional relations in the corporate world is the human interaction, the relationship. And a friend of mine, Hello Wim, he always talks about do people make a connection with another human being? And I think, like you said, going to say hello to the horse is like, am I able to make a connection with the horse? But then the same, and there it's obvious, right, we can see immediately how the horse responds. I would argue for human beings, it's the same. Am I able to make a connection? Am I able to make a connection with my teammates? Am I able, as a leader to make a connection with whoever my stakeholders are? So it's, it's extremely interesting, and I hope one day we have an opportunity , Ed, where you can take me to your work with the horses. I would like to see how the horses respond to me as well.

[22:07] Martin: Yeah, lovely, Gerrit. There is, there is so many good points that you kind of, summarized there and made a link between what we can learn from the horse and then generalize that link to, to, to leadership and leading other humans. One thing that sticks with me beside what you already mentioned, Gerrit, is the non bias of the horse, and I'm thinking of, as leaders, there's typically a lot of egos, they're successful, they're performance driven, everybody looking up to them, And I'm assuming that the horse doesn't give anything about that. I imagine as a leader, I would stand there very naked, kind of very vulnerable, very naked. There is no big desk, there is no big title in front of me. And, It must be a scary situation for me as a leader to not knowing what, what to do. And, and then I'm linking to that, you said this difference when they are in the room before the intervention and then when they come to the debriefing, at the debriefing, it's silence and humbleness.

[23:24] Undressing the ego of myself as a leader and being vulnerable so I can be also humble, that is when I'm opening myself up to learning and self reflection. I got to, I got to take off all my ego dress, and look at myself naked. That is when I have a chance to develop to my next level, right?

[23:49] Ed: And I think Martin, you guys have brought up so much that we could be here for three weeks discussing this, but just to pick up on a couple of those things, that is exactly what it is. You're, you're putting yourself as a leader who is reasonably comfortable in, in, in a given environment, in an environment so alien to that person. Let's be honest, most people are reasonably scared of horses. You're talking about an enormous great animal here. That, that could do some real damage to you if you don't know whether to, and by the way, I should say, you know, we do the safety piece around, don't walk around the back of the horse and so on, but first and foremost, these are physical beings. 

[24:28] But secondly, it's an incredibly eerie environment to really sort of show up. And you mentioned, just to pick up on a couple of things that you talked around, you're absolutely right around the connection. How often do we really have intimate soulful connection with, I mean, less so even now in a hybrid world and the way the world of work has moved, but don't forget, this is not just horses. Every horse is different. Every horse has a different personality, so it's not a case of I learn how to go and interact with Gerrit or Martin or horse X or horse Y every time I go near a horse. I need to be aware of how I'm showing up, I need to be mindful of the person in front of me. What's their style? Some horses are more energetic, some horses are less, some horses are going to flinch, some don't. It's all about building connection and trust. And some of the other work I've done in, in more sort of charitable areas is with veterans, you know, war veterans. And, and it's been incredibly popular intervention with war veterans because as they come back into civilian life, they're really struggling, I'm generalizing, but some might be really struggling with building trust. Now, if they can build trust with a horse, who doesn't, to your point Martin, have the ego, the judgment, the bias, yeah, they can build that trust and leverage that trust and the confidence they get from being able to trust another being, whether it's a horse or a human, to then go back into civilian life.

[26:03] Pick up a couple of things, and some of this gets a bit deep, so there's different levels of which the horse community or the equine community looks at in terms of the equine world. Some would see the horse as consciousness, 

[26:15] so horses do not have a conceptual mind, they don't think, humans think, humans are caught up in ego. Horses wouldn't be. So, there in itself is, is the conundrum, you know, as someone goes into the horse stables and myself included, you're full of thoughts, what's, whatever's going on in that day. The horses are just stripping straight through that and seeing what's in front of them. So you've got this immediate sort of imbalance, which, which is what creates that such instant feedback that humans cannot find it much harder to tell from each other.

[26:50] So me sitting across the table for someone as a coach. I really believe, and Gerrit, we've had these conversations, you know, in the coaching discipline, the power of mindfulness is enormous, the power of presence is enormous, the power of whether you're in your body and listening with your body as much as listening with your head, all the sort of classic ways of thinking around modern day coaching, are absolutely key. If you think about it from a horse's perspective, they don't necessarily have to go there because they are stripped bare already, so it's, it's a fascinating piece. 

[27:25] The other thing, just to pick up on one or two more bits you talked around, I think what I've seen again, trying to connect this back to mainstream workplace, I think there is a big move around, more mindful leadership, more conscious leadership. So by building up some of these skill sets or experiences, or opening yourself up to a situation, which is quite extreme in the case of the horse, you know, is not actually that, that, that left field, if you think about it, but it does require to the point you guys made earlier, people being brave enough. Leaders either to accept the offer to go and work with horses. Human resources folks to be brave enough to put it to your leaders, or team members to go as a team and be self examined, opened-up, in that sort of way. And my last point would be, Martin, I think you mentioned around the post session. Look, I'm not saying that every leader or every group that goes and works with the horses is going to receive mind blowing insights, is going to receive life changing experiences, of course not. But there's always something that comes up, there's always something that is, that someone will either gain an insight there or further down the line in the weeks to come. And there's always in that session after it creates in the way that I believe these programs should, the starting point for what was going on there. How can we build on this? Gerrit, I think you were going to

[29:01] Yeah, that was actually a point I wanted to make or I wanted to ask the question, what do people do afterwards? What's the impact? Because one of the items I did not touch on before was this feedback aspect, shining a light on it, on the situation. Let's say as coaches, our role is also to give our clients feedback. Sometimes the unpleasant feedback that nobody else is giving them. Or very often we conduct a 360 degree feedback exercise. And people respond to it differently, right? Many people who come into coaching, they are curious about learning, but some are also defensive. So they receive the feedback, and if there's anything that sounds unpleasant, perhaps they just discount it, right? Yeah, this is only because... oh, I know this, this is, this is a comment that Martin made, because. So I would assume that also when you work with horses, people bring different levels of openness with them. Some are very curious to learn about themselves, and others will find lots of excuses why you picked the wrong horse for them, And I don't think in any intervention, Gerrit, that a leader or organizations or individuals chooses is going to be one size fits all. If you're not open to change, or opening up or behavioral change or insights or self reflection, you're probably not, um, of course, but your point around the feedback, you know, the, these programs are integrated into broader coaching, broader workshop, broader end to end, broader assessment, start and finish type, type scenarios. So I think one of the misconceptions might be when you get onto some of these more experiential ways is, let's go and work with the horses and see what comes up. It's grounded in a you know, a skillful, carefully choreographed or articulated, leadership development program, if you like.

[31:11] However, a bit like in the way that I believe coaching should be when you're in the moment and you're with the horse, let's see what comes up. There's no control in terms of we need to get to here. Let's see what, let's see what the horse brings up. 

[31:27] Martin: I don't have the horse physically, the access to this. So how could I, using the horse as a metaphor, what could I learn? What, what should I take with me from the horse as a metaphor?

[31:44] Ed: yeah. I'll give you one example of, 

[31:46]  whether this directly answers your question, some children we work with in the neurodiversity field, so my work takes me into the corporate space, but also beyond, and again, the similar principle applies with the children, I'm having problems at school. I'm scared of a task. I don't know how to do maths. we use the horse, the exercise around the horse, such as picking up the hoof, such as leading the horse, to develop some of these competencies, some of these skills, some of these behavioral traits. And further down the line we have reports of children who come back a week or two weeks later saying when I was in class and my teacher told me off for X, Y, Z, which has all happened to all of us I presume, certainly me, I thought of the horse. I thought of the horse. I thought of how the horse would be walking with me. I thought of how strong I was and what I learned from being with the horse, that if I connected, if I built trust, if I, if I walked with purpose, with the right energy, the horse would follow. And this child, I remember to this day really, hanh you know, said when the teacher said this, usually I would have reacted in this way, instead I thought of Toffee, the name of the horse, and I stood tall and I, and I breathed cause we worked with them around the breathing as well a little bit in the, in the context of horses, because it's to be around horses, you do need to be reasonably as calm as you can be. 

[33:12] I myself still do this today as I look at the way I've shifted together with my mindfulness practice, how I've shifted my way of reacting to responding to situations. And we all know in the workplace, my goodness, there's opportunities to react to everything and anything. Personal life, work life, workplace, whatever it happens to be. Um, but some of the lessons I've learned through breathing or through being with the horses, the way that the horse, has, has reacted to me has really helped me pause and switch between reacting and responding. And ultimately it's that transition between reacting and responding that probably can shift leadership alone.

[33:51] Martin: mm mm 

[33:53] Ed: The lesson I always think around in the workplace and in, in with my coaching clients is, which of the things you really need to get involved in, which of the thing can you just let go? joiningwhere are you taking a few breaths? how can you skillfully, manage life in your workplace or your personal life without getting caught up in the noise, in the sort of game, in the ego, to your, to your point, Martin, you know, so the horses give one option, and many of the leaders perhaps listening will have all sorts of different hobbies, interests that could be used as a a way of, extracting those learnings, and becoming a better leader and whatever leadership means to them. and I think underpinned in all of this, going back to where I met Gerrit is that essence of mindfulness, you know, without being grounded, without being present, you have very little chance of building a relationship with a horse. And I would argue without being grounded and being present, you're always going to come up again, with troubles and conflicts and everything else in the workplace, just by the nature of how you're showing up and how other people are reacting to you. 

[35:06] So, it's a super interesting field. do I take lessons from it? Yes, of course. Have I mastered it? Of course not. But I'd like to think that when I go through some of these situations, I do think of the horse. I do use some of these sort of learnings and it helps me just to, reframe, and re evaluate the way that I'm showing up and what impact that might have on people around me.

[35:28] And Ed, what you just said, I felt that was already like the perfect closing remarks for, for the episode.Yeah, no, it's been, look, it's been a wonderful session, and I think you can tell I always get excited about talking around all things, coaching, leadership development, self development. Um, but particularly these ways where we start to think about things a little bit differently and what else can take us to, to the next level.

[35:56] I think for me, takeaways that, or reflected questions, and I'd be interested to get the thoughts from you guys, is really always encouraging, what can I do differently to test myself in a given environment to really get under the skin of how I operate as a human in different situations? We can all get quite comfortable in our particular job or our particular place where we live and the rest of it. And I think really try and provoke and test ideas with others. You know, what else can we do collectively as a group? Create situations or propose situations that might be vulnerable, you know, to you as a leader, put yourself out there.

[36:39] My final point might be, there's, if you look around at your life and what you're engaged in and what you like, there's many more illustrations or ways of doing this than you probably think are apparent. So, how else can I gain a stronger, sense of understanding of the way that I show up? How can I get a better understanding of how I react in different situations? And of course, if horses are for you, then, I think it's a great thing. Just be careful when you walk around the back of a horse.

[37:10] What about, what about you, Martin and Gerrit, what are your takeaways?

[37:13] Martin: As a reflection question, How, how can I create more opportunities to stand in front of a better mirror? And the horse is the perfect mirror, but again, if I not have access to that, how can I be in front of a better mirror, perhaps a person that gives me feedback without caring who I am? And at that moment also, how can I be vulnerable, really listening, listening with vulnerability, not with my guard up?

[37:47] Ed: Yes.

[37:48] Gerrit: Interestingly, my reflection question goes into a similar direction, because I also found this aspect of the horse as the perfect mirror, as an opportunity for feedback very interesting. And as you said, Martin, we might not always have an opportunity to test that. But I think what we can do is we can sharpen our senses and see how do other people respond to me. When I'm in a meeting, I can pay attention to facial expressions, to the non verbal reactions that I'm getting, and I think this, this can help a lot, and it's related to how am I actually making a connection, a true human connection with the people I work with, that would be mine.

[38:37] And Ed, maybe, if somebody says, that's, that's all very interesting, I would like to learn more about this, either your coaching work or working with horses. How should people reach out to you, where can they find you?

[38:52] Ed: Yes, best places to connect with me on LinkedIn. So, Ed Renshaw, perhaps I can insert the link at the bottom of your,

[39:01] your podcast. Um, one of the things I love about the, the coaching community is it, it tends to be full of interesting people looking at the human experience. I mean, the fact that someone brings a horse in is, is, you know, is a, is, is a bonus, but always interested to chat to people. and thank you very much for having me on Gerrit and Martin. It's been a, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you.

[39:23] Martin: It was an eye opener and I'm not a skeptic anymore.

[39:28] Ed: Have I converted you, Martin?

[39:29] Martin: Yes.

[39:30] Gerrit: Thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed, enjoyed this episode and we're coming to the end of today's episode. So if you like what we do please remember to subscribe to Second Crack on your favorite podcast platform. It would also be wonderful if you could recommend our podcast to a friend. And of course, we would love it if you could leave a positive comment or rating.

[39:55] For more insights about Martin and my work, please visit our website at secondcrackleadership. com. That's all in one word. And we are also curious to receive your feedback, your questions, and your comments. Feel free to reach out to us at hello@secondcrackleadership.com. Bye for now.