Читать книгу The Five Roles of a Master Herder - Linda Kohanov - Страница 8
ОглавлениеThe moon is almost full. Its soft light shines gold at the source, yet somehow turns blue as it flows over the desert landscape. The black horse paces back and forth, her labor pains increasing in intensity as her powerful mate mutters a deep, gentle sound of reassurance nearby.
Still, something is not quite right. Well before midnight, when most equine births occur, I sit down on a bed of straw and pat the ground, looking for some way to encourage the mare to rest for an hour or two. Surprisingly, miraculously, she lays down beside me.
Even so, Rasa’s distress is palpable. She continually touches her nose to her hip, her gestures becoming so emphatic that I grab a flashlight and check under her tail. And there it is, one of many potentially deadly complications I was warned about: Though her water has not yet broken, Rasa’s foal is emerging from the womb, destined to drown in amniotic fluid if I don’t do something fast. I break the sac and support the emerging child, breathing onto his nose to encourage that first breath, relieved to realize the birth is not breech. By the time my ranch manager arrives on the scene, answering a concerned call I made to her not twenty minutes earlier, the foal is resting quietly under a canopy of trees, their leaves blowing gently in the warm September wind.
The tiny colt looks up at me, his eyes reflecting the rising moon. He stands quickly, easily, and ambles on shaky legs toward his two-legged midwife. The mare, however, is facing yet another challenge. She cannot get up. In fact, she doesn’t want to try, in part because of a problem with her right back stifle (similar to the knee in humans) that was taxed to the limit by the stress of pregnancy.
Rasa’s eyes begin to glaze over, and I feel tears welling in my own. Horses who can’t stand can suffocate due to the increasing pressure of body weight on their weakening lungs. Somehow, my colleague Shelley Rosenberg and I have to inspire this mare to choose the promise of life with her newborn over the very understandable urge to sleep.
With Shelley guiding him from behind, the coal-black foal follows me like a shadow as I lead him toward his mother.
“Rasa, here is your boy,” I say, directing the still-wet yet increasingly engaged little horse to breathe into the mare’s nose. “You must get up now and feed him.” The experienced mother nickers and suddenly comes to life at the soft, curious touch of her long-awaited second child. Yet Shelley and I exchange worried glances as Rasa struggles valiantly, then lies back with a weary, disturbingly defeated sigh. We know that we must make her stand before she gives up completely.
It takes two of us, one pulling a halter attached to a lead rope in front and the other pushing from behind, overriding our own fears and empathetic responses in order to increase the pressure on this exhausted mare. We progressively encourage, then insist, then demand that she rally every last resource she possesses to stay in this world. Finally through the herculean efforts of all three of us, Rasa leaps to her feet, shaking her mane in defiance at the specter of death slinking back into darkness.
Moments later, Rasa is caressing her boy, pushing him gently toward his first taste of milk. Indigo Moon drinks with delight as all the horses begin to whinny, welcoming another herd member into this strange and beautiful new world.
Five Roles
To save the lives of both mare and foal, Shelley and I each performed four of the five roles of a Master Herder that night. Though it would have been tragic, we were also prepared to engage the fifth, if absolutely necessary.
In the days leading up to the birth, a number of staff members traded shifts in the Sentinel role as we kept watch over the pregnant mare, concerned that the long-standing lameness in her right back leg might lead to complications. Since horses usually give birth less than a half hour after breaking water, we knew we’d have to act quickly if there was a problem, long before a veterinarian could drive down the rustic dirt road to our ranch. While I was confident in Shelley, who had assisted in numerous equine births over the years, I also realized I needed to somehow overcome my notorious fear of medical procedures to learn not only what to look for but what I might have to do in any number of disturbing labor scenarios. It turned out to be a prescient move: While Shelley was planning to take over the watch at midnight, Rasa’s foal emerged from the womb several hours earlier than expected — minus the classic signal that he was on his way.
Without the mare breaking water, it would have been deadly for the foal if I had stubbornly maintained the role of Sentinel, that is, if I had watched from over the fence and only called Shelley once something ran amiss, while abdicating a more hands-on approach because of my lack of veterinary experience. To read the subtle nonverbal communication Rasa exhibited during those crucial moments, I needed an intimate understanding of her unique behavior and a desire to comfort her. I needed to recognize that the feeling of concern my horse conveyed when she laid down was more than an early stage of labor. This intimate knowledge combined with my intuition came from years of close association and trust. Without my proficiency in the role of Nurturer/Companion, and the connection Rasa and I shared as a result, it’s highly unlikely I would have been sitting on the ground next to her when the foal first emerged. The bond Indigo Moon and I developed as I helped him out of the womb also served us well in the years to come.
Yet this birth required much more than watching, nurturing, and supporting our four-legged companions. Shelley and I also had to engage two much more active roles that night, those of the Leader and the Dominant. We had to be quick about it, too. Taking the leadership position, I walked toward our first goal, drawing little Indigo forward, gaining his interest and cooperation without the benefit of restraints or training, compelling him to follow me around the corral to his mother as Shelley gently herded him from behind, taking the position of Dominant. When the feel and sweet smell of Indi’s soft muzzle wasn’t enough to inspire Rasa to face the pain of standing up, Shelley and I increased the intensity of these roles, simultaneously pulling and pushing, coaching, encouraging, and then demanding that the mare get on her feet.
Finally, if the situation had become dire, both Shelley and I would have had to accept — with deep courage and compassion — the role of Predator. We would have had to make the decision to euthanize Rasa. This would have been difficult enough, but if the vet could not arrive in time to humanely end our beloved companion’s suffering, we would have had to use a gun normally kept on hand for protection in the desert outback and perform this most grievous and sacred act ourselves.
To this day, I thank our lucky stars we didn’t have to engage all five roles that night. But our ability to incorporate and exchange the other four as needed offered me the first, most visceral glimpse of an ancient form of wisdom, one that has been all but lost in humanity’s increasingly insulated, highly specialized, city-based, sedentary lifestyle.
Power Struggles
Fall flowed into winter as Indigo Moon grew stronger and bolder with each passing day. His older brother, Spirit, was navigating the fretful challenges of adolescence, testing boundaries and finding ever-more-clever ways to amuse himself at others’ expense. Luckily, I had some experience with disorganized male aggression. Both Indi and Spirit were sons of Midnight Merlin, a proud, at one time dangerous Arabian stallion who refused to submit to simplistic dominance-submission training methods.
Everything I feared and abhorred about the misuse of power was embodied in the patriarch of my growing herd. Merlin had been abused, in large part because he was defiant. Several trainers had tried to tame him with all kinds of techniques and tricks and intimidations — efforts that most often ended with some stunned, humiliated human scrambling to safety.
By the time I met Merlin, he’d been abandoned at a Tucson boarding stable and confined to an isolated corral. Though lonely and even depressed as a result, he was unable to control his own traumatized nervous system in the presence of horses or humans. A vicious cycle of terror and destruction swirled around him like a monsoon storm gathering force in foreboding yet unpredictable ways. Merely taking him for a walk was an ordeal few people were willing to face more than once. You could actually feel the thunder rumbling under the surface of his sometimes-calm demeanor. You just knew that lightning was bound to strike at any moment.
Thankfully, Merlin’s tendency to rear up and attack without provocation lessened over the years of our association, and at times he was quite sweet. In the process of forging a partnership with him, however, I was forced to delve into the instinctual subtleties of dominance and leadership — and reflect on the ways in which both could be used to either build or destroy trust and cooperation.
This was initially a huge paradox for me. I was taught that power led to tyranny or, in women especially, ostracism. I spent years honing the tenuous combination of courage, compassion, mindfulness, and assertiveness that Merlin needed from me in order to find balance. It absolutely boggled my mind to realize that I was unable to tap the stallion’s latent gentleness unless I could enter his corral with a strong yet caring presence, one that simultaneously didn’t suffer fools, didn’t hold grudges, and didn’t take tantrums personally.
Yet just when I thought I had a handle on these issues, Merlin’s sons came along and showed me that his tantrums were not, at their root, a reaction to abuse. These violent outbursts were more specifically an age-old call for skillful elders capable of helping younger generations socialize their own vast, untapped, all-too-often-misunderstood resources of personal and collective power.
Like their father, Spirit and Indigo were highly sensitive, naturally dominant, and extremely intelligent. For a time, they were even scarier than Merlin precisely because they had been raised in a secure environment. They had no fear of humans and were actually attracted to new things and experiences that would send the average horse running. Consequently, they would rear and kick and bite for fun, testing their strength and mine, but without the surge of anger I was able to sense in Merlin right before he would attack.
And so, it seemed, I reentered the school of hard knocks and scary stallions. Practicing various ways of channeling this tremendous energy and intelligence in productive ways — without lapsing into the negative, intimidation-based techniques that made Merlin such a troubled character — opened my eyes to a sophisticated, highly effective way of working with free, empowered humans.
Over time, I was able to translate the skills I had learned from my most challenging herd members into safe, efficient, yet exciting ground activities with gentler horses. I began teaching these tools to the executive teams, entrepreneurs, students, teachers, parents, clergy, and counselors who came to study leadership at my ranch in Arizona. In the process, I developed a nature-based model that helped people relate what they learned at the barn back to their offices, homes, churches, and schools.
As Spirit and Indigo Moon grew to adulthood, the once-aggressive colts became exceptional teachers of advanced students who wanted to tap the wisdom of these large nonpredatory power animals. All of us, the horses included, became more adventurous and collaborative as we learned to juggle the Master Herder’s five roles. My clients were especially intrigued to discover that this innovative “new” approach was actually very old — as ancient as the human-animal bond itself.
The Fittest to Lead
Charles Darwin’s work suggests that it’s not the strongest or the most intelligent of the species that survive, but the ones most responsive to change.
That means us, now, in this crucial, promising, yet precarious stage of our own species’ development.
The sedentary, hierarchical, dominance-submission models of leadership the “civilized” world has relied on for the last few thousand years have outlived their usefulness. Ironically, the very technological advances this system once nurtured have given birth to an increasingly nomadic lifestyle where freedom, autonomy, and constant adaptation challenge all the previous rules of social engagement.
In the January 2015 article “20/20 Visions,” Entrepreneur magazine asked leading futurists and cultural anthropologists to predict “how the next five years will revolutionize business.” Brian Solis joined other members of the panel in emphasizing that “things are not only changing, but are so radically different that the business models we have today cannot support a much more dynamic approach to the market.”
Shifting value systems demand innovation, not only in technology, but also in leadership as network-based organizational structures emerge. Younger generations are “very entrepreneurial and tend to have a lot of global connectivity,” Bob Johansen observed. “They’re very interested in environmental issues and sustainability.” They also “want authenticity, they want transparency.”
It makes sense. These are the people who will endure the effects of climate change and raise children in the face of dwindling resources. At the same time, their fluency in social media calls for collaborative business models that take advantage of “mutual benefit partnering on a global scale,” or what Johansen calls (in his book by the same title) “the reciprocity advantage.” For anyone born after 1990, hierarchical, highly competitive, slash-and-burn styles of corporate conquest are not only ineffective, they’re simply less relevant. The most successful CEOs of the last forty years cannot model, and quite possibly cannot even imagine, the leadership and social intelligence skills the next generation will need to thrive in this brave new world.
Power and Collaboration
While some corporate and political regimes still strive to disempower others for personal gain, relentless waves of technological, economic, and cultural innovation are eroding dictatorial resolve. In his book The Third Industrial Revolution, Jeremy Rifkin speaks of “an emerging collaborative age” in which “lateral power organized nodally across society” is “fundamentally restructuring human relationships, from top to bottom to side to side, with profound implications for the future of society.”
There’s one major issue we face in this transition: Far too many people experience power and collaboration as opposites, as if one must be sacrificed in favor of the other. Those who value power are more inclined to suppress collaboration to fulfill ambitious goals or reinforce the status quo. Those deeply committed to collaboration sometimes neglect assertiveness for fear of damaging relationships, even when a clear, directive, humane use of power may be necessary to motivate widespread positive change.
I once belonged to the latter category. Growing up female in the 1960s, before the women’s rights movement gathered force and floated more gently toward my small, Midwestern city, I was encouraged to develop the nurturing arts at the expense of leadership. As I graduated college and entered the workforce, I was desperately untrained in the skillful use of power and influence, except through those genteel, primarily unconscious, passive-aggressive moves “the weaker sex” developed through five thousand years of subjugation.
In the 1980s, equal opportunity opened things up a bit. I could use intelligence, vision, enthusiasm, and degrees or certifications to be promoted, and I excelled at inspiring and collaborating with others — especially when working with self-motivated, caring people. But whenever it was necessary to make tough decisions, motivate uncooperative employees, deal with feuding factions, or lead others into controversial or uncomfortable areas, I tended to avoid conflict, at times abdicating authority when I needed to stand strong.
More dominant colleagues had no problem pulling rank, handling dissent, and herding others toward short-term goals, but these command-and-control-style managers were less effective over time. Many crossed the line between assertiveness and intimidation, losing trust along the way. Some withheld information and suppressed creativity, producing dull, listless staff members who hid growing resentment behind limp smiles of compliance.
If these leaders inspired anything at all in their employees, it was the tendency to choose between two mediocre options — to take their talents elsewhere or to become more complacent, in some cases machine-like, “retiring in place” decades before receiving that coveted gold watch.
Pandemonium and Paralysis
When I began to teach emotional and social intelligence skills to a variety of entrepreneurs, corporations, and nonprofits in the early 2000s, I noticed that the gap between relationship-oriented and goal-oriented leadership styles widened in certain fields — which increased dysfunction. Social service, educational, and charitable agencies attracted plenty of considerate, openhearted employees, but these people didn’t necessarily know how to get along. Unresolved conflict festered behind facades of politeness. Undercurrents of increasing frustration were expressed through skeptical silences in meetings and toxic whispers in the hallways.
Staff members who considered “power” a dirty word engaged in passive-aggressive moves to gain influence. For example, when differences of opinion and working style emerged, some people in the “caring fields” used the subtle, damaging ploy of undermining a rival’s reputation by diagnosing him or her with any number of personality disorders, behind his or her back, usually while feigning concern for the person’s mental health. This “armchair psychologist” power play successfully gained the person using it some followers — while creating factions that worked at odds with one another as a result. Yet those who employed this increasingly popular technique rarely acknowledged the unproductive results for the organization as a whole, let alone the personal ambition behind this divisive behavior. Instead, they saw themselves as victims or as self-righteous protectors of colleagues who were victims.
Highly sensitive people and abuse survivors, who felt called to these fields for the best of reasons, amplified stress in other ways. These employees were more likely to exhibit hair-trigger responses to minor threats or simple disagreements, take creative debate far too personally, and hold grudges. Such tendencies undermined working relationships, most insidiously because conflict-averse people acted out anger and frustration in secretive yet increasingly virulent ways, making it impossible for supervisors to catch difficulties in their earliest, most manageable stages. Simply by giving one another the silent treatment, for instance, key staff members could make it difficult for colleagues unrelated to the conflict to get their jobs done. Over time, more factions would be created, with each side feeling disrespected or undermined by the others.
Untrained in how to set boundaries, communicate their needs effectively, handle disagreements, and motivate others through unemotional yet compassionate assertiveness, leaders and followers alike had trouble fulfilling their noble goals, and the energy of idealism was depleted by the daily realities of interpersonal unrest. This made it difficult to serve clients, as well as to experiment, debate, and adapt to shifting social and economic climates — no matter how admirable the organization’s mission might be.
Corporate and entrepreneurial settings, on the other hand, attracted more goal-oriented, technologically savvy people. These organizations faced a whole other set of challenges as people with great ideas and relentless ambition rose to influential positions without developing the emotional and social intelligence skills to lead effectively.
To make matters worse, brilliant minds were encouraged to ruthlessly compete with one another, most often through a combination of financial incentives and bell-curve firing practices, breeding mistrust, defensiveness, and the tendency to withhold important information from colleagues.
In the most extreme cases, a “kill or be killed” mentality focused on short-term profit at the cost of long-term company growth and sustainability. This led to all kinds of callous acts resulting from institutionalized predatory behavior. In one of the most famous examples — Enron — executives purposefully created a “survival of the fittest” culture, encouraging ravenous competition, not only with other companies, but within the corporation itself. Championed by Jeffrey Skilling, who served as president and chief executive officer, this philosophy promoted increasing aggression and, in some staff members, unethical business practices. As Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind observed in their book The Smartest Guys in the Room, traders and executives “who stayed and thrived were the ones who were most ruthless in cutting deals and looking out for themselves.” The strategy backfired for everyone involved. Enron’s subsequent downfall not only resulted in jail time for Skilling and other employees, but the company imploded at a significant cost to stockholders, employees, and society at large.
In politics, the gap between relationship-oriented and goal-oriented leadership styles evolved into a strange combination of pandemonium and paralysis as the twentieth century came to a close. To this day, social service concerns clash with competitive corporate ambitions on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, resulting in all the dysfunctions described above, acted out in a confusing free-for-all of unproductive behavior.
No wonder even the most well-meaning democratic governments can’t seem to get anything significant done: The challenges that every modern organization faces are magnified exponentially when an entire country gets involved.
Where Do We Go from Here?
In the last twenty years, a number of studies have explored “masculine” and “feminine” styles of leadership. From this perspective, command-and-control, task-oriented, winner-takes-all practices resulted from a long-standing preponderance of men in business and politics, a trend that ruled well into the twentieth century. Then, after women gained the right to vote and began to enter the workforce in increasing numbers, a revolutionary shift occurred. More collaborative, relationship-oriented, mutually supportive practices began to emerge as the daughters and granddaughters of the pioneering spirits of the women’s movement gained advanced degrees, excelled in professional fields, and were promoted to management positions.
Inc. magazine’s editor-at-large Leigh Buchanan divides the subsequent evolution of leadership into three rapidly shifting eras: the Age of Autocracy (ancient times into the 1980s), the Age of Empowerment (mid-1990s to the mid-2000s), and the Age of Nurture (mid-2000s to present). Buchanan describes this sequence in her June 2013 article “The De-Machoing of Great Leadership,” but all three styles continue to exist side by side, allowing us to compare them in real time.
Modeling himself on samurai principles, Oracle’s Larry Ellison is a modern poster child for the Age of Autocracy, “as he attacks competitors and pushes employees to the limit.” Buchanan also cites General Electric’s Jack Welch “for his propensity to get rid of employees while leaving buildings intact,” gaining him the uniquely disturbing nickname “Neutron Jack.”
To exemplify the Age of Empowerment, Buchanan cites Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s strategy to “rely on store-level employees making decisions based on knowledge of their regions.” She also looks at eBay’s Meg Whitman “whose business model is all about autonomy, which requires her to trust people while insisting on integrity.”
For the Age of Nurture, interestingly enough, Buchanan lauds the antics of three men: David Neeleman, who “dons an apron and serves snacks to JetBlue passengers”; Whole Foods’ John Mackey, who “contributes $100,000 annually to a fund for workers with personal struggles”; and Tony Hsieh, who “enshrines honesty, humility, and weirdness among Zappo’s core values.”
“Increasingly,” Buchanan asserts, “the chief executive role is taking its place among the caring professions. It takes a tender person to lead a tough company.”
And, I would argue, it takes a tough person to lead a caring organization. But not in the way we usually define “tough.” I’m not talking about a Larry Ellison or Neutron Jack. I’m thinking more along the lines of an Abraham Lincoln or a George Washington, two exceptional leaders who upheld controversial, socially conscious goals during exceedingly dangerous, pivotal moments in history.
What we’re really talking about here is a long-standing, though initially slow-moving, trend toward balancing assertive, goal-oriented behavior and compassionate, relationship-oriented behavior that reached a tipping point in the late-twentieth century. In her June 2013 article “Between Venus and Mars: 7 Traits of True Leaders,” Buchanan cites Lincoln as “a man for our times,” one clearly capable of “merging masculine traits (strength of purpose, tenacity) with feminine ones (empathy, openness, the willingness to nurture others).” America’s sixteenth president went to war to uphold his convictions, and yet his “humility and inclusiveness made possible the ‘team of rivals’ described by Doris Kearns Goodwin in the popular book of that title. Generous and empathic, he made time for people of all stations who approached him with their troubles.”
Still, it’s important to appreciate the level of emotional heroism it takes to combine “masculine” and “feminine” qualities, especially in challenging situations. In The Power of the Herd, I analyzed George Washington’s impressive career in several chapters and came to the conclusion that in triumph — and, more importantly, in long, drawn-out periods of confusion and despair — he was a far more compassionate and inventive leader than most people realize.
“Let your heart feel for the affliction and distress of everyone,” Washington advised. This was no small feat for a general who shivered with his troops and felt helpless as many of them starved to death at Valley Forge. Yet letters to trusted allies and friends reveal that he dealt with his own heightened sensitivity for years, struggling to maintain composure in the midst of searing empathic responses to the settlers he encountered during the French and Indian War: “I see their situation, know their danger, and participate in their sufferings without having it in my power to give them further relief than uncertain promises,” he wrote to his British superiors in 1756, asking for support. “The supplicating tears of the women and moving petitions from the men melt me into such deadly sorrow that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided it would contribute to the people’s ease.”
Though Washington was able to renew himself in Mount Vernon’s pastoral embrace after the French and Indian War, rest and success did not make him complacent. As Washington repeatedly reentered public life, supporting one desperate cause after another, the turmoil he endured voluntarily is truly staggering. Rather than shield his heart against the disappointment, anguish, and sheer horror he witnessed, Washington remained steady and thoughtful in the midst of feelings that would have short-circuited the average person’s nervous system. His was not the coolness of the sociopath who feels no fear, but the authentic hard-won calmness of a man whose emotional stamina was so great that he was willing to accompany people into the depths of despair, and stay with them, offering hope through sheer presence.
In situations that most leaders would find hopeless, Washington’s unique combination of fierceness, fairness, authority, courage, self-control, and empathy kept people from lapsing into seemingly justified selfish, revenge-seeking, survivalist behavior. His open heart wasn’t hardened by adversity, nor did it keep him from making tough decisions. He refused to coddle deserters or looters, ordering severe floggings of men caught stealing food. On rare occasions, he executed soldiers planning widespread revolt. And yet, he instituted a policy of humanity for prisoners of war, even as the British executed and tortured his own captured troops.
It’s reasonable to say that Washington was one of those rare individuals capable of combining “masculine” and “feminine” forms of leadership, but it’s more accurate to say he was a “Master Herder,” someone capable of performing five crucial leadership roles fluidly, interchangeably, as needed.
In The Power of the Herd, I built a case for the fact that this at-once innovative and ancient approach to leadership stemmed from Washington’s own experience taking care of large herds of powerful animals. He found and trained horses capable of enduring the challenges of war, and he rode and cared for all the others daily in times of peace.
Washington’s ability to use the Five Roles of a Master Herder was developed over decades, though this nature-based wisdom supported his many goals at a subconscious level, like a musician who plays brilliantly without giving technique a second thought. He never wrote about using these skills — though the animals he relied upon would have demanded he hone this balance every day (just as my own herd introduced me to the same set of skills over two hundred years later). Even so, this experiential wisdom helped Washington become an exceptional leader capable of transcending the problems of a dualistic approach, allowing him to move beyond the human preoccupation with “opposites” like male versus female, power versus collaboration, mind versus heart, logic versus feeling, and assertive, goal-oriented behavior versus compassionate, relationship-oriented behavior. This ambitious, socially intelligent perspective is what our current, fast-changing culture increasingly asks both men and women to adopt.
The Five Roles of a Master Herder make sense of previously confusing group dynamics, while helping people to develop a mature, balanced, mutually empowering approach to leadership and social intelligence: at work, school, home, and in larger cultural contexts. This model helps us navigate change, handle conflict, and support innovation that serves the individual as well as the group, and perhaps most importantly, the health and well-being of all species and countless generations to come.
What more could we possibly ask for in this time of unprecedented, potentially dangerous, mind-bending possibility?
