Читать книгу Horse Sense for People - Monty Roberts - Страница 11

Fear and mistrust can be delivered to you by two distinctly different messengers. First “the familiar” and second “the unfamiliar.” Horses bring about fear in people, generally because they are unfamiliar with them. People simply have not taken the time to get to know that, although horses are large and fast, they have no agenda to hurt without cause. Fear of a parent, your spouse or your boss might be established out of familiarity and a knowledge that they have a propensity to “act out” violently.

I tell people who express great fear of horses to get to know them, to study their true patterns of behavior and understand more clearly what the horse wants out of life before branding them as dangerous.

As I examine my own patterns of fear and distrust, it seems utterly foreign to think that I might fear a horse. It is a joke for me to think that I might fear this flight animal more than the man walking on the other side of the street or the person approaching in an automobile. It seems ridiculous to me that a horse could be perceived as more dangerous than an airplane, train, truck or even that awesome instrument of terror, the computer.

What the horses are telling me is that if you can remove fear from the environment, both learning and innovation spiral upward. There is no more fearful situation than when people in the workplace are faced with change. Predictability and routine are all important in the stress-filled world of business. If you take away that predictability, change the routine, you alter the environment in which people work. Change, however, is with us. The speed of change in today’s high-tech world is frightening. One of the most important jobs a manager has is to create an environment in which change occurs without production loss. This can be accomplished by creating an environment in which people are willing to change. Obtaining people’s willingness to embrace change is therefore a catalyst in the process of change.

I ask my raw horse to change from being an uncooperative animal to being a partner with me in a new venture. I do not use force—horses Join-Up with me of their own free will. It should be the same with a workforce. Without willingness, work suffers and the whole organization is crippled. Take the simple situation of lunch and coffee breaks, time off and bonus benefits. If a manager is fearful that the company’s goodwill is being abused, he may try to control the situation forcefully. What he should do is concentrate on making the working environment pleasant and building motivation so that the employee is actually happy to stay busy. If the executive gets his formula right, he may well find that his attention will need to be directed to seeing to it that his people take sufficient time off so as to freshen them for the task. Suddenly you have employees hungry to volunteer their loyalty, in the same way that horses lick and chew to signal their willingness to cooperate. People, like horses, perform much better if they are willing partners.

While attending a conference I noticed that one company put its management team in one hotel and its executives in another more upscale establishment. If cooperation and communication are desirable, then segregation is destructive. In my own organization, I attempt at all times to keep travel and living accommodation the same for all staff to promote the feeling of being a member of the team. I work to create an environment that communicates this theme: each position on the team is important if we are to achieve a successful outcome on tour and at our demonstrations.

On another occasion, a well-known organization came to Flag Is Up Farms for a demonstration. The employees filed up onto the round pen viewing platform. Three of the executives stood by the buses—I was told they were the bosses and we would have to wait for them before I could start. I took no notice and began my introduction. I didn’t see why 98 percent of the people should have to wait for the 2 percent. As the crowd hushed and the sound system came on, I could see the three men had come up the steps and were standing to the rear of the onlookers. In an oblique way I began to describe how corporate families find ways to intimidate and pull rank on their workforce. I didn’t name the men, but I made my position clear to everyone. Remaining on the theme throughout the evening worked like a charm and, at the end, each of those men came to me and told me how much they had learned that night.