Horse Enhanced Accelerated Learning (H.E.A.L.)
Horse: A large, four-legged prey animal
Enhanced: To increase or make greater, as in value
Accelerated: To quicken, increase the speed of, to bring about sooner than expected, to hasten the growth and progress of
Learning: To acquire and gain knowledge, comprehension or mastery through experience
Why Use Horses?
Horses are sentient beings with the capacity for independent thinking, social relationships, individual dispositions as well as physical abilities and limitations. More importantly, they have a very similar mindset to customers, vendors and employees.
Just like your customers, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders, maximum effectiveness and mutually beneficial relationships can only be built when you understand where each other is coming from and your shared purpose and desires. High performance requires effective communication so everyone can clearly understand each other’s expectations and the results you want to achieve together.
Horses are invaluable partners in disclosing patterns of behavior and habits that work as well as dysfunctional behaviors that no longer serve you or your team. If something is not working or the horse is not responding, you and your team examine the messages that you are sending. This helps you increase your self-awareness and builds self -accountability for your actions as well as the ability to make in-process adjustments in order to achieve mutual success.
H.E.A.L. experiences are a great training ground for not only acquiring new levels of awareness but to actually experience a new level of performance.
Benefits To Your Organization:
Cost-effective, time-efficient learning method.
Learning that is directly targeted towards fulfilling business needs.
Creates more flexible and innovative employees.
Improves communication, conflict resolution, and problem-solving skills.
Increases understanding of systems thinking and keeping the big picture in mind.
Helps align employees with desired outcomes.
Increases participants’ self-awareness, self-accountability and self-responsibility.
H.E.A.L. Results
“This is not another one of those touchy-feely company retreat things, I hate those. This is not one of those. Surprised me. The environment is amazing…seeing the real parallels between how the horses work and think and how we work and think, and the insights that we gleaned were really easily learned and in a very painless way. I’ve gotten a lot out of it both personally and in my role within the company.” -Joe Mathia, Software Developer, Avatar DPS
“My first reaction was, it’s amazing how much horses are like many of the managers I work with. In my role, they’re looking to me for direction. This was an amazing interaction with the horses because it was just like doing the work that I do for a living. It was just astounding. I’ll come back here time and time again, and see where that takes me.” – Mike Rooney, Senior Consultant, Alcoa
“At first I thought we were going to come out here and be with someone who liked horses and had some nice fuzzy ideas but it wasn’t like that at all. It’s been very concrete and very helpful. What I’m noticing is that I act and react from my strengths so it allowed me to be more conscious about why I’m thinking and behaving the way I am, it’s useful.” – Steve Hoy, Special Project Manager
“Amy has a deep background in organizational development and brings this horse piece to it. She brought the learning together in a very practical way. She synthesized the OD piece and moved them forward on a very intellectual subject of creating a team charter by leveraging the horses to create an awareness of each person’s gifts and what they brought to the table.” Susan Motzko, CEO Executive Results
“Exceptionally impressed with the program. Exceeds anything you could experience or learn in a classroom. Usually, in these types of leadership classes the structure allows for a few people to hide behind others, here, you couldn’t. Everyone had an important role in the action of the exercise.” – Nancy Heinrich, Account Manager