Building High Performance Teams
from the Ground Up!

We offer workshops using Equine Assisted Learning (EAL)
EAL is education using horses to help us learn new ways of thinking. Team building activities integrate the healing powers of the horse, skills of the facilitators and challenges and successes of the participants. We use dozens of activities to work towards a variety of goals tailored to your specific team. Activities are related to the larger ongoing issues within the day-to-day functioning of the team, promoting growth and change. Because our approach is activity oriented and includes interactions with a living, breathing and thinking equine, our horses may tell you more about your team members in five minutes than you could learn in a month or more. Whether you visit us once or on a regular basis, our workshops can help you to evaluate and improve your company’s future.

Why use horses to evaluate and improve your company’s success?
Much like that of many corporations trying to maintain stability in the marketplace, horses are motivated by survival. Because horses are bigger than humans, respect happens naturally and boundaries and limits are clear. Horses offer immediate feedback about behavior and give non-verbal consequences. Through the feedback provided by the horse, participants also develop an understanding of how their behavior affects others. In many cases the horse acts as a mirror or magnifying lens, helping to focus on the issues clients bring to the session. In addition, like situations in the work place where employees are challenged by new and increasingly difficult duties, the use of horses places your team members in novel situations where they may be unsure of how to proceed to successfully complete a task.

Teamwork
Our workshops provide opportunities for more effective working relationships that can increase success and productivity among employees. The activities create opportunities where participants must work together to reach a common goal. Success in the business world depends on collaborative efforts, gaining insight into our styles of interaction, resolving conflicts, enhancing verbal and nonverbal communication, developing leadership skills, and strengthening relationships within a non-threatening environment.

Communication
Like humans, horses are social animals, with complex communication patterns and a distinct hierarchy of roles. Horses offer immediate feedback about behavior, give non-verbal consequences, and offer second chances. Through the feedback provided by the horse participants develop an understanding of how their behavior and methods of communication affect others. Many times participants must learn how to communicate in new ways in order for the team to succeed at the prescribed activity.

Problem Solving
Participants use past experience, trial and error, reflection, generalization and metaphors to facilitate learning and creative problem solving. One activity we use is a “catch and halter” exercise. For an individual with horse experience this is typically a simple task. However, for those without horse experience, it can be quite difficult, require creative problem solving and can test a person’s communication skills, boundary setting, level of trust and frustration tolerance. In addition, achieving success on this task often means being able and willing to engage in healthy risk taking.

Perseverance
For many businesses success does not come easily. There are many barriers to success, requiring perseverance in the face of obstacles. Employees often become discouraged in the face of adversity and don’t use their full potential to overcome constraints, thereby reducing your company’s success. Our activities are geared toward developing strategies to overcome seemingly impossible barriers. For example, one activity we use is “life’s little obstacles”. The team must move the horse over an obstacle created with a small jump. With four rules in place, perseverance can be evaluated and addressed.