The Power of the Herd (59 page)

I tried to address this issue constructively. After all, there was no official policy against such behavior from full- and part-time workers, mostly because I never in my wildest dreams imagined that this would
be
an issue. All of my colleagues and employees “believed in” balancing individual and group needs, but I began to notice that some had significant trouble considering the long-term good of the organization
when they felt vulnerable,
as this would cause them to revert to a survival-of-the-fittest, every-man-for-himself mentality — even when they weren't in physical danger.

Working in an innovative field with few rules and no experienced referees triggered feelings of uncertainty and instability in all possible directions — prime breeding ground for vulnerability, that fear of stepping into the unknown, making mistakes, and having your most cherished beliefs and behaviors questioned. I didn't realize it at the time, but raising everyone's tolerance for feeling vulnerable was essential to our success in all kinds of seemingly unrelated areas.

In the hope that others can learn from my experience, I feel it's necessary to depict some of the more troublesome vulnerability-averse behaviors I encountered at Apache Springs, patterns I've since recognized in other business, religious, political, and social-activism settings. For this purpose, I've created two composite characters, Gretchen and Deirdre, based on a dozen colleagues, employees, apprentices, and clients who would act out in similar ways when they felt threatened. All these people were brilliant and inspiring. Yet over time, their sometimes overt, sometimes secretive reactions to interpersonal challenges in particular undermined their respective teams, creating significant interference in reaching even the most mundane goals.

“Gretchen” wasn't the only staff member who needed to boost her social-intelligence skills. We all had to improve our game. But over time, it became clear that she was least interested in letting go of the past, taking personal responsibility for her role in certain conflicts, and acknowledging that her approach, while valuable, did not cancel the validity of other experts' approaches to similar issues and jobs. One executive coach I consulted early on cautioned that Gretchen “was not a team player,” but this issue became even more problematic when she began demonizing a colleague. Gretchen literally, and quite seriously, described “Don” as “evil” on several occasions. From her perspective,
differences in work style, priorities, and most certainly Don's interpersonal weaknesses became “evidence” that he was profoundly defective, leading to a downward spiral of angst and outrage that caused Gretchen to hold grudges and create factions among other staff members and even clients.

I admired Gretchen and appreciated her work. But I could not convince her to compromise, forgive, or take responsibility for her own role in conflicts, at least not without resentment that came out sideways in other areas. And at that time especially, I needed everyone to work through difficulties with fellow staff members in support of an evolving vision that required constant input, dedication, and adjustment. This was a tall order, much taller than I ever could have imagined. Upon recognizing the destructive dynamic between Gretchen and Don, I brought in a consultant for a team-building weekend, and even the consultant seemed powerless to address some of the issues already in play.

I now believe that, had I understood one specific, at that time hidden, factor, we all could have moved through our initial trailblazing difficulties. The road would have been bumpy, but eventually we would have gotten to the other side of that treacherous mountain pass and back onto paved roads. As it was, however, I had to stabilize a staff that could not move past individual differences (and the hurtful behaviors that had stacked up as a result). While I could see that everyone, including me, needed additional emotional- and social-intelligence skills to function, I had to choose the most loyal, adaptable, and hardworking employees to stay on board. But it was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. After gently, apologetically letting Gretchen go (with the possibility that she could do some freelance work for us), I ran into the bathroom, threw up, and cried for two hours. I had worked as a manager before; I had fired people. But I had never taken it personally. With this operation, however, I was inviting people to share in a growing movement that my first two books had inspired. I was offering people a beautiful place to work, because my initial success had made it possible for other adventurous souls to combine forces to take this work to the next level. All we had to do was value the opportunity and support each other.

It sounded so simple. But it wasn't. After wandering around the ranch in a confused, disempowered state, whining, “Why can't we all just get along?” over and over to myself for the better part of a year, I decided to take a different approach. I decided to ask a different question:
“How
can we all get along?”

Sharing leadership was much more difficult than any of us had imagined. It truly wasn't enough to be an expert in one's field and show up with good
intentions. Everyone, from high-level riding instructors and mental health professionals to the most inexperienced interns, needed significant emotional intelligence to fulfill the potential of what attracted them to this project in the first place. Many of the tools we had developed — such as the Emotional Message Chart and the various self-awareness, boundary-setting, leadership, and assertiveness activities immediately useful to individuals — had to be modified for collaborative situations in which groups of people were pursuing innovative goals together.

Yet while Apache Springs made the need for these herd-related skills blatantly apparent, I had been facing this challenge to a lesser extent for years, ever since an early version of Eponaquest had been formed as a regional collective of horse trainers in 1997.

After my first book came out in 2001, readers were motivated to jump on planes and fly to Arizona, hoping to master the personal-empowerment and authentic community-building skills the horses were primed to teach. As more people with different talents, agendas, and cultural perspectives showed up, social intelligence began to outweigh personal-development skills in importance (though the former certainly drew on a basic knowledge of the latter).

People with advanced degrees in counseling were the ones who surprised me the most. I had mistakenly assumed that, if no one else,
they
would know how to work effectively with others. And certainly, some of them were experts in group therapy. These same people, however, were just as confused as I was in handling difficulties among colleagues. In training facilitators, for instance, one person who thoroughly confounded me had a PhD in psychology, extensive additional certifications, and twenty years' experience as a successful therapist in private practice. “Deirdre” was without a doubt one of the most intelligent people I had met, and she functioned well in hierarchical situations where she was either clearly the leader or clearly the student. But collaborating with peers during the Eponaquest apprenticeship program sent her into a tailspin.

Whenever her professional expertise or ideas were questioned, often simply because someone else had a different perspective on the situation, she would lash out or leave the room, feel confused and embarrassed about it afterward, pick a faculty member to blame, and then undermine the entire program secretly, behind the scenes, while praising the Eponaquest approach to my face. I could see that Deirdre was having trouble sharing power with others, but at that time, I had no idea how to assist her in moving beyond this challenge. I was also intimidated by her superior educational background. She was a licensed therapist, after all. Who was I to teach her anything about human relationships?

None of my colleagues, even those who were mental health professionals, knew how to help Deirdre alter this destructive behavior, and she was released from the program. Had we realized that she was exhibiting an aversion to feeling vulnerable (solutions for which I present at the end of this chapter), the outcome might very well have been different.

This incident also brought to light an ongoing leadership challenge as the business continued to expand: downplaying my authority among people who knew more about their jobs than I did was a seemingly subtle management mistake that added to the strife at Apache Springs. It was hard to be assertive with staff members who were experts in their fields. I wanted them to feel valued. I didn't like pulling rank, and I was self-conscious of the way that clients who came to the center because of my books sometimes put me on a pedestal while dismissing other faculty members.

Authoritative assertiveness was an issue with my business partner as well. He had an MBA from a major East Coast university. He was wealthier by far than I could ever hope to be, and he often used both of these factors to pull rank in a gentle yet authoritative way whenever I brought new ideas for investors to his attention. As it turned out, the real estate market crashed during a crucial growth stage at Apache Springs, and we needed those investors to float us through the hard times ahead. I had been right to stress the importance of this issue, but being right didn't save me when I had no more money of my own to invest, and our promising, steadily building business at Apache Springs was suddenly cut in half.

Maintaining a strong, fair leadership presence among creative, self-empowered experts was definitely my learning edge. But it also became painfully, frustratingly apparent there was something else I needed to address, some crucial hidden dynamic I couldn't quite put my finger on. Several intensely irritating years went by before I realized that vulnerability was somehow involved. While I didn't figure this out in time to keep Gretchen, Deirdre, and a few others on board at Apache Springs, my eventual ability to deal effectively with this palpable yet amorphous “something” turned out to be the key to Eponaquest's long-term success.

As a leader who truly wanted others to step forward and lead effectively, I desperately needed to make this X factor conscious. Along the way, I kept thinking about Mocha, the one horse in my extended herd who also had trouble seeing Apache Springs as anything close to Horse Heaven.

I was excited when the handsome dark bay Thoroughbred stepped off the trailer a few months after we moved to the ranch. A show horse experienced in a variety of riding disciplines, Mocha was sure to thrive in his role as a respected instructor at our new international study center. He'd also have lots of time off to run free, finally, with other horses.

Confined to a stall for many years, worked on a strict schedule, and turned out in solitary confinement for a meager thirty minutes a day (to avoid career-interrupting injuries he might acquire playing with others), Mocha was entering a new stage of life at Apache Springs, one that would balance his riding expertise with a more natural herd-based existence. He would be living with a group of gentle geldings on a five-acre pasture — with lush green grass during the rainy season — a rare luxury in the Arizona desert.

But when we turned him out the day after his arrival, Mocha panicked. His eyes literally rolled back into his head. Not knowing which way “the danger” was coming from, he alternately reared, frantically raced around, and then stood next to the gate, refusing to eat or drink. When other horses approached him, he took off running or turned around to kick, eventually making his way back to the gate, shaking, begging for a way out.

While I found this reaction confusing, one client staying on-site instantly related to Mocha's dilemma. “He's scared,” the woman said, her voice cracking with emotion, “of
freedom.
The pasture is too big. It makes no sense to him. And he doesn't know how to relate to others off rein. Even though
we
know it's safe,
he
doesn't.”

Several hours and two meals later, Mocha continued to pace, ignoring food and most especially water, alarming behavior in the desert, where horses colic if they become dehydrated. And so we brought him back to the barn at sunset. Sure enough, Mocha relaxed and began munching hay when we put him in one of the tiny stalls that absolutely unnerved some of my other horses. In the wild, equines and other large herbivores avoid caves and enclosed spaces. As animals who evolved to roam vast stretches of open grasslands, they're naturally claustrophobic. Mocha, however, had been profoundly, thoroughly civilized. He was threatened by what the rest of my herd considered a taste of paradise.

As it turned out, Mocha needed our help to gain confidence in stepping outside the box. We brought in another gelding, Max, who also had experience with barns, trailers, shows, and large crowds (though he, like most horses, had taken to pasture life like a fish to water). While the gray Arabian didn't seem especially thrilled with the prospect at first, he lived next to Mocha in a ten-by-ten-foot stall for a couple of days, occasionally nickering to him through the bars. We then turned the two out next to each other in twenty-by-twenty-foot
corrals we'd created for stallions. With five-foot aisles between them (to keep potentially rivalrous males from fighting with each other), Mocha could see Max but he couldn't quite touch him. Still, with his new friend nearby, Mocha was happy to live in this larger, open-air space. We began riding the two together, then turning them out in the riding arena together. And finally, with Max as his guide, Mocha successfully moved out to the big pasture nearly a month after he'd first arrived.

Jenna's eyes grew wide with recognition when I told her Mocha's story. “It sounds to me,” she finally said, “like he was dealing with that other kind of fear you talked about yesterday, the kind where you're not actually in danger but you're freaking out anyway. What did you call it?”