The Power of the Herd (68 page)

People can be fickle, praising you one moment, blaming you the next, all while struggling to gain your support and approval in order to secure whatever advantages you represent. It helps to know this up front. (At least then you won't waste time feeling shocked, as I did, when it happens.) Yet if you ask me if it was worth it, I would have to say yes. Conviction and endurance are fueled by inspiration, as it turns out, three qualities that, when combined, border on obsession. This appears to be what keeps any innovator going despite the accompanying strife of bringing something new, or even mildly precocious, into the world.

Motivating others, setting boundaries, and sometimes literally protecting myself from aggressive attacks: these were skills I learned from my stallion that became useful when I began working with herds of people, some of whom were a lot like Merlin, as it turned out — talented, stunningly beautiful, and filled with potential locked behind a wall of fear, frustration, vulnerability, or rage. In a predatory dominance system, we all experience abuse and betrayal, sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic, creating moments that, at their most extreme, feel a bit like George Washington's unexpected encounter with Tanacharison (which in their case led to a bloody massacre and the start of the French and Indian War).

The Washington-Tanacharison episode makes it tragically apparent that when others experience trauma, everyone pays in the long run. As Thich Nhat Hanh observed,
“When another person makes you suffer
, it is because he suffers deeply in himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help.... Happiness and safety are not an individual matter. His happiness and safety are crucial for your happiness and safety.” No one made this more apparent to me than Merlin. Misunderstanding and punishment created the monster he became. I knew I would never be safe around him
until this trauma was transformed — not through naive “it's not his fault” indulgence, but through a heroic use of power that I later realized had much in common with the Fulani sharo.

Extreme physical violence is less common in the modern world, but emotional, psychological, and verbal forms of violence are promoted as “free speech” and, on reality television, entertainment. At home, school, work, and church, and most definitely in politics, we often find ourselves helplessly standing by, watching nasty altercations we can neither predict nor stop, knee-jerk reactions that start long-term, unnecessary battles that sometimes do erupt in shootings, beatings, and large-scale acts of terrorism. It's not enough to ask, “Why can't we all just get along?” We must make some serious culturewide efforts to ask a different question:
How
can we all get along? To even attempt to answer this question, we must stop blaming others and playing the victim. We must stand up to aggressors who also see themselves as victims of past injustice (and often truly are). And we must resist the urge to use shame as a weapon.

To do this we need power combined with compassion. We need to exercise emotional heroism.

Whether or not we grew up in idyllic circumstances, emotional time bombs are everywhere, especially when we step into a leadership role. Just as Merlin would explode for no apparent reason, people do the same thing, looking for an external enemy to fight or punish for sudden surges of fear related to personal or ancestral trauma, or to feelings of vulnerability that are in fact calling them to access their own power and vision.

For many years, I felt as if I were entering a World War II minefield whenever I walked out my front door. I knew I would not survive the ordeal if I took these assaults personally. I also realized that I would not reach my goals if I wasn't willing to take a certain amount of abuse without fighting back: Holding grudges would have sapped energy I needed for innovation. Seeking revenge would have taken me off course. This too is a visionary-leadership dilemma.

Sometimes, of course, I pined for the days when I was spending long stretches of time alone writing my first book and hiding out in the desert, seeking counsel from my horses away from the competitive equestrian world. To move to the next level, however, I had to give up my loner-artist tendencies and step into the fray. It might have helped to be a more aggressive alphastyle leader at that point, but I didn't want to give up my sensitivity in order to “tough it out” and take control. This, it turned out, was
my
visionary-leadership
dilemma: maintaining empathy, ingenuity, and adaptability; encouraging others to step forward and lead; supporting them in working through their initial feelings of vulnerability in preparation for experimenting and creating something new were part of my calling.

The
idea
of bringing nonpredatory wisdom into an intensely aggressive culture was much more difficult to manifest than I expected — and I expected it to be hard. To pull rank and fight back when people challenged me overtly or, more often, undermined me secretly behind my back (though I would usually, eventually, find out) seemed to go against the very essence of my mission. For a time, I diffused the pain with alcohol, but it became clear that I couldn't possibly drink enough to soothe the wounds I sometimes had to endure daily. I would have needed something stronger. Doctors were ready and willing to give me any number of powerful drugs that purported to address these issues chemically. I knew lots of high-powered leaders who were taking Paxil, Xanax, Prozac, and other brain-altering, anxiety-reducing, courage- and energy-boosting substances with significant, sometimes unpredictable side effects. One executive I worked with said that, on his team of twelve close associates,
nine
people (that's
75 percent)
were taking at least one of these prescriptions.

If I wasn't going to medicate or self-medicate, what
could
I do? Give up? Run away? Not an option. For some reason, I truly felt willing to die for this calling, whether I was successful or not. Few people, including my husband, understood this. This too is a visionary-leadership dilemma.

And then in 2011, studying the long-suppressed, yet richly nuanced, leadership innovations of pastoral cultures, I came across something that truly excited me. I had already accessed the concept of emotional heroism by immersing myself in George Washington's numerous biographies, but I had no clear idea how to exercise it. Then I encountered the Fulani practice of the sharo (see the section titled “A Ritual of Courage and Self-Control” in
chapter 8
,
pages 137–38
).

The Fulani sharo is an act of physical heroism. In this coming-of-age ritual, a young man agrees to stand shirtless with arms wide open as he's beaten with a three-foot stick. After recovering from the ordeal, the “victim” is invited to challenge the challenger to a similar ordeal, ultimately giving both parties the opportunity to display their willingness to face pain and aggression without fighting back. During these public beatings, interestingly enough, the person enduring this abuse holds up a mirror, watching his own facial expressions,
more concerned with his controlled response to this power play than the fierceness of his attacker.

Women sometimes initially have a strong negative response to using the sharo as a metaphor for handling modern conflicts. Carol Roush, an Eponaquest advanced instructor and faculty member who started the highly successful “Now” personal-development program in Europe, encounters abuse survivors and highly sensitive people who have trouble engaging power because it was misused on them in the past. After reading an earlier version of this chapter, she expressed confusion and concern regarding this concept: “On the one hand, you insist that there's no excuse for physical violence, yet you use the sharo as a positive example. It could be argued that fundamentalist Christians who ritually beat small children are engaging in a ‘rite of passage' to teach them something important.”

To be clear: I don't believe there's any responsible justification for verbally or physically violent behavior. However, in our current stage of emotional and social development, these attacks do occur, and we must learn how to handle them, especially if we find ourselves in a leadership role of virtually any kind. This guiding principle uses an updated version of the sharo, taken out of the realm of physical violence, to deal constructively with conflict and power plays in ways that reduce and transform suffering, encouraging all parties involved to move forward productively. It is not at all about playing the victim, seeking revenge, or punishing or abusing others for some nefarious or “lofty” goal.

When Merlin threatened my life, I defended myself with a whip, smacking him on the belly as he reared over me, setting a boundary that was emphatic and understandable, sending the message that I was capable of protecting myself from physical assault. The split second he backed off, however, I gave him immediate positive feedback in the form of support and connection. I did not punish him with violence by chasing him around the arena, beating him with the whip. I did not seek revenge afterward, nor did I demand a period of groveling. Instead, the combination of self-control, power, and compassion I showed in the midst of these completely unwarranted attacks worked wonders on this horse, who read my actions as not just fair but also worthy of respect and, eventually, trust.

There's a significant difference between the sharo and the not-uncommon historical practice of beating children in the name of religion (which did happen to my father, who was regularly whipped while kneeling in front of icons of Christ, by his rigidly religious father — a form of ritual abuse). In the Fulani sharo, the challenge comes from a
peer,
not an authority figure who maintains
the upper hand. The sharo offers a counterintuitive model for dealing constructively with power plays among adolescents and adults.

Violent altercations are instinctual in all species, predatory and nonpredatory alike: stallions fight with each other over mares and social standing — wild mustang males are often covered with scars. In the Fulani case, however, this outback community makes it clear that
not
fighting back in response to a power play is a
valued option.
Furthermore, there's significant preparation for this publicly observed challenge; it happens neither suddenly nor secretly. “Civilized” bullies use the element of surprise to catch smaller or outnumbered victims off guard, often ganging up on people, sometimes with automatic weapons, no less. In our culture, adolescent conflicts and power plays take place behind schools, in back alleys, and on isolated wooded lots, away from the watchful gaze of parents, teachers, and peers. Winning at all costs, even by underhanded means, is the goal.

In the Fulani sharo, there's no conventional winner. By challenging someone, you're inviting the same treatment in public up to a year after the original ordeal, which means even the scrawniest victim has time to heal, gain weight, lift weights, and study martial arts if he wishes — no doubt making some young men think twice about engaging in this ritualized expression of male aggression, or at the very least showing some mercy during the initial encounter.

Women have rarely, if ever, been encouraged to develop rites of passage for showing courage, enduring conflict, and socializing power. From Native American ceremonies for girls who begin menstruating, to engagement parties, lavish weddings, and baby showers, feminine rituals worldwide emphasize the ability to create life. It's no wonder that some of my more sensitive staff members and clients initially have a hard time seeing the sharo as anything but violent.

As modern women step into leadership positions outside the home, however, particularly in previously male-dominated fields, the challenges associated with embracing and transforming the active, masculine power principle are significant. Some female leaders
think
of themselves as gentle and nurturing, pushing their own unacknowledged competitive and aggressive tendencies underground, where these rejected impulses eventually rear their ugly, outraged heads in unpredictable, shadowy ways.

If previously disempowered women (or men) refuse to develop and socialize their power, crazy things happen when they pursue ambitious goals together — as I found at Apache Springs and in previous leadership positions
where some of my colleagues would act sweet on the surface and ruthless underneath. As much as they hate to admit it, women in professional settings engage in
nasty
power plays no less painful and debilitating when many take the passive-aggressive role of undermining those whose position, promotion, talents, or power they envy. Much of this behavior, however, cannot be taken personally.

“This is what finally helped me find peace with the volatile and often incomprehensible events that would go on with one of my most naturally powerful and competitive colleagues,” Carol Roush told me as we continued our discussions on the sharo. “When I finally realized that this person's motives were unconscious, I was able to stop trying to analyze why she was doing those things, because I understood that she didn't know. Then I could finally begin first to look at my reactions to her and then eventually to look for my responsibility in the situation. Prior to that, I was sure it was all premeditated scheming designed to sabotage my every step. Now I have more empathy for someone's unconscious pain or vulnerability. I keep clear boundaries around the things we are probably never going to agree on, and this creates the safety and trust that allows supportive friendship.”

In the twenty-first century, everyone needs advanced tools for modulating power and moderating conflict. Contrary to popular belief, many of these skills
can't
be exercised through competitive sports: conflicts arising in innovative settings happen precisely because there are no established rules and referees. In this respect, treating any interpersonal challenge as an impromptu sharo has helped me immensely in recognizing, enduring, and responding constructively to events that once shocked, demoralized, and exhausted me. Teaching others to exercise emotional heroism — rather than feeling victimized, holding grudges, and undermining people afterward — mitigates the toxic by-products of power that people release unconsciously,
especially
when they think of themselves as peaceful and evolved.