Being Present Takes Work, Inner Work.

This is Part 4 of a series of articles that explore how the way of the horse can serve as a model for leadership and how to be successful together, what horses teach us about executive presence, and how to lead authentically.

Presence Is the Foundation of Leadership

Well-functioning horses always return to a deeply relaxed state of deep peace for rest-repair-digest after experiencing any stressors. It is a place where a parasympathetic reset takes place for the individual’s physiology and for the whole herd. Being able to find this place in yourself is crucial to being a good herd member and a good leader. We will call this place ‘presence.’

Humans who aren’t mindful about their presence have a difficult time being clear in communication with a horse. Often, the horse won’t take them seriously because they can’t read them clearly. When there’s too much information coming through to the horse that’s unclear from a human, it creates static for the horse versus the ease and flow that comes from clarity about where we are, how we’re feeling, what we’d like to do together, and how we’d like to do that. An uncalm leader doesn’t create a sense of psychological safety for the horse to want to begin to engage. What happens is that the horse starts being more concerned for their own safety.

Likewise, a stressed-out herd member can create discord for others in the herd. Tensions and other struggles arise when a horse cannot find this for themselves. Returning to deep peace is a point of survival for the herd because it allows them to move with clarity and direction, all executed with great speed when necessary. Because of how emotions travel through the herd, a continually stressed-out or anxious horse is a liability to the herd as a whole. A stressed horse will create stressful upset amongst the herd, and a stressed-out herd is ineffective at keeping everyone safe and will end up being someone’s lunch.

The leader of the herd is the calmest one who moves the least and keeps the peace in the herd so that they are relaxed and ready for anything. She keeps the peace not with an iron hoof, but with a strong presence. This calm, deep peace is essential to thriving and good health (and therefore survival). To be steady and calm and know how to make good decisions is to be a good leader for horses.

Presence is what allows you to meet others with complete attention and clarity of heart. It allows you to know where you are, so you can then respond to others with well-placed care. Presence allows you to be there for others more fully than if you tried to be with others by managing your anxiety. (We see this when folks rush to fix or advise and fail to listen deeply so that the other person is heard, truly.)

Because of the emotional wi-fi transmitting between you and the horse and what your breathing is saying about your heart rate, being present takes work. You have to be able to manage your nervous system, which means knowing yourself intimately. What happens when you are triggered? How long can you come back down? What do you need to do to return to center? Your ability to stay present can co-regulate the ‘herd’ of those around you, which is better than co-regulating the herd to your anxiety or another less productive feeling tone.

Presence allows you to seize the great responsibility to meet the tender hearts that you work with in organizations in ways that let them know they matter. Responding to these tender hearts is responding to what my friend Akshay Kapur articulated as “this vulnerability that wants us just to be present. For whatever shows up. In all the small and big acts of leadership, we face every day in our lives.”

When you are in full presence, and able to meet the world from that place, it bears echoes of what Carl Buchheit describes as the basic stance we long for as we reach out with our life from our earliest days to see who looks back at us, and who’s got our back: “I am here. I recognize you are there. I am so glad you are.”

That presence is a healing force. It’s a productive force in our organizations because it mitigates tension and stress. Presence begins with finding peace and calm in your heart.

As humans, we hold on to tension in our bodies longer than we often need to. If a horse reacts to a stimulus, their nervous system upregulates by flight, fight, flee, or freeze. Once it’s over, they can return right back down to the deep peace of grazing. There are no residual effects or held tension, physical or mental. However, sensitive as they are to all body cues, horses can feel the tension we hold in our bodies. And, while they don’t know the verbal stories of what holds that tension, they can feel it in you.

Congruence: Your Presence Precedes You

Horses are extremely sensitive and attuned to the subtlest shifts in each other and their environment. They can feel a fly land on them, and they know what is happening in a half-mile radius surrounding them. Their hooves, while hard and durable, are very alive. Hoof tissues are filled with blood from arteries that run from the heart down their legs. Like a drum skin, they feel the vibration of the earth. Horses can also feel each other and what each other is feeling. This means they can feel you, too.

The way horses sense and respond to congruence and incongruence in their environment is the same way they can feel the congruence and incongruence in the humans in the herd with them. For a horse, it’s not safe to trust incongruence.

As prey animals, horses have the capacity to register intention. They sense and respond to the intention of a predator, rather than the role the predator is acting out. For instance, a herd of zebras can be seen at a watering hole with a lion lazing nearby. As soon as that lion starts to pretend he’s a rock in order to score lunch, the zebras know something is amiss and flee.

When we can bring ourselves into greater congruence with ourselves by slowing down, finding our breath, and feeling what’s alive and present in us, then we can arrive back on our foundation enough to be of value as a herd member. In working with humans with horses in the arena during a coaching session, I have seen time and time again a previously uninterested horse walk the length of the arena to go check out the human as soon as the human had a big shift. Horses can see through the stories we tell ourselves about what we’re doing and why. They see us when we true-up with what’s going on inside of us, or when we find rapport with self.

Because of the horse’s acutely attuned body-feeling-tracking system, they can feel you coming from a half a mile away. They feel all of you, no matter how you present yourself to them. Your presence (or lack thereof) precedes you. “Horses react to what lies in our hearts, not in our heads,” writes Alan Hamilton in his book Zen Mind, Zen Horse. “They are not confused by the words we use to lie to ourselves or hide from others.” For a horse to feel safe with you, he needs to know: How are you? No, really: how are you? How’s your heart? They will find it hard to relax around you until you can drop into the feeling-truth of how you are right now.

Congruence is when your insides true-up with your outside, or the face you put on for the world to see. When your heart and your outside face match, you’ve found congruence. This might feel new, this might feel like vulnerability, but this might also feel like who you really are.

What tensions are you holding? What sadness? What anger? What joys? What fears? What memories are present now, holding you back from experiencing life fully? Whatever is there: include it. It belongs and has a place, and there’s no place it can hide. In so doing, you become more congruent with yourself and therefore able to be in rapport with others with a sense of clarity for them.

As Jack Kornfield offers in A Path With Heart: “Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax, and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.”

Author Toko-pa Turner reminds us how important it is to include what’s here for us, not only for our own well-being but for the well-being of those around us. When we find the undivided ground of our full experience, our presence allows others to find that space within them. Moreover, others can relax when we make this vulnerability our ally. She writes:

“There is a special quality of stillness in a person who encounters their shadow wholeheartedly. Your body may relax in their company because it understands, in the subtle communications of their presence, that nothing is excluded in themselves, or you, from belonging. Such a person, who has given up guarding against the shadow, who has come to wear their scars with dignity, no longer squirms from discomfort or bristles at suffering. They no longer brace in avoidance of conflict. They carry a deep willingness to dance with the inconstancy of life. They’ve given up distancing as a strategy and made vulnerability their ally.”

One thing we know about the leaders of the herd is that they know how to meet each member of the herd and be in a way that allows that member to find what inner resources they need to show up as secure herd-mates. Your ability to do so depends on the depth of your inner work and awareness of your shadow. A leader’s well-honed, real and vulnerable presence allows them to be present for their herd mates (or office mates). They are able to listen to them and be with them in a way that lets them know that they matter. With your stuff accounted for and included, it doesn’t get in the way of another person’s experience.

Attuning Your Horse Body

As you stand with the horse, or the herd, (or with yourself in your office herd), or alone with yourself notice the following:

• How are you?
• How do you hold yourself in your body? Do your insides and outsides match?
• What do you feel in your body? Where is it and what does it feel like? What might it remind you of?
• What emotion would you ascribe to your inner state?
• What face are you presenting to the world?
• How do you feel in your body in relation to others and the world around you?
• How safe do you feel?
• Where is your foundation?
• How is your breathing?
• What do your toes feel like?
• What’s in your heart?
• How does it feel to take all of this in? What is happening in your body? What feelings are you feeling?