Leadership skills: it’s really just horse sense

Deloitte Centre for the Edge chief Peter Will­iams believes executives can learn a lot about leadership from horses.

Deloitte Centre for the Edge chief Peter Williams with horsewhisperer Carlos Tabernaberri at Upper Plenty in Victoria. Picture: David Geraghty.

Every business consultant has a view on what makes a great leader, and most agree that understanding staff, being able to motivate, engage and inspire to drive productivity are key ingredients.

But Deloitte Centre for the Edge chief executive Peter Will­iams says executives can learn more about leadership from ­horses than from many other training areas, highlighting the success of herds across millennia.

Williams, who will be speaking next week at the annual Australian Human Resources Institute convention, says that after spending time with Argentinian horse whisperer Carlos Tabernaberri he has learned more about humans.

Williams says people, like ­horses, respond to a nudge and some direction, and he encourages leaders to understand what makes each of their staff members tick by getting to know their personalities rather than “helicoptering” over a team. He supports an open-door communication policy.

“You’re more involved with them, you’re more available to staff, they get a sense of what’s working,” Williams says. “If it’s not working you say, ‘Let’s reflect on that and see what’s not working’. It’s the constant application of small pressure.”

Williams says leaders can learn about body language from horses. By spending time with them on his farm and having fortnightly ­sessions with Tabernaberri, he has learned that most people do not realise horses have overt body language and that it needs to be read, just as many leaders fail to read their own staff.

“When I walk in the office now I can see my people and tell if they look stressed,” he says. “I can take them aside and see if they’re OK, do they need some help.

“Managers get into the habit of saying they’ve got things to do without knowing if their workers are in a good state or a bad state. It’s also this notion of being completely present and being aware because they’ll read you in a millisecond as well.”

Williams says poor leaders are often promoted without chief executives providing training or realising they may not be able to lead others well. In the horse world, he says, leadership is earned and respected in the team.

“If you act inappropriately in the horse world you lose your leadership, and in life that’s where things go bad,” he says. “If you go home and say, ‘Did I earn the right to lead my people today?’ and take a different perspective as leader, you’re more likely to earn ­respect.”

Professor of business psychology Tomas Cham­orro-Premuzic, who is also speaking at the conference, says leadership deteriorates when ­executives fail to ask themselves those questions, and when they get caught up in their own importance. He says confidence levels among chief executives, company leaders and management are getting out of control in Western countries and there is a growing “epidemic of narcissism”.

“This is worse in the corporate sector and most managers are positively rewarded or congrat­ulated for showing confidence and hubris,” Chamorro-Premuzic says. The Columbia University academic says that as people have evolved, their capability to judge others has diminished as the ability to deceive and manipulate has developed. With more “showing off” and “sucking up” to reach the top of professions, there is a lesser need for people to prove themselves, as they once would have in engineering or manufacturing careers, he says. People no longer have to prove their worth by creating things or showing skills.

There is a growing sense of entitlement, Chamorro-Premuzic says, and the gap between entitlement and work ethics is increasing. “Everyone wants to be the next Richard Branson but they don’t have 1 per cent of the work ethic,” he says.

The narcissistic epidemic is worse in the US, he says, where executive salaries are skyrocketing and those who succeed are often the most confident.

But Chamorro-Premuzic says Australia has not reached those highs or lows, and worker attitudes here sit somewhere between the self-deprecating, cynical British and the ambitious, confident Americans. “The bigger the gap between the top 1 per cent of CEOs and entrepreneurs and the workers, the more that culture worships ­individuals.”

With growing confidence threatening to create a division between the managing class and their staff, University of Michigan professor of business David Ulrich says the human resources profession will have to evolve to be more about delivering people skills, talent, better leadership and organisational solutions.

Rather than just dealing with staff issues and employment, Ulrich says, HR executives will need to become business professionals to bring insight to senior man­agement and have a greater understanding of marketplace conditions.

“HR practices need to be aligned to strategy inside the company and customers and investors outside the company,” he says. HR practices will also need to be innovative in the next decade. “HR alignment, integration and innovation will help deliver talent, leadership and ­organisation solutions to business problems and opportunities,” he says.

As the industry develops, ­Ulrich says, HR professionals will need to adapt to technology and use it to their advantage, allowing people to streamline tasks and improve ­efficiency.

Ulrich recently came up with the POT theory to describe the future of HR. The P stands for perspective, and how staff increasingly will have to change their focus from inside the business to outside opportunities. The O stands for outcomes, and how professionals will need to concentrate on results rather than activity, focusing on talent, building leadership, and capability for change. The T stands for transformation, and how HR should adapt its gov­ernance, practices, competencies, and analytics to respond to new opportunities.