Taking off the Blinders: A Q and A with Dr. Barbara Walton, MCC

With a full slate of clients, including individuals, couples and teams, ICF Global Past President and Master Certified Coach Dr. Barbara Walton sometimes needs to enlist the assistance of some trusted colleagues. Weighing in at approximately 1,000 pounds, with a taste for carrots, apples and peppermint candies, the coaching pros Barbara partners with aren’t likely to make an appearance at the next ICF event. However, as the “workhorses” of KTD Coaching’s Equine-assisted Coaching services, they play an important role in enhancing clients’ capacity for self-awareness, communication and teamwork.

We asked Barbara to join us for a conversation about Equine-assisted Coaching and the unique capacity of horses to help clients take their own blinders off and see themselves more clearly.

Coaching World: What is Equine-assisted Coaching? What does it entail?

Barbara Walton: We take folks through a series of exercises, from simply approaching the horse to getting the horse to go through an obstacle course, and the horse becomes a coach as well.

Horses can give feedback about the participants that might not otherwise surface or be revealed. Horses are very sensitive, and they will pick up thoughts that aren’t even being spoken yet, taking the coaching to a whole new level. The exercises allow a different level of awareness and conversation about who the client is being, who the client intends to be and who the client hopes to be, versus how he or she is showing up.

CW: How did your interest in Equine-assisted Coaching begin?

BW: I had my own horse when I was young, and I remember it brought out such joy and such freedom just to be with horses. As an adult, I’ve found that being around horses brings out the best in me as a leader and as a human being, and the overall emotional experience of being in the presence of a horse can do that in just about any client I work with. I’ve never worked with anyone who didn’t want to be around the horse, who didn’t want to approach the horse.

Clients don’t come to me expecting to work with horses. The clients who end up taking it to the next level and working with the horses are more or less at the VIP level: It’s not their first encounter with my coaching. It really represents the next level of coming into my life, as well as them opening their lives to me. It’s been a natural evolution to bring these clients into my environment and incorporate the horse into the coaching relationship.

CW: How does Equine-assisted Coaching enhance clients’ learning?

BW: Horses do not have a separation between what they think and what they present as humans do. We have a way of presenting a persona or a mask of what’s going on inside us, and horses don’t. They actually experience what’s behind the mask, and what’s not being said.

Horses will pick up on things in the client that I may never pick up on or the client may never reveal. The level of fear is one thing that gets revealed very quickly. Most people can cover their fears very well in their communication, unless they’re really anxious, but this is the more subtle fear, the more subtle nuances that an individual may have learned to navigate in their interpersonal interactions. Any significant emotional experience opens us up to learning, and I find that horses do that for most adults. It gives the opportunity to open up, whether it’s the heart opening or the mind opening. Clients are able to learn something new from the experience of being in the presence of the horse, and they are learning about themselves and I’m learning about them and learning from the horse in a way that the client may never, ever divulge. It ends up taking the conversation in a whole new direction.

CW: How do you use equines in Team Coaching engagements?

BW: Team-building generally starts in the same way, with exercises where the individuals begin to tune into and receive feedback on who they are and how they’re communicating with the equine. We often have subgroups of the team working together to accomplish a task, such as grooming, moving the horse around the round pen or moving the horse around the obstacle course. It elicits a different kind of collaboration and communication, and the ability to align with one another in order to accomplish a task. You see that when the participants are doing these exercises, they’re having a lot of fun. Some of the learning doesn’t happen until they’re done with the exercises and they’re reflecting on the experience. Even three to six weeks later, they’re calling back and saying, “You wouldn’t believe how my conversations and how my interactions with clients have changed since working with the horses.”

Any opportunity that takes place outside of a team’s normal atmosphere or environment and asks them to do a task that they’re unfamiliar with is going to result in some bonding and some team building. It’s an opportunity to be outside and with nature. It’s not just being around the horses, but being around the trees and the grass and the pasture that really makes people want to bring out their best. When we can bring out the best in the horses, the horses bring out the best in us.

CW: What can horses themselves teach teams?

BW: Horses are herd animals, so the team can watch the way the horses interact and watch their natural leadership. No matter what group of horses you bring together, they will herd; there will be a leader; and they will share tasks, they will share responsibilities, and they will collaborate. We point some of that out to them, and some of it they notice on their own in their learning about what’s happening, because they’re watching their teammates and the horses and watching how the horses respond to the different energies in their teammates. This is a dynamic learning experience.

CW: What impacts have clients experienced as a result of Equine-assisted Coaching?

BW: I think the stories I love the most are when clients come back and say that it’s affected their family, that it’s made a difference in how they’re able to be present with their families, how they move out of that mind chatter or the knowing of their mind to really be more aware and more conscious. The individual feels a greater alignment with their whole self. Their mind, their soul, their physical body is more present in their interactions with others. Often, parents come back and say that there’s a big difference in how they’re hearing or guiding their teenager, recognizing they can’t control them. They learned that from the horse: that they can’t control them with words or expectations and they have to co-create something with them.

Clients have credited Equine-assisted Coaching with helping them get real enough to tell a truth that allowed a deep conversation to happen, whether they say that saved their marriage or whether they say that saved their relationship with their teenager, in addition to the environment at work being improved or being navigated more successfully, and just feeling more successful and having a feeling of more competence and confidence in creating their own success.