In this edition of the Eponaquest News, Linda Kohanov debuts the Introduction to her upcoming book The Five Roles of a Masterful Leader, which is due to be published in Spring 2016. While this, her fifth, book offers an innovative approach to corporate and non-profit leadership, this model is also helpful for anyone who would like to rally the resources to become a balanced, compassionate, effective, fully actualized adult—one capable of handling challenges at home, work, and school, as well as in political, spiritual, social activism, and therapeutic contexts. The Fives Roles are based on the knowledge gained by ancient herding cultures, tribes that lived in harmony with nature through a mutually beneficial association with large and sometimes-dangerous, nonpredatory animals. Exploring how to employ this model in modern life, Linda shows us how to bring horse power into the human world to follow our dreams and gain the willing cooperation of others.
The Five Roles of a Masterful Leader
Harnessing Nature’s Wisdom for Adaptive Change, Social Transformation, and Sustainable Innovation
Copyright 2015 by Linda Kohanov
Introduction
The moon is almost full. Its soft light shines gold at the source, yet somehow turns blue as it flows over the desert landscape. The black horse paces back and forth, her labor pains increasing in intensity as her powerful mate mutters a deep, gentle sound of reassurance nearby.
Still, something is not quite right. Well before midnight, when most equine births occur, I sit down on a bed of straw and pat the ground, looking for some way to encourage the mare to rest for an hour or two. And, strangely, miraculously, she lays down bedside me.
Even so, Rasa’s distress is palpable. She continuously touches her nose to her hip, her gestures becoming so emphatic that I grab a flashlight and check under her tail. And there it is, one of many potentially deadly complications I was warned about: Though her water has not yet broken, Rasa’s foal is emerging from the womb, destined to drown in amniotic fluid if I don’t do something fast. I break the sac and support the emerging child, breathing onto his nose to encourage that first breath, relieved to realize the birth is not breach. By the time my ranch manager arrives on the scene, answering a concerned call I made to her not 20 minutes earlier, the foal is resting quietly under a canopy of trees, their leaves blowing gently in the warm September wind.
The tiny colt looks up at me, his eyes reflecting the rising moon. He stands quickly, easily, and ambles toward his two-legged midwife on shaky legs. The mare, however, is facing yet another challenge. She cannot get up, in fact doesn’t even want to try, in part because of a chronic problem with her right back leg that was taxed to the limit by the stress of pregnancy.
Rasa’s eyes begin to glaze over, and I feel tears welling in my own. Horses who can’t stand can suffocate due to the increasing pressure of body weight on weakening lungs. Somehow we have to inspire this mare to choose the promise of life with her newborn over the very understandable urge to sleep.
With Shelley guiding him from behind, the coal-black foal follows me like a shadow as I lead him toward his mother.
“Rasa, here is your boy,” I say, directing the still-wet yet increasingly engaged little horse to breathe into the mare’s nose. “You must get up now and feed him.” The experienced mother nickers and suddenly comes to life at the soft, curious touch of her long-awaited second child. Yet Shelley and I exchange worried glances as Rasa struggles valiantly, then lies back with a weary, disturbingly defeated sigh. And we know that we must make her stand before she gives up completely.
It takes two of us, one pulling a halter attached to a lead rope in front and the other pushing from behind, overriding our own fears and empathetic responses in order to increase the pressure on this exhausted mare, progressively encouraging, then insisting, then demanding that she rally every last resource she possesses to stay in this world. And finally through the herculean efforts of all three of us, Rasa leaps to her feet, shaking her mane in defiance at the specter of death slinking back into darkness.
Moments later, Rasa is caressing her boy, pushing him gently toward his first taste of milk. Indigo Moon drinks with delight as all the horses begin to whinny, welcoming another herd member into this strange and beautiful new world.
Five Roles
To save the lives of both mare and foal, my colleague Shelley Rosenberg and I each performed four of the Five Roles of a Masterful Leader that night. And though it would have been tragic, we were also prepared to engage the fifth, if absolutely necessary.
Days leading up to the birth, in fact, a number of staff members traded shifts in the Sentinel role as we kept watch over the pregnant mare, concerned that the long-standing lameness in her right back leg might lead to complications. Since horses usually give birth less than a half hour after breaking water, we knew we’d have to act quickly if there was a problem, long before a veterinarian could drive down the rustic dirt road to our ranch. And while I was confident in Shelley, who had assisted numerous equine births over the years, I also realized I needed to somehow overcome my notorious fear of medical procedures to learn not only what to look for, but what I might have to do in any number of disturbing labor scenarios. It turned out to be a prescient move: While Shelley was planning to take over the watch at midnight, Rasa’s foal emerged from the womb several hours earlier than usual—minus the classic signal that he was on his way.
Without the mare breaking water, it would have been deadly for the foal if I had stubbornly maintained the role of Sentinel, watching from over the fence, knowing who to call if something ran amiss, certainly, but abdicating a more hands on approach because of my lack of experience in the veterinary arts. To read the subtle nonverbal communication signals Rasa engaged during those crucial moments, I needed an intimate understanding of her unique behavior and a desire to comfort her. I needed to recognize that the feeling of concern my horse conveyed when she laid down was more than an early stage of labor. This intimate knowledge, combined with intuition, came from years of close association and trust. Without my proficiency in the role of Nurturer/Companion, and the connection Rasa and I shared as a result, it’s highly unlikely I would have been sitting on the ground next to her when the foal first emerged. The bond Indigo Moon and I developed as I helped him out of the womb would also serve us well in the years to come.
Yet this birth required much more than watching, nurturing and supporting our four-legged companions. Shelley and I also had to engage two much more active roles that night, those of the Leader and the Dominant. And we had to be quick about it. Taking the leadership position, I began to walk toward our first goal, drawing little Indigo forward, encouraging him to follow me to his mother, as Shelley gently herded him from behind, taking the position of dominant. When the feel and sweet smell of Indi’s soft muzzle wasn’t enough to inspire Rasa to face the pain of standing up, Shelly and I increased the intensity of these roles, simultaneously pulling and pushing, coaching, encouraging, then demanding that the mare get on her feet.
And, finally, if the situation had become dire, both Shelley and I would have had to accept—with deep courage and compassion—the role of Predator: To make the decision to euthanize Rasa would have been difficult enough. But if the vet could not arrive in time to humanely end our beloved companion’s suffering, we would have had to use a gun normally kept on hand for protection in the desert outback, and perform this most grievous and sacred act ourselves.
To this day, I thank our lucky stars we didn’t have to engage all five roles that night. But our ability to incorporate and exchange the other four as needed offered me the first, most visceral glimpse of an ancient form of wisdom, one that has been all but lost in humanity’s increasingly insulated, highly specialized, city-based, sedentary lifestyle.
As Indigo Moon grew to adulthood, the once sweet and gentle foal began to challenge the authority of his two- and four-legged elders alike, forcing us all to gain even more sophisticated skills to socialize this intensely intelligent, highly sensitive, naturally dominant horse. I learned to juggle what I now call the Five Roles of a Masterful Leader with increasing consciousness and proficiency. In the process, I recognized these same principles at work in ethnological studies of traditional nomadic pastoral tribes.
In doing research for my fourth book, The Power of the Herd: A Nonpredatory Approach to Social Intelligence, Leadership, and Innovation, I realized that for thousands of years, “master herders” had developed a multi-faceted, socially intelligent form of leadership combining the roles of Dominant, Leader, Sentinel, Nurturer/Companion, and Predator into a fluid vocabulary of interventions that allowed interspecies communities to move across vast landscapes, dealing with predators and changing climates, protecting and nurturing the herd while keeping these massive, gregarious, sometimes aggressive animals together—without the benefit of fences and very little reliance on restraints.
And I realized, at the dawn of the 21st century, this same richly-nuanced, collaborative, nature-based approach to leadership and social organization must be resurrected if we hope to motivate modern tribes of empowered, mobile, innovative and adaptable people to support each other through the inevitable droughts and doubts of life, moving ever more faithfully and confidently toward the greener pastures of humanity’s own untapped potential.
The Fittest to Lead
As Charles Darwin once observed: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
And that mean us, now, in this crucial, promising yet precarious stage of our own species’ development.
The sedentary, hierarchical, dominance-submission models of leadership the “civilized” world relied on for the last few thousand years have outlived their usefulness. Ironically, the very technological advances this system once nurtured have given birth to an increasingly facile, psychologically expansive, semi-nomadic lifestyle where freedom, autonomy, and constant adaptation challenge all the previous rules of social engagement.
We live in an era of rapid innovation and unprecedented freedom: freedom to fly around the planet for business or pleasure, and freedom to work at home in lucrative and meaningful ways. Through the Internet, people communicate instantly with friends and colleagues they may never meet in person. When natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and demonstrations of protest or solidarity occur in any country, it’s not only journalists and politicians who disseminate information and share their views. People around the world watch the drama unfolding moment to moment, empathize, and join an international conversation that sometimes changes minds and lives.
Men and women of diverse educational and economic backgrounds can access information and resources that would have been denied to them just twenty years ago. Anyone with a great idea can raise money online, order supplies delivered to the door, and conceive a multi-million dollar corporation in the corner of a basement or garage. As a result, command-and-control forms of leadership are suddenly less relevant—on their way to becoming impotent and, finally, obsolete.
Learning to share power is the challenge of the twenty-first century.
In the January 2015 article “20/20 Visions,” Entrepreneur magazine asked leading futurists and cultural anthropologists to predict “how the next five years will revolutionize business.” Brian Solis joined other members of the panel in emphasizing that “things are not only changing, but are so radically different that the business models we have today cannot support a much more dynamic approach to the market.”
Shifting value systems demand innovation, not only in technology, but also in leadership as network-based organizational structures emerge. Younger generations are “very entrepreneurial and tend to have a lot of global connectivity,” Bob Johansen observes. “They’re very interested in environmental issues and sustainability.” They also “want authenticity, they want transparency.”
It makes sense. These are the people who will endure the effects of climate change and raise children in the face of dwindling resources. At the same time, their fluency in social media calls for collaborative business models that take advantage of “mutual benefit partnering on a global scale,” what Johansen calls The Reciprocity Advantage in his book by the same title. For anyone born after 1990, hierarchical, highly competitive, rape and pillage styles of corporate conquest are not only dangerous, they’re simply less relevant. The most successful CEOs of the last forty years cannot model or quite possibly even imagine the leadership and social intelligence skills the next generation will need to thrive in this brave new world.
Power and Collaboration
While some corporate and political regimes still strive to disempower others for personal gain, relentless waves of technological, economic and cultural innovation are eroding dictatorial resolve. In his book The Third Industrial Revolution, Jeremy Rifkin speaks of “an emerging collaborative age” in which “lateral power organized nodally across society” is “fundamentally restructuring human relationships, from top to bottom to side to side, with profound implications for the future of society.”
There’s one major issue we face in this transition: Far too many people experience power and collaboration as opposites, as if one must be sacrificed in favor of the other. Those who value power are more inclined to suppress collaboration to fulfill ambitious goals or reinforce the status quo. And those deeply committed to collaboration sometimes neglect assertiveness for fear of damaging relationships, even when a clear, directive, humane use of power may be necessary to motivate widespread positive change.
I belonged to the latter category. Growing up female in the 1960s, before the women’s rights movement gathered force and floated more gently toward my small, mid-western city, I was encouraged to develop the nurturing arts at the expense of leadership. As I graduated college and entered the workforce, I was desperately untrained in the skillful use of power and influence, except through those genteel, primarily unconscious, passive aggressive moves “the weaker sex” developed through 5000 years of subjugation.
In the 1980s, equal opportunity opened things up a bit. I could use intelligence, vision, enthusiasm, and degrees or certifications to be promoted, and I excelled at inspiring and collaborating with others—especially when working with self-motivated, caring people. But whenever it was necessary to make tough decisions, motivate uncooperative employees, deal with feuding factions, or lead others into controversial or uncomfortable areas, I tended to avoid conflict, at times abdicating authority when I needed to stand strong.
More dominant colleagues had no problem pulling rank, handling dissent, and herding others toward short-term goals, but these command-control-style managers were less effective over time. Many crossed the line between assertiveness and intimidation, losing trust along the way. Some withheld information and suppressed creativity, producing dull, listless staff members who hid growing resentment behind limp smiles of compliance.
If these leaders inspired anything at all in their employees, it was the tendency to choose between two mediocre options—to take their talents elsewhere, or become more complacent, in some cases machine-like, “retiring in place” decades before receiving that coveted gold watch.
Pandemonium and Paralysis
When I began to teach emotional and social intelligence skills to a variety of entrepreneurs, corporations, and non-profits in the early 2000s, I noticed that the gap between relationship-oriented and goal-oriented leadership styles widened in certain fields—increasing dysfunction in both. Social service, educational, and charitable agencies attracted plenty of considerate, openhearted employees, but these people didn’t necessarily know how to get along. Unresolved conflict festered behind facades of politeness as an undercurrent of increasing frustration was expressed through skeptical silences in meetings and toxic whispers in the hallways.
Staff members who considered “power” a dirty word engaged in passive aggressive moves to gain influence. For example, when differences of opinion and working style emerged, some people in the “caring fields” used the subtle yet damaging ploy of undermining a rival’s reputation by diagnosing him or her with any number of personality disorders, behind his or her back, usually while feigning concern for the person’s mental health. This “arm-chair psychologist” power play successfully gained the person using it some followers—while creating factions that worked at odds with each other as a result. Yet those who employed this increasingly popular technique rarely acknowledged the unproductive results for the organization as a whole, let alone the personal ambition behind this divisive behavior, instead seeing themselves as victims, or as self-righteous protectors of colleagues who were victims.
Highly sensitive people and abuse survivors, who felt called to these fields for the best of reasons, amplified stress in other ways. These employees were more likely to exhibit hair-trigger responses to minor threats or simple disagreements, take creative debate far too personally, and hold grudges. Such tendencies undermined working relationships, most insidiously because conflict-averse people acted out anger and frustration in secretive yet increasingly virulent ways, making it impossible for supervisors to catch difficulties in their earliest, most manageable stages. Simply by giving each other the silent treatment, for instance, key staff members could make it difficult for colleagues unrelated to the conflict to get their jobs done. Over time, more factions would be created, with each side feeling disrespected or undermined by the others.
Untrained in how to set boundaries, communicate their needs effectively, handle disagreements, and motivate others through unemotional yet still compassionate assertiveness, leaders and followers alike had trouble fulfilling their noble goals as the energy of idealism was depleted by the daily realities of interpersonal unrest. This made it difficult to serve clients, let alone experiment, debate, and adapt to shifting social and economic climates—no matter how admirable the organization’s mission might be.
Corporate and entrepreneurial settings, on the other hand, attracted more goal-oriented technologically savvy people. These organizations faced a whole other set of challenges as people with great ideas and relentless ambition rose to influential positions without developing the emotional and social intelligence skills to lead effectively.
To make matters worse, brilliant minds were encouraged to ruthlessly compete with each other, most often through a combination of financial incentives and bell-curve firing practices, breeding mistrust, defensiveness, and the tendency to withhold important information from colleagues.
In the most extreme cases, a “survival of the fittest, kill or be killed” mentality focused on short-term profit at the cost of long-term company growth and sustainability, leading to all kinds of callous, unethical acts resulting from institutionalized predatory behavior. Aggressive companies like Enron imploded at a significant cost to stockholders, employees and society at large. Even operations seen as extremely successful, such as Apple Computers, lost millions of dollars and a number of valuable employees through the antics of brilliant yet domineering innovators like Steve Jobs, who valued intellect and competition over relationship, communication, and collaboration.
In politics, these dynamics evolved into a strange combination of pandemonium and paralysis as social service concerns clashed with competitive corporate ambitions on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, resulting in all the dysfunctions describe above, acted out in a confusing free-for-all of unproductive behavior.
No wonder even the most well meaning democratic governments can’t seem to get anything significant done: The challenges that every modern organization faces are magnified exponentially when an entire country gets involved.
Where Do We Go from Here?
In the last twenty years, a number of studies have explored “masculine” and “feminine” styles of leadership. From this perspective, command-control, task oriented, winner-take-all practices resulted from a long-standing preponderance of men in business and politics, a trend that ruled well into the twentieth century when women gained the right to vote and began to enter the workforce in increasing numbers. During that revolutionary shift, more collaborative, relationship oriented, mutually supportive practices began to emerge as the daughters and granddaughters of these pioneering spirits gained advanced degrees, excelled in professional fields, and were promoted to management positions.
Inc. magazine’s editor-at-large Leigh Buchanan divides the subsequent evolution of leadership into three rapidly shifting eras: The Age of Autocracy (ancient times into the 1980s), The Age of Empowerment (mid-1990s to the mid-2000s), and The Age of Nurture (mid-2000s to present). This sequence represents what Buchanan calls “The De-Machoing of Great Leadership” in her June 2013 article by the same title, but all three styles continue to exist side by side, allowing us to compare them in real time.
Modeling himself on samurai principles, Oracle’s Larry Ellison is a modern poster child for The Age of Autocracy, “as he attacks competitors and pushes employees to the limit.” Buchanan also cites General Electric’s Jack Welch, “for his propensity to get rid of employees while leaving buildings intact,” gaining him the uniquely disturbing nickname “Neutron Jack.”
To exemplify The Age of Empowerment, Buchanan cites Starbuck’s Howard Schultz’s strategy to “rely on store-level employees making decisions based on knowledge of their regions.” She also looks at eBay’s Meg Whitman “whose business model is all about autonomy, which requires her to trust people while insisting on integrity.”
For The Age of Nurture, interestingly enough, Buchanan lauds the antics of three men: David Neeleman, who “dons an apron and serves snacks to JetBlue passengers,” Whole Foods John Mackey, who “contributes $100,000 annually to a fund for workers with personal struggles, and Tony Hsieh, who “enshrines honesty, humility, and weirdness among Zappo’s core values.”
“Increasingly,” Buchanan asserts, “the chief executive role is taking its place among the caring professions. It takes a tender person to lead a tough company.”
And, I would argue, it takes a tough person to lead a caring organization. But not in the way we usually define “tough.” I’m not talking about a Larry Ellison or Neutron Jack. I’m thinking more along the lines of an Abraham Lincoln or a George Washington, two exceptional leaders who upheld controversial, socially conscious goals during exceedingly dangerous, pivotal moments in history.
What we’re really talking about here is a longstanding, though initially slow-moving, trend toward balancing assertive, goal-oriented behavior and compassionate, relationship-oriented behavior that reached a tipping point in the late-twentieth century. In her article “Between Venus and Mars: 7 Traits of True Leaders,” Buchanan cites Lincoln as “a man for our times, one clearly capable of “merging masculine traits (strength of purpose, tenacity) with feminine ones (empathy, openness, the willingness to nurture others).” America’s sixteenth president went to war to uphold his convictions, and yet his “humility and inclusiveness made possible the ‘team of rivals’ described by Doris Kearns Goodwin in the popular book of that title. Generous and empathic, he made time for people of all stations who approached him with their troubles.”
Still, it’s important to appreciate the level of emotional heroism it takes to combine “masculine” and “feminine” qualities, especially in challenging situations. In my 2013 book, The Power of the Herd, I analyzed George Washington’s impressive career in several chapters and came to the conclusion that in triumph—and, more importantly, in long, drawn-out periods of confusion and despair—he was a far more compassionate and inventive leader than most people realize.
“Let your heart feel for the affliction and distress of everyone,” he advised. This was no small feat for a general who shivered with his troops, helpless, as many of them starved to death at Valley Forge. Yet letters to trusted allies and friends reveal that he had been dealing with his own heightened sensitivity for years, struggling to maintain composure in the midst of searing empathic responses to the settlers he encountered during the French and Indian War: “I see their situation, know their danger, and participate in their sufferings without having it in my power to give them further relief than uncertain promises,” he had written to his British superiors in 1756, asking for support. “The supplicating tears of the women and moving petitions from the men melt me into such deadly sorrow that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided it would contribute to the people’s ease.”
Though he was able to renew himself in Mount Vernon’s pastoral embrace after the French and Indian War, rest and success did not make him complacent. As Washington repeatedly reentered public life, supporting one desperate cause after another, the turmoil he endured voluntarily is truly staggering. Rather than shield his heart against the disappointment, anguish, and sheer horror he witnessed, Washington remained steady and thoughtful in the midst of feelings that would have short-circuited the average person’s nervous system. His was not the coolness of the sociopath who felt no fear, but the authentic hard-won calmness of a man whose emotional stamina was so great that he was willing to accompany people into the depths of despair, and stay with them, offering hope through sheer presence.
In situations that most leaders would find hopeless, Washington’s unique combination of fierceness, fairness, authority, courage, self-control, and empathy kept people from lapsing into seemingly justified selfish, revenge seeking, survivalist behavior. His open heart was neither hardened by adversity, nor did it keep him from making tough decisions. He refused to coddle deserters or looters, ordering severe floggings of men caught stealing food. On rare occasions, he executed soldiers planning widespread revolt. And yet, he instituted a policy of humanity for prisoners of war, even as the British executed and tortured his own captured troops.
It’s reasonable to say that Washington was one of those rare individuals capable of combining “masculine” and “feminine” forms of leadership, but this wouldn’t be nearly as accurate as analyzing his ability to act as a “master herder,” one capable of performing five crucial leadership roles fluidly, interchangeably, as needed.
In The Power of the Herd, I built a case for the fact that this at-once innovative and ancient approach to leadership stemmed from Washington’s own experience taking care of large herds of powerful animals, finding and training horses capable of enduring the challenges of war, and riding and caring for all the others daily in times of peace.
Washington’s ability to use the Five Roles of a Masterful Leader was developed over decades. This nature-based wisdom supported his most ambitious goals in the human world, most likely at a subconscious level, like a musician who plays brilliantly without giving technique a second thought. Washington never wrote about using these skills, never commented on them—though the animals he relied upon demanded he hone this balance every day. Even so, this experiential knowledge helped Washington become an exceptional leader capable of transcending the problems of a dualistic approach, allowing him to move beyond the human pre-occupation with “opposites” like male versus female, power versus collaboration, mind versus heart, logic versus feeling, and assertive, goal-oriented behavior versus compassionate, relationship-oriented behavior—an accomplished, socially-intelligent perspective that our current, fast changing culture increasingly asks both men and women to adopt.
Employing these roles, consciously and fluidly, might seem like an overwhelming task at first glance, but I promise you, they’re easy to recognize, even among citified humans. The average adult is already good at wielding more than one. But the idea of each individual developing and balancing all five of these roles for the good of one’s family, business, and ever widening local—and global—community promises something even more strange and wonderful: a leap in the social evolution of humanity itself, helping large numbers of people to become compassionate, effective, fully actualized adults.
The Power of the Herd
In this effort, we must consciously harness wisdom that nature has been promoting for millennia. In our sedentary culture, few people—even accomplished equestrians—realize that in herds of freely roaming herbivores, the Leader and the Dominant are often two different animals, that they perform specific functions essential to the group’s well being, and that the other roles I mentioned also contribute to the healthy functioning of the social system.
Still, most animals, human included, are drawn toward a couple of roles, while avoiding or outright rejecting the others. This tendency not only keeps everyone in a state of arrested development, it has a tendency to wreak havoc in challenging situations—unless the “tribe” is managed by an exceptional leader who, like a George Washington or a master herder in a traditional pastoral culture, is capable of employing the various roles as tools, rather than identifying with one or two.
The simple, eternally irritating truth of the matter is that each role has a shadow side that results in dysfunctional behavior when it is overemphasized. We’re well aware, for instance, that people who cling to the role of Dominant or the role of Predator can become highly destructive in businesses, in families and most certainly in politics. Your average dictator takes it one step further, combining the roles of Dominant and Predator, enslaving and victimizing people in order to thrive at their expense. But many people don’t realize that these two roles are useful, necessary in fact, when separated and employed sparingly, for very specific purposes, by people who are well versed in nonpredatory forms of power, people who know when and how to employ all five roles for the good of the tribe. For many people, it’s also counterintuitive, yet ultimately enlightening, to realize that even the Nurturer/Companion role can have toxic effects in organizations and families when this function is over-emphasized in an individual.
The Five Roles of a Masterful Leader makes sense of previously confusing group dynamics, while helping people to develop a mature, balanced, mutually empowering approach to leadership and social intelligence: at work, school, home, and in larger cultural contexts. This model helps us navigate change, handle conflict, and support innovation that serves the individual as well as the group, and perhaps most importantly, the health and well being of all species and countless generations to come.
What more could we possibly ask for in this time of unprecedented, potentially dangerous, mind-bending possibility?
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Want to Learn More?
If you would like more information on the history and development of this model, see Linda’s fourth book The Power of the Herd. Chapters 3 to 5 discuss unique features of George Washington’s development of a compassionate, socially conscious form of leadership. Chapter 6 looks at Enron’s downfall as a case study of an overly predatory corporation, and offers a long-ignored theory of evolution where mutual aid is a significant factor in the survival of the fittest. Chapters 7 and 8 take an in-depth look at nomadic pastoral cultures that learned important leadership and social organization skills from herds of large animals. For critical and reader reviews of this book, see http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Herd-Nonpredatory-Intelligence/dp/1577316762
There are a number of pre-publication opportunities to study the characteristics of the five roles and their counter-productive shadow sides. Linda will be presenting this model in Paris June 6 during an indoor skills building workshop. For more information and to register, see http://eponaquest.com/workshop/the-power-of-the-herd-horse-sense-for-challenging-times-france/.
Linda will also be teaching these skills through highly effective horse-facilitated activities during two fall workshops with her herd in Arizona: Harnessing the Invisible http://eponaquest.com/workshop/harnessing-the-invisible-a-transformational-approach-to-leadership-innovation-and-authentic-community-building/ and The Power of the Herd http://eponaquest.com/workshop/power-herd-leadership-21st-century/. (No horse experience necessary.)
Eponaquest Instructors with the POH (Power of the Herd) designation next to their names are also offering Power of the Herd introductory workshops based on this model. For list of Eponaquest Instructors on five continents, see http://eponaquest.com/recommended-instructors/.
And if you would like to learn how to teach this model, in indoor workshops, coaching sessions, and through powerful horse-facilitated learning activities, join us for the 2015 Eponaquest Apprenticeship Program. (Only four spaces left. Horse experience IS necessary.) For information on this in-depth training, see http://eponaquest.com/overview/.