Participant with personal and professional challenges feels a sense of freedom, victory, peace, and comfort, and obtains hope for the future after attending “Unharness Your Leader-Self” workshop. The Names have been changed to protect the participant’s privacy.
Prior to attending the L-E-A-D workshop, Terry had experienced management challenges with a good employee who suddenly became difficult. The cooperative “team” approach that she had been successfully practicing did little to prepare her for dealing with and managing the new defiant behaviors. As long as things were going smoothly, she could handle it, but confronting someone’s negative behavior was outside her area of expertise. She was a nice person who didn’t want to hurt anyone, and therefore failed to set proper boundaries.
Terry’s personal life had been riddled with fear and self-doubt. She grew up in what looked like a normal, middle class home, but in reality endured physical and mental torment at the hands of an older sibling, with an at-home parent who did nothing about it. Because she never felt “worth it,” she lacked self-esteem and self-confidence. This opened the door for more people to harm her throughout her life. The pattern of hurt became a negative reoccurring theme, creating distrust in most people.
Terry did not trust her judgment of people and preferred being alone rather than in a relationship, risk being hurt and repeating the same mistakes. She experienced a few wins in her life, but felt when something went wrong, it was her fault, she must have done something wrong, and deserved the physical & mental abuse dished out by others.
At the beginning of the workshop each participant is asked to tell the group what they want to accomplish during the 2-day workshop. Terry’s reason for attending was “I want to walk in my own authority. I want to know what I do that causes people to walk all over me, and I want to learn it from a horse, because horses don’t lie.”
The facilitators had Terry work with Pan, one of our herd members. They asked her to put a halter rope on Pan, and when she was finished, to stand with the horse and hold him. When the task was accomplished, Terry was asked some general questions about herself. While standing next to Pan and holding the rope, he put his head against her. She thought this was sweet and it meant that he liked her. As she continued responding to questions, he began to nudge her. The facilitators asked if his behavior was bothering her, and she assured them it was not. The frequency of the nudging intensified with each question and response, but Terry continued to respond as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, and assured the facilitators that she was fine.
Finally, the nudge turned into a push that physically moved her about a foot. At this point, the facilitators asked Terry again, “Is that bothering you?” The facilitators continued probing, and asked her why she felt his inappropriate behavior was okay? It was at this point she realized it should have been bothering her. She was stunned. Terry said, “It was annoying, but it would have never occurred to me that I didn’t have to up with Pan’s behavior unless someone told me.”
The facilitators advised Terry that when she failed to stop Pan from invading her personal space, he began to take advantage of her. The more she allowed, the more insistent he became. Terry said, “I would have tolerated Pan’s pushing endlessly. It never occurred to me to do something to stop him pushing on me. Normally, I would have just felt guilty for being annoyed, like this was just something I’d have to put up with and not complain. I realize that I have done this over and over again in my personal life.” Terry had made the connection to the similar patterns playing out in her personal and professional life.
Terry describes the value of her learning experience as: “Just like the MasterCard commercials: Priceless! Freedom, victory, peace, comfort, and hope for the future. Restoration of dreams lost in the past. Wholeness. I have won a big battle, and I’m working on the war.”
The feelings Terry has experienced are changes on the inside, which are most important, but they also produce noticeable outward changes. When out with a dear friend of Terry’s the night after her experience with Pan, he told her “I’ve never seen you look so radiant. I can see peace in your eyes.”
