Here you see a representative of a sales team partnered with a representative of an operations team. They’re objective is to convince the horse (the customer) to stay inside the box, keep him entertained and loyal despite the hay located a few feet outside of the box. They cannot touch the horse, talk to the horse or talk to each other to accomplish this task, so they’ll have to use some “outside of the box” problem solving skills to reach their goal.
Corporate Team Building
In today’s economy….your employees HAVE to work as a team. Layoffs and budget cuts have resulted in fewer employees to perform the same or increased workload. Now more than ever business leaders are looking for “outside of the box” approaches to increasing sales and production results from employees. Inner Trails provides customized equine assisted corporate team building workshops for groups of 1-100 employees.
How does it work?
Participants are assigned a task to accomplish individually or with a group and horses. They are given a couple of rules but for the most part they are fully empowered and responsible for deciding how to complete the task. Often during our sessions, participants do not yet realize that profound change is actually occurring. The activities are fun, they challenge people to problem solve and empower them to explore a variety of approaches which often force them out of their comfort zone.
At the conclusion of the activity we discuss their experience and there are often AH-HA moments when participants describe the horses behavior/response and relate the same feelings or experience to their own behaviors in the work place.
This form of self discovery is particularly powerful because no one told them how to accomplish the task, so all of the decisions about how to approach the challenge and their behaviors during the activity were not guided by outside influence, but rather by themselves. Thus, we remove the concept that they had no choice based on the direction provided, and by having them partner with a horse instead of a human we remove the possibility that their partner has some hidden agenda or motive. Removing some of these typical patterns of blame leads participants to more readily recognize and take ownership of their behaviors.
There is no horse experience necessary as this program is not about horsemanship. We offer a unique, challenging, and often fun form of experiential learning and self discovery.