2455 - Leadership Lessons from Horses for Today’s Executives with Business HorsePower's Julia Felton

0:03Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If you're committed to growing your business by serving audiences with generosity and real expertise, you're in the right place. This is a daily 15-minute show featuring leaders who believe real impact comes from generosity, not hype, which means as a listener, you're going to get the good stuff. In fact, we created podverified.com to give thoughtful leaders like you free tools to show up better on podcast stages like this one. That includes your free podverified score, free podverified guest training, a free media kit builder, and so much more. It's the first ecosystem of its kind built by podcasters who genuinely want to help guests thrive and grow in podcasting.

0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Julia Felton. Julia, you are the founder of Business Horsepower. You are found on the web at businesshorsepower.com. You also happen to be a professional speaker. You have a lot of great clients, and you are also a podcaster. Your podcaster is called Impactful Teamwork, which we have all linked up. and congratulations on well over 100 episodes now. But Julia, it's great to have you. Well, thank you so much, Josh, for inviting me on the podcast. Totally love it. My pleasure.

1:32And so I always love hearing from, you know, what leaders do for fun when they're not at work. And just so happens that what you do for fun aligns with the brand of your business. So you've got horses. Tell me about that. I absolutely do. So I've got horses, horses work as part of my business. But what I'm really focusing on now is that I've got a new team member, a new herd member. So right now I'm integrating him into the herd, building relationships with him and getting to know who he is, a bit like we have to do in the workplace. and my other big passion project right now is I'm really passionate about creating great environments for people to work in and I know from my own experience having the right people around you absolutely changes everything so my passion project on the side is I'm just launching a networking group here in the UK in York where I live it's called Hard Hats to Heels and it's for property and business people.

2:35Cool. We'll get into that in a second. A little bit more on the fun stuff before we get here. So tell me about, so you said you recently acquired another horse? Yeah. What age do you, is it kind of like adopting a puppy where you kind of have to wait till they're like six or eight weeks old and you know? Yeah. So my new horse is 12. I just imported him from Malta because in Malta, Malta is a really small island for people that don't know in the Mediterranean. And they have a lot of horses that they do carriage racing with. And then, unfortunately, the island's not big enough to keep all of them.

3:16So unfortunately, his future wouldn't have looked very rosy. So I've adopted him. He's come over to the UK. So he was 12. My other horses are two other horses that I rescued when they were nine months old. They were found on the highway here in the UK. What? Yeah. And they needed somewhere to stay and they've never left. And they're now 16. And I've got my new horse because unfortunately the founders of my business and the reason I set up Business Horsepower, unfortunately passed away last year due to old age. So they were 33. Oh my goodness. What does it take to transport a horse from Malta? my dumb brain is like thinking about you but because I remember what it was like during the Olympics and they they actually talked a great deal about that and what a process that is can I'd love to hear what what happened like how do you bring a horse from Malta well luckily the people that I was uh adopting him from arranged it all but it's it's uh it's a large truck it bought over about 12 of them uh took about five days to drive them all the way from malta and but obviously there's all the passports and everything yes a horse does have a passport right like a person and all the right injections and everything that had to happen but yeah yeah it's so it's it's strange you know this horse has never seen grass before so you know in malta they don't have fields so the horse is doing this is a real acclimatization to a brand new environment that hopefully is going to thrive in and well he seems to be thriving after you know six or eight weeks here so and the other horses are doing all right with the new family member yeah they're doing fine amazing all right so how does this uh how does your work and experience uh in working with horses uh connect to business horsepower explain the metaphor if you would so it's both a literal and an actual metaphor right so business horsepower we are a leadership development company we really help organizations get aligned pulling in the same direction getting all the teams on the same page and improving your leadership skills and one of the ways we do that is through partnering with horses so horses we curate experiences out in nature where people actually come partner with the horses and learn about leadership skills because horses are just amazing at giving people feedback on how they show up really they don't sugarcoat the feedback like Josh, you know, it is just as it is.

5:49And they don't care if you're the CEO or the janitor, right? They just treat everyone the same. So there's no pretension, no ego there. People just partner with the horses and the horses give you some direct feedback on how you're doing. So tell me more about that feedback. Well, so let's just take an example. One of the exercises, I asked you to lead a horse around some cones in an arena and somebody will go up and they'll ask the horse to move and the horse won't move. He'll just stand there often because the person hasn't built any connection, rapport and relationship. You know, why would you want to work for somebody you don't have a relationship with?

6:28Sometimes people's energy isn't there. They're a bit lethargic and the horse is like, well, if you can't be bothered, I can't be bothered. Or one of the main ones also that we find is many, many leaders are very much in their head, Right. They're, you know, thinking about what happened last night. They're worried about what's going to happen in the future. So they're not present in the moment. And the horse requires you to pay attention to know exactly where all the danger is around them. There are prey animals. So their biggest concern is where's the danger coming from? And if you're in your head and not paying attention, how are you going to keep them safe?

7:05But that's also what our team members are looking for. but they're just not quite so explicit, let's say, in their feedback as my horses are.

7:15So you speak on this. Do you mind sharing? You do consulting as well. Yeah. Yeah. So I do. So I run leadership retreats for companies. I run training courses, you know, both in and out the classroom. Not everything is with the horses. and then I speak as well and I host my podcast which is all about teamwork elements because I think you know what we learn from the horses and from the natural world is a model to lead through uncertainty which all businesses are going through right now the horses have been on the planet for millions and millions of years so they've learned to adapt but we also learn about the power of teamwork and I think in the world that we live in today there's no way that one leader can just know everything.

8:03So I really am working with leaders to help them understand the power of what I call shared leadership, because that's what a horse herd does so well. You know, in the old industrial days, Josh, you know, when you had one factory, it was okay. You know, the factory manager could know everything, right? But in today's world of the internet and everything else, let's face it, none of us know everything, what's going on, nowhere near. So how can you have a team around you? And this is a concept I talk about, teamship rather than leadership in businesses. Yeah. You know, and then of course, our tools have gotten significantly better over the past few years in terms of things that are AI enabled now, but that can cause other issues.

8:48How have you seen your work with clients evolve over the past couple of years, especially in regards to, yeah, there's definitely some more turbulence internationally. And then, of course, you've got AI, which is being pretty disruptive in good and bad ways. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think for clients, what I'm finding is so many people have just become addicted to the technology. We've become a society that is always on. You're always at the end of your phone. You're way too available for your team members, in my personal opinion. and leaders need to step away from the tech. And, you know, actually what that is doing is it's causing some problems because what I'm increasingly seeing is decision making just gets stuck with the CEO, right?

9:37It's too easy for you as a team member, if you don't know the answer, to go, I just asked my boss. And your boss will just go, yes, this is the answer. And I'm old enough to remember the days pre-internet, right? And, you know, I remember early on in my career, I was had a big publication to put out to print. My boss was out skiing. There was no way to get hold of her. And I just had to make a decision. So I'm quite used to making decisions. But what I come across time and time again in organisations is this decision drag where nobody wants to make decisions and escalates everything further and further up the organisation.

10:18So, you know, the senior leadership team is becoming the bottleneck. But, you know, this is completely different to what we see in the horse herd where the leadership is distributed and everyone is responsible for making decisions for the health, harmony and unity of the herd.

10:35So why when we think about I feel like there's probably a lot more we could talk about regarding trust as a leader, like I want to evoke that. But then we're also talking about, you know, we think about how we evoke that trust. Would you mind, let me just ask you about that. How does a leader evoke more authentic trust? Like not performatively, but they just are showing up in the way that they would win the trust of the horse and, you know, our teams. Sure. So I think for me, the way that you build trust is obviously you start with yourself. You've got to trust yourself. You've got to do what you say you're going to do.

11:20The quickest way to lose trust with people is say, for example, just something really simple. Say we're going to say minutes after a meeting and then we don't do it. Right. You immediately start eroding trust. So we build trust by the simple actions we do consistently day in, day out. And I think for me as well with our team members, we build trust by spending time and getting to know who our team members really are. Just like I'm doing with my new horse, right? That's how I'm building trust with him. I'm spending time with him to get to know who he is as an individual, what inspires and what motivates him.

11:55And as leaders, I think there's so much pressure on us to go, go, go get results that actually to slow down and spend time having real genuine conversations with our team members about what their aspirations are. Where do they want their career to go? What drives them? What motivates them? That's so important for me for building trust with our team members and something we just need to do way more of. But it's kind of counterintuitive. It's that slow down to speed up piece. All right. So, Julie, share with us how you work with your clients. Do we need to come visit you in the UK to come hang with you and the horses?

12:32well you obviously can you're more than welcome and I love partnering with my herd of horses and I'm based here in Yorkshire but I do have venues and I work all across the world so I actually partner with a company in the US called Teaching Horse I'm one of their facilitators we work all across the US so last year I was over in North Carolina running something for them we worked in Paris last year we worked out in the Middle East so we can actually do the work pretty much anywhere that we can find suitable horses to partner with but obviously my most fun thing is to to do them here with my horses in Yorkshire and and usually typically an experience is a day or two days I like the two-day experience because I often find that clients come and they are so in their head with what's going on it actually in order to get people really present and grounded it takes part the first day to do that and then they can really start connecting with the horse and then that overnight experience of what we call latent learning is really powerful but to be very clear people never ride the horses they're just exercises that people do on the ground with the horses that give us feedback like we say on how are you showing up on a leader as a leader what's your body language like are you authentic are you paying attention what kind of energy you bring into this relationship?

13:55Are you more focused on the task than the relationship? That's a big challenge that leaders have. Yeah. Well, Julia, your podcast is Impactful Teamwork. You want to share just a brief bit about what you talk about on your podcast? Sure. Thank you for asking. So Impactful Teamwork is all about how you can create a super team, because I think teamwork is an unsung competitive advantage that all leaders have in the workplace, but we don't really appreciate our team enough and leverage them enough to get the most success. So we're always looking at ways that you can be more successful as a leader and how do you get your teams to work more effectively together.

14:37Yeah. Your website is businesshorsepower.com. I don't know if you have any other resources that you'd recommend, folks. I think you do. You've got some good resources here. You might sharing what folks go from here. So best way for people to get started is if you go to businesshorsepower.com forward slash quiz, you can take a quiz there that helps you understand how to turbocharge your team to get the most out of them. And then there's a diagnostic that comes on the back of that. Also, you can find my books on Amazon. I've got Unbridled Success, Unbridled Business on Amazon. and also tune into the podcast, which is on Spotify, Apple, all the major streaming platforms.

15:18I love it. Yeah, your books, Unbridled Business, Unlocking Nature's Wisdom to Reinvent Leadership and Unbridled Success, How the Secret Lives of Horses Impact Leadership, Teamwork and Communication. Julia Felton, you are the founder of Business Horsepower, found on the web at businesshorsepower.com. The podcast is Impactful Teamwork. Julia, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much, Joss. Totally enjoyed it. Thank you.

15:48Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If your goal is to grow your business, increase revenue, and build authority without gimmicks, this show is designed for you. Each episode gives you practical insight from leaders who have turned trust and credibility into real business results. If you value short, thoughtful conversations that respect your time, make sure you're subscribed. We publish daily 15-minute episodes focused on growth that actually compounds. And if you're interested in being a guest or you want to turn podcast appearances into measurable business growth, visit podverified.com.

16:24You can start for free with your Podverified score along with free podcast guest training and a free media kit builder. These tools are built to help you get booked on better shows, deliver stronger interviews, and convert audience trust into revenue. No more desperate sales. You truly can enjoy all the business you like by generously sharing your wisdom. Everything we offer is built by podcasters for guests with a focus on trust, organic growth, and long-term business success. Thanks again for spending your time with us. I'll see you next time. We'll be right back.