Articles
Hawks and horses may not necessarily be thought of as typical training companions for today’s stressed-out managers but at engineering firm Festo they are being employed in a rather novel way to teach leadership.
Horse whispering and hawk training are used to develop executives’ awareness of the effectiveness and emotional intelligence of their leadership styles. The approach is ideal for those suffering from training burn-out, says Neil Lewin, business development manager.
“This is a different way to engage people who have been through the mill training-wise,” he says. “When a new round of training is announced, people can be jaded, and their defence mechanisms go up. This is something fresh.”
Lewin acknowledges that training programmes often fail. This can be down to companies lacking clarity about what they want to achieve, and employees failing to apply lessons learned in training once back in the workplace. When times are tough and workloads heavy, training can be viewed as an inconvenience rather than an opportunity.
“These are typical examples of why companies do struggle and why they have a very negative view of training,” says Lewin. “The key thing for us is always in the preparation, and it’s important to have any training linked to the needs of the business. Without that it tends to become training for training’s sake.”
While there is no doubt that some people make better natural leaders than others, leadership can very much be taught, says Lewin. Enter the horse whispering, where course participants are encouraged to influence horse behaviour during a range of set tasks. “People complain like hell when they can’t get the horse to do what they want it to do, but it’s a very direct reflection back on people’s management styles – you can’t get that through a role play.
“Horse whispering shows that there are other ways in which we can inspire and engage to achieve the objectives that we want. It comes back at the trainee in a direct manner.”
The hawks meanwhile are used as study animals. Employees on the training course work with birds of prey to observe how animals that are free to fly away at any time can be trained to achieve certain objectives set by people. “The beauty of this is that you get a very direct response with animals compared to people,” he says. “We’re very good at hiding our emotions, nodding when we mean ‘no’, and giving the answers that we think people want to hear. With animals the feedback is direct.
“A lot of our R&D work also looks at lessons from nature, and we try to apply biomimetics in industrial applications. This is a different way to engage people.”
Ten reasons why training often fails
- Companies lack clarity about what training should achieve
- People arrive for training unprepared and with no personal connection
- Managers don’t follow up on training afterwards
- People put the books away too soon, and don’t review what they learned after the training – or apply it at work
- Managers see training as ‘ticking a box’ rather than a strategic tool
- Training is not well-aligned to the needs of the business
- Managers see training as a cost rather than an investment
- Participants see training as an inconvenience rather than an opportunity
- Trainers think more about the delivery of the material to the group than the impact they can have on individuals
- Training providers focus more on the revenue they create for themselves than the value they create for their clients