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Imagine translating a horse’s sensitivity to human emotions into understanding, improving your leadership style.
Fascinating, right?
In today’s volatile business environment, recognizing and harnessing the power of our emotions can revolutionize the way we lead.
I had a transformative discussion with Lucinda Vette, a renowned equine coach, about equine-assisted coaching—a method that digs deep into understanding leadership energy and emotional intelligence through our connection with horses. But I didn’t just discuss it, I went down to the in Tucson, AZ and experienced this powerful modality firsthand.
Miraval Resorts has luxurious wellness destinations, designed to help you create a life in balance through mindfulness. One of their pioneering programs is Equine Coaching, where equine specialists help you practice balancing leadership and cooperation skills with a nonverbal companion.
Lucinda has honed her expertise through years of practice combining intuitive interpersonal skills with practical, actionable advice, empowering leaders and teams to achieve their full potential. This mirrors lessons from The Path to Enlightened Leadership with David Meltzer, where tuning into emotional signals is key to leading with intention.
Discover how engaging with horses can redefine your leadership approach by tuning into this week’s episode of The Enlightened Executive.
Harnessing Emotional Intelligence Through Leadership Energies
Our discussion began with an exploration of the various types of leadership energies: sentinel, visionary, nurturer, dominant, and predator. Each of these energies offers unique strengths and can be strategically employed in different scenarios to optimize outcomes:
- Sentinel: a guard, a lookout, a person keeping watch
- Visionary: (especially of a person) thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom.
- Nurturer: someone who cares for others, offering protection, support, encouragement, or training.
- Dominant: most important, powerful, or influential.
- Predator: a person who leverages or “uses” others to get ahead.
Act: Consider a challenging situation you faced recently—assess which type of energy you applied and its effectiveness. Increase your awareness and versatility by consciously practicing different energies in varied circumstances (except the last one). This adaptability can significantly enhance your leadership effectiveness.
Emotional Intelligence in Equine Coaching
Equine coaching reveals the unspoken power of non-verbal communication, emotional sensitivity and how horses can impact those around us.
Horses respond intuitively to the energies we emit, providing immediate feedback about our true emotional state and the congruence of our intentions and actions.
- Actionable Tip: Engage in activities that increase your non-verbal communication skills. Try this mirror exercise: Pair up with a partner and take turns mirroring each other’s body language and gestures. This helps increase awareness of your own non-verbal signals and how they are perceived.
Leading with Emotional Authenticity and Awareness
“Horses respond to the energy we emit.”
One of the most striking aspects Lucinda shared was how horses challenge us to confront and process our emotions authentically. They detect and react not just to what we show outwardly, but what we genuinely feel.
For instance, if a leader brings dominant energy into a stressful situation, the horse might become resistant to doing what the leader wants them to do—mirroring typical team reactions when they feel overwhelmed.
- Practice This: Cultivate a habit of checking in with your emotions regularly – the simple question of “what am I feeling right now?” Use journaling or digital apps designed for emotional tracking. This can help you recognize emotional triggers and patterns, leading to better self-management and clearer communication.
For a deeper dive into how emotional intelligence impacts leadership and team dynamics, listen to this conversation on optimizing emotional health with Joey Klein.
Synergizing Team Energies for Better Dynamics
Lucinda touched on the importance of recognizing and harmoniously integrating the diverse energies within a team.
A deep understanding of each team member’s dominant energy can prevent conflicts and enhance teamwork.
- Try Out: Initiate a team workshop where each member identifies their dominant energy type and discusses how it influences their work style and interactions. Facilitate discussions on how these energies can interplay to improve team cohesion and output.
My conversation with Lucinda Vette underscores the compelling connection between leadership effectiveness and emotional intelligence, facilitated through equine coaching.
As leaders in a constantly evolving landscape, recognizing the undercurrents of emotional energies and harnessing them wisely is not just advantageous—it’s essential. As we explored in Building trust as a foundation of team effectiveness with Christopher Michel, trust and transparency are crucial for team synergy.
Reflect on this the next time you feel a disconnect in your team or a personal leadership hurdle. Sometimes, the answers lie not in more strategy, but in more humanity and emotional connection.
Lucinda also shares…
- How to discover the shift in personal and team dynamics when leaders prioritize emotional intelligence and authenticity.
- Effective strategies for maintaining energy balance through mindfulness and body-awareness practices.
- Real-world examples of transformative leadership shifts that happen when leaders fully embrace emotional honesty and authenticity in their interactions.
Ready to Lead with Greater Emotional Intelligence?
If you’re curious how your leadership energy is impacting your team, take the first step by uncovering your leadership style. Take the Leadership Superpower & Roadblock Assessment to gain insight into how to harness your strengths and shift team dynamics for the better.
For executive teams ready to go deeper, explore our leadership training programs for teams that build trust, enhance communication, and foster authentic connection—no horses required.
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Episode Transcript
Susan Drumm: Hi, I’m Susan Drumm, and welcome to The Enlightened Executive, where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance — go to meritageleadership.com to learn more.
Today we’re discussing equine coaching and how it can help leaders in both their personal and professional lives, and I’m thrilled to introduce my very special guest, Lucinda Vette, the equine programming manager at the award-winning Miraval Wellness Resort, located in Tucson, Arizona. Set on four hundred acres of majestic desert in the Santa Catalina Mountains, Miraval Arizona is the original Miraval Resort and Spa and is globally recognized for its transformative and immersive approach to well-being.
Lucinda is a lifelong horsewoman and former attorney, now at the helm of the resort’s Purple Sage Ranch. At the ranch, Lucinda harnesses her innate sensitivity and aptitude for social connection to facilitate insightful, non-verbal conversations between guests and their equine partners. So welcome, Lucinda, it’s great to have you here.
Lucinda Vette: Oh, it is my pleasure. I’m so honored to be here, Susan, and so excited to be able to share something that I’m so passionate about on this forum. So thank you.
Susan Drumm: Yes, yes. And I had the incredible opportunity to work with you and experience this for myself just last weekend, so I’ll be able to bring a perspective from a guest and what that experience is like. But let’s start out talking about what equine coaching is, because I’m sure there are some listeners out there who have never heard of this.
Lucinda Vette: I do have a lot of people ask me what in the world could horses possibly bring to us in this realm of coaching and developing human potential. So equine coaching, or equine-facilitated learning, is really a partnership between a horse, a facilitator, and whoever we’re working with. What we’ve learned is that horses are incredibly sensitive, intuitive, and actually have a high level of emotional intelligence, believe it or not.
And so equine coaching is a modality that takes advantage of horses in their most natural state to help people get in touch with all kinds of information that we hold inside of ourselves — information that is often on a subconscious level, or below the level of consciousness.
Susan Drumm: Yes, I would say that was my experience exactly, and I think the way people are using horses in this modality is that the horse actually reflects back to you the energy you’re putting out there that you may not even realize. And it’s quite eye-opening, because they’re going to respond based on how you’re showing up. Look, I’ve done a lot of deep work, but I’ve never had an animal reflect back to me, in this way, some of the things — maybe some things I knew, but other things I didn’t know.
So maybe it’s just really good to get into some examples of that. But before I get into the examples, in terms of how you’re working with people, can you describe — with horses — what that experience is like for a lot of guests, in the ring?
Lucinda Vette: Sure. So we have a couple of different ways we can do it — one way might be a group experience, where we have maybe four to six people, or one could be a one-on-one experience. Sometimes we work with horses in what’s called a round pen, or some kind of arena — it’s an enclosed area, but it’s big enough that the horse has a choice whether they want to be there or not. Sometimes we even take away all controls and just work out in a large four- or five-acre area.
So we would do some kind of introduction to tell people what’s going to be happening, and then generally we have people come in one by one and have an experience with the horse, with a planned activity that they would do. The activity might be something that, to be successful, requires a certain type of energy. What we learn from the horses is that there are kind of five different types of leadership energy, I guess you could say, that we can bring to any given situation — the energy of the sentinel, the energy of the visionary, the energy of the nurturer, the energy of the dominant, believe it or not, or the energy of the predator.
So we have an activity that is going to tap into one, or maybe more, of those energies. We demonstrate what the activity will look like, we give instructions, but of course we can’t demonstrate the really essential aspect of it, which is the energetic part that happens once somebody comes into the arena. So, with in mind what type of energy the activity would draw on, the person interacting with the horse will just see what comes up when they come in.
We do try to prepare people as much as possible — we’re not just throwing them in to see how they do in a stressful situation. We try to prepare people as much as you can for an experience that’s so unique that they’ve never done before. But then it’s a lot of observing — the person’s body language, for the facilitator, and the horse — the horse is feeling what’s happening with the person.
Really, the partnership between the facilitator and the horse starts happening then, because as the coach or facilitator, we have to learn to feel in a similar way that the horse does. And so, through observation, through felt sense, through sensations in our bodies, through questions that we ask people, we start exploring what’s happening, what’s working, what’s not working.
Susan Drumm: Yeah, yeah, and let’s tie this to leadership a bit, because one of the activities you had me do was have the horse walk with me — not tugging on the horse or pulling the horse, but energetically, could I have the horse follow me? So I’m the leader — could I put out that energy? Initially, I thought I had that, and the horse didn’t move, right?
So what that had me tap into was a very slight feeling of frustration, like, okay, well what do I do here — I can’t get this horse to move, so what am I supposed to be doing? And if you really take the surrogate of that, I can’t tell you how many leaders I’ve coached who have that little bit of frustration come up, like, I’m trying to get my team to complete X, Y, and Z, and they’re not showing up the way I need them to show up. So there are so many analogies here.
What I found is when I shifted my energy, the horse actually walked with me, and that’s what you get to learn in this environment — what kind of energy are you putting out, such that your team is responding in the way that they’re responding? Because the horse is going to very much show you, nonverbally, what that energy looks like. That part was super fascinating for me, and it’s so subtle, too, what the shift was — but I remember part of it being getting really connected to what I was feeling and being present with the horse at the same time.
One of the things I learned — and you can feel free to share what you saw as the example — is that I tend to focus a lot on the other, the horse: okay, well, what does the horse need, what do I need to do? And I lose contact with myself and what I’m feeling. I didn’t even acknowledge that I had frustration, and you had me sort of tap into that. And the reason that’s important to recognize is — that’s emotional intelligence, being present with what you feel, being present with what other people feel. What I got is that if I’m not present with what I’m feeling in the moment, the horse is getting sort of a mixed signal.
But maybe you can share a little bit more, or elaborate on that, because I’m sure I’m not the first person who’s had this experience.
Lucinda Vette: Yeah, I mean, that tends to be, I think, a big pillar in this work — emotional intelligence. My observation is that many people — and many, many very successful leaders I work with, a lot of C-suite executives, high-level people — have gotten to where they are by suppressing emotions, or focusing on the positive, always kind of nurturing a sense of positive emotions. That’s not a wrong thing to do, but it sort of skips a level.
This is where the horses really teach us that we need to learn to be really clear in our energy, to have what’s going on in our heads and what’s going on in our energy in alignment. We need to learn how to become really aware of emotions in their most pure form. Oftentimes, the way I talk about that is that emotion begins as a sensation in your body, and this is one of the things the horses help us tune into.
A lot of people are suppressing emotions because by the time they feel a so-called negative emotion, it’s already the intensification of the emotion — frustration turns into rage, or turns into whatever it might turn into. But on that very subtle level, there’s a subtle shift in energy that starts interfering with communication, which starts interfering with the non-verbal communication that’s so important.
So where the horses come in is they give us a model for emotional intelligence that I think is really unique, because it’s not just about identifying the emotion — it’s also about getting the message behind the emotion. I think that’s what helps shift the energy. I don’t know if you remember, but I was asking you, once we got to the point of, well, one, trying isn’t working, right — and that was something you were willing to admit, that you couldn’t get this two-thousand-five-hundred-pound horse to move to the area you wanted to go.
But once we got to that, then I could say, well, that sounds like the definition of frustration, right? Because it was very small — you weren’t mad at the horse, you weren’t really frustrated with the horse. So there’s some resistance to acknowledging the emotion. But what the horses teach is, if you can feel the emotion in its most pure form, which oftentimes is a subtle shift in the body, then you get the message behind the emotion.
You never have to name the emotion, you never even have to state the emotion — if you can realize, “oh, this isn’t working, oh, that’s frustration,” that opens up a whole lot of possibility for you. Then you change something in response — well, what else can I try, what else might work, do I need some help? Whatever it is, it taps into a sense of curiosity about the emotion, rather than just expressing it or suppressing it, which are sort of the flip sides of the same dysfunctional coin.
You’re actually getting the information from the emotion, changing something in response, and then, with the horses, we say you go back to grazing — but basically you just get on with your day, or get on with the activity. That applies to all kinds of emotions — we can start asking questions of them, but the first step is to be willing to feel the emotion. And I think a lot of people don’t want to feel uncomfortable emotions.
Susan Drumm: Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it was amazing, though — once I did sort of stop and acknowledge and feel where it was in my body — and again, it was so subtle, certainly there are far bigger things that can get frustrating than that. I was curious, but I was also sort of like, okay, well, I tried this, I tried that, I don’t know what else to do here.
But the minute I acknowledged where I was, the horse started walking — that’s the crazy thing. It’s almost like the horse just wanted me to acknowledge the emotion that was there.
Lucinda Vette: Well, and I think there’s — there’s even been some research on this — there’s kind of a shift in blood pressure, a shift in energy, that happens when we stop. Because even if you’re not purposely suppressing the emotion, it can just be sort of an autonomic response to what’s happening — there can be a rise in blood pressure. And horses, being prey animals, are so tuned into things like energy. That shifts the energy, and then when you acknowledge it, it’s like it’s there all of a sudden.
The other thing that can happen is that sometimes the emotion is a little bit about the present moment and a little bit about the past. There can be even some deeper pain under that, that’s really causing the body to go into an autonomic state of survival — like fight or flight, or even shut down, on a very subtle level. But the horses tune into it.
Susan Drumm: Yeah, they feel that. Well, tell us some stories about other leaders — I’ve shared a little bit about my experience, but what type of breakthroughs have leaders had by doing this equine coaching?
Lucinda Vette: Yeah, so, one — I don’t know if it’s my favorite, but one that really stands out to me — is I was working with an entrepreneur, very successful, who also happened to be a neurobiologist. I think he had a PhD from Harvard, I think he’d been a Rhodes Scholar — very, very intelligent person, and much more of an expert in the nervous system than I am.
Before we even started our session, he was very curious about what we were going to be doing, and when I started talking about the energy piece, he brought up a video of his research on how subtle shifts in heart rate cause minute movements in the head when emotions shift, and how he thinks this is what horses are tuning into. So, really dealing with an expert — this is somebody who developed a technology in the U.S. for autistic children.
So, of course, I was a little intimidated — I had to find my inner courage and really trust what the horses and I had to share with him. Once we got down to the horses and I started talking about what we were going to be doing, he got very, very interested, very excited to come in. It was the same activity that you did with the horse, where it’s inviting the horse — this time with no ropes, though, no halter and lead rope, just at liberty.
He came in and set an intention for himself, which was that he wanted to become friends — he wanted the horse to become a friend. And then I watched him put a great deal of effort into making this horse his friend — studying, using all his vast intellect and knowledge, looking for reactions in the horse, minute shifts, bringing all his expertise in the nervous system into the situation. As I watched him, I could really see that he was very disembodied, very disconnected from his body.
We paused, and it started to hit me that this really brilliant man maybe used his intelligence to sort of hold people at bay — the same thing that was such a gift was also his coping mechanism. When he felt uncomfortable, it was something he used rather than actually connecting — something he used to soothe himself in uncomfortable situations.
Susan Drumm: Oh my.
Lucinda Vette: There are so many leaders I can tell you who do the same thing — using their intellect as a way to stay safe, as a way to create distance and protection.
Susan Drumm: Yes.
Lucinda Vette: And so we talked, he tried some different things, and then, all of a sudden, it just hit him — he came to these realizations, and he realized how the very thing that served him so well in some areas also became a barrier to things he really wanted: more connection, more ease with people. And a lot of times with people, things come up about childhood — things that have happened, because oftentimes these are things we learn in childhood.
So, again, with him, as soon as he started acknowledging this, the horse — I mean, the horse literally almost looked like he was falling asleep, because this guy wasn’t present. And as soon as he could start talking about this and having insights about it, the horse woke up and just walked with him. It just sort of happened. So, really powerful — there are stories like this that happen every single day. It’s always amazing to see what happens.
Susan Drumm: I mean, it was amazing to see what teachers these horses are, and the things you could learn about yourself just in terms of what comes up for you — and then you and I have that dialogue, and it’s so congruent as well. We talked about this related to my field of study and the work around how our childhood wounds show up in our leadership, and what happened to you is still showing up in very subtle ways — getting present to that pattern.
And also, that we are putting out energy all the time, whether we realize it or not, and everything has a vibration — it’s all about the density of the vibration, how solid the matter is. The earth vibrates, we vibrate, this camera vibrates — everything does. So what we have to recognize is that our emotions also send vibrations out, and the horses, with their incredible sensitivity, are picking them up.
So I often say, understanding your playlist — what’s the vibration you’re putting out there? And people say, well, how do you determine that? What I found is this is a fascinating way to figure out what that playlist is, because the horse is going to show you.
Lucinda Vette: Yes, yes. And the thing about the horses — this is what I observe — is they respond to authenticity. They’re going to be a hundred percent honest about what it feels like to be with you, and they really respond to authenticity. So if you’re feeling nervous, if you’re feeling frustration, acknowledging it is so powerful — getting specific about it rather than just saying, “I’m uncomfortable, so I’m going to breathe my way through it.”
You can have all these tools that support you in shifting your vibration, and I think what the horses show is there’s a really important step where we’ve got to feel what we’re feeling, understand it, get curious about it, maybe even have compassion for it — not let it stop us, but not suppress it and push it down, because it’s still in there no matter if you make the choice to be positive, or whatever it is. We need to go through, sometimes, the challenging stuff, get the information from it, in order to get to the other side — to that more relational, connected state in the nervous system.
Susan Drumm: And we worked over the course of a couple of days, so I would highly recommend that — this isn’t just a one-time thing, you need a couple of days. And, I mean, amazing setting at Miraval — there’s incredible spa, workout activities, classes, hiking, all of the gorgeous — it could really be wonderful for a team retreat, or for a cohort, a group of CEOs, a forum — I’m in an EO, YPO forum — to go do this type of work together, because you’re learning and growing together, and you’re also restoring, with all the healthy eating and different types of spa treatments and wellness.
But I was also struck by — and you gave me some suggestions around really interesting things I hadn’t done before — working with energy, with some other types of practitioners, that were super valuable for me. So I find, this type of work — when you couple it with the equine work, you keep learning about yourself, not just in the ring, but as the day progresses, and then when you go back in, you’re working and shifting something else.
Lucinda Vette: Yes, and I think a lot of people find that all of the offerings we have here seem to sort of miraculously support each other. You do one thing, and then something comes up, and it comes up a little differently with the horses, and it comes up a little differently somewhere else. So it’s a fantastic place to come with a cohort, or group, or a team, and have a very holistic approach to restoration, leadership, and well-being.
Susan Drumm: Yes, yes. Well, what’s one thing that leaders could try today, tomorrow, to get an experience, or at least become more present to the type of things that you’re teaching?
Lucinda Vette: Well, I think I would always say, if you don’t have horses to work with, starting a mindfulness practice — some kind of meditation practice — is incredibly powerful. But even just shifting your belief system around emotions, or even understanding what your belief system is around them, and maybe even starting to notice what’s going on in your body — because really, I think the body is the conductor between the thinking brain and our emotions.
So, starting to develop some practices around connecting with your body, leaning into things that are uncomfortable — I think developing a mindfulness practice is an incredibly powerful thing to do, even in short spurts.
Susan Drumm: Yeah, yeah, you started each of our sessions with a body scan — just almost speaking out loud what sensations I’m feeling: my shoulder’s tight, my hat, I can feel it on my head, I’ve got a little bit of tightness in my jaw, that type of thing. Just scanning the whole body to notice what’s going on, and maybe choosing one area to focus on, and noticing if there’s any emotion you’re picking up related to that body sensation. Most of the time, I’m just racing from one thing to the next — I’m not paying attention at that level.
So when you say mindfulness, I think of that very specific practice, and I’ve been starting to do that right before my meditation, or after, just to check in and say, what does my body have to say? Because so often the mind is just running everything, but the body has wisdom too, and if we’re not taking the time to access it, we’re losing important data.
Lucinda Vette: Yeah, and I’m really glad you brought that up, because the body scan is also — once you get a little bit accomplished at it, you can do it very quickly, and you can start to discern if the energy or emotions are yours, or if they’re somebody else’s. Or you go into a meeting and you notice a shift, and there can be a lot of information there for you. So that’s a powerful practice.
Susan Drumm: Well, I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to work with you over the weekend, so thank you for everything you shared with me, and the wisdom. I’m excited to bring this more out into the world for people to experience. Where can people learn more about you and your work?
Lucinda Vette: Well, they can go to the Miraval Arizona website — there’s an equine specialist page there, and we’ve got a video that tells a little bit about it. I also have a TEDx talk, and I think it describes the work pretty well — that’s called “Lessons from Listening to Horses.” And, of course, come to Miraval.
Susan Drumm: Absolutely, and experience it. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and you need a break, I’m telling you, go spend a couple of days — you’ll come out—
Lucinda Vette: Yeah, you’ll come out with awareness, and some important, I think permanent, shifts, for the better.
Susan Drumm: So, well, thank you so much for your time — I could talk to you for another hour. Yeah, and I’m glad we got a chance to experience it together first, and then get a chance to speak about it live with the rest of our community.
Lucinda Vette: Yeah, thank you so much, Susan — just appreciate you, and what a pleasure to be here and to know you. Thanks.
Susan Drumm: Oh, thank you.
And if you like this episode, you’re not going to want to miss my interview with Josh Linkner, who believes that it’s in our nature as human beings to be creative, and the single biggest roadblock to creativity is fear. Let’s lead the way.
Hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and I’d like to point you to the next important step: hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I’ll see you on the next episode of The Enlightened Executive.