Monty Roberts shot into great fame for whispering to wild horses. It is an unusual method compared to the standard technique of breaking the animal spirit to the extent that it accepts defeat and becomes tamed; often dispirited. Monty’s approach has been to appeal to the instinct of the horse and gain its trust. His method works so well that wild horses are willing to be saddled just within half of an hour. His method was the inspiration for the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster “The Horse Whisperer” starring Robert Redford. It has been the subject of several TV serials and books.

His methods have inspired research projects in management schools, new approaches to leadership training and management methods. Monty Roberts has worked with over 250 corporates in the world including American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Dean Witter, Disney, Hallmark, John Deere. Clive Warrilow the CEO of Volkswagon, North America is quoted as saying, "Monty Roberts certainly listens to horses, but, in my humble opinion, he delivers a powerful message to people, and, in particular, people at all levels of leadership."

At the heart of Monty`s approach is the belief that horses as well as people should not be threatened into training but made to “join up”. He observed the behavior of horses from an early age and understood their language (which he later called as “Equus”) – he obviously loves them and gains their trust in unusual manners.

Monty says, "For centuries, humans have said to horses, 'you do what I tell you or I'll hurt you.' Humans still say that to each other - still threaten, force and intimidate. I'm convinced that my discoveries with horses have value in the workplace, in the educational and penal systems, in the raising of children. At heart, I'm saying that no one else has the right to say 'you must' to an animal - or to another human."

He has now an unparalleled record of several accomplishments including 8 national level championships and has produced, nay developed, three Champions. Those of the US, Australia and New Zealand horse races. Queen Elizabeth II heard of his work and encouraged him to lecture, train and demonstrate in the UK. He has authored three best selling books: "The Man Who Listens To Horses", "Shy Boy: The Horse That Came In From The Wild" and "Horse Sense For People.

There is a school in Britain that used Monty’s technique and philosophy to literally pull itself from the brink of closure to top ranks in two years. Kingshurst Junior School is in the suburbs of Birmingham and 40% of its students had to avail of free dinners and were on special needs registers. Taylor, one of the teachers read Monty and persuaded the school's headmaster, Jeff Darby, to give the new technique a chance. 'The school was failing; no one wanted to come to work in Kingshurst, morale was low and behavior extremely poor,' said Darby. 'We were looking everywhere for successful models to follow and when we discovered Monty, we never looked back.' The Head Master discussed, drew new rules of behavioral contracts between children and teachers to infuse the trust-based, non-threatening, motivated behavior - the school improved and received a coveted Charter Mark, it entered Britain's top 400 schools in 2001 and this year, it was awarded the coveted Beacon status. The episode is similar to the turnaround story of NUMMI plant at Fremont by Toyota after take-over from General Motors. It probably is the same conviction with which Recardo Semler approached human relations in his company, Semco.

The Manchester Business School (MBS) has been studying the relation of Monty’s whispering technique, called “join-up” on creative leadership styles (Tudor Rickards, “Trust-based Leadership: Creative lessons from Horsemanship”, Creativity and Innovation Management, Vol 9, No.4, December, 2000. Time Magazine, January, 2000 also had mentioned about this experiment). It is reported that Kelly Marks, a celebrity, working with horses using the trust based method of Monty Roberts, inspired the wife of the MBS director, eventually resulting in the visit of Monty Roberts to the school and a research project. This, despite the criticism and cynicism associated with the entire analogy.

Who would want employees to be compared to animals that are saddled by dominating bosses? The very idea can be faulted for the underlying assumption that employees need to be coaxed one way or the other to be trained and managed – it is reminiscent of the Theory X assumptions. Any case, doesn’t our normal induction program not take care of this “join-up”? What about the culture building programs uniquely done as in IBM or the HSBC? What are the service rules and staff manuals for? Don’t our appraisals, rewards and punishments make people fall in line? Have we not seen the fruits of the tough/strict approach - it yields quick results; everyone jumps to action and attention. Importantly, it makes the people who are in command feel good at the cost of others. Even the people subjected to the power-guzzling-hungry-leader like the system, at least for the hope that they too can one day bathe in the same luxury and till such time, perpetuate it in their own small domain. Doesn’t all this whispering business and trust appear too soft in a world that has to be driven by contracts and incentives – leading by the brains and “nuts” than by the heart?

But leadership obviously is not just about rules, policies and systems alone. Every one has them like the drainpipes in all houses. Leadership is about the ability to quickly gain acceptance among people, inspire them to act in a way to win together, coach them when necessary, create a common aspiration and joy of working together and achieving continuously.

The preliminary reports of the Manchester experiment indicate that the experimental group of managers has shown that Monty’s type of trust-based approach to people management actually may have close relation to creative leadership. The trust based horsemanship shifted behaviors from wild or troubled to be cooperative; leaders sought a win-win outcome; the leader could make the “horse” learn fast and solve its problems; the leader was able to listen better. The key message is that trust-based leadership brings about better performance, better skill development and competencies, as it is non-threatening and supportive.

Incidentally, the trust-based horsemanship seems to have helped the performance of Kelly Marks who was instrumental in the MBS initiative - she won her most prestigious European racing award after she gave up the whip; and pursued the trust-based “whispering” relationship with her horse.

We are yet to know what happens if Kelly Marks or Monty Roberts had reneged on the trust created – it is so tempting for some leaders to fool their employees by whispering only to mesmerize; to use trust-talk as a cover up. Monty believes that horses understand body language and the level of sincerity as well – they can tell who is speaking his heart. Hopefully, employees will be just as smart as horses without being cynical.

Post Script: I asked my friend, a horse-owner here, if he would like to call in Monty to whisper to his horses. He told me, he would rather whisper himself to other’s jockeys!