When given the opportunity, a core lesson a horse will offer is about the role of silence in the communication process. Silence offers the space and time for the communication between us to take shape, form, morph. It allows me to listen to myself, you to listen to yourself, both to listen to each other.
In his locker room speech in “Any given Sunday” Al Pacino said it very nicely: “one half step too late or too early, you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast and you don’t quite catch it.”
Apply this to the market and the innovation process. Propose something too early and it will be rejected, probably because it is not understood. Propose it too late and the need it serves will have been addressed through other means or by other players. Apply it to sales, purchasing, hiring – the right time is key, every time.
In our daily interactions we experience time’s influence on the communication process in all those moments when the words coming out of mouths are either too early in the dialogue or too late. The visual indication of this off-timing are the eyes of your conversation partner, his eyebrows, and the brief interruption in his flow of thoughts you will notice through the way his face muscles contract.
We think we are having a conversation but in fact we are having at least 3. I’m having an inner conversation, you’re having an inner conversation and between us two we’re having another outer conversation. Make no mistakes, the 3 conversations are very different.
In this already complicated context, what could a horse possibly bring as added value in our development?
Silence
When given the opportunity, a core lesson a horse will offer is about the role of silence in the communication process. Silence offers the space and time for the communication between us to take shape, form, morph. It allows me to listen to myself, you to listen to yourself, both to listen to each other. It’s like going through neutral when shifting gears. It allows choices which can take us closer to the objectives we have for that interaction. It is where added value is created.
How does the horse do all of this? Through the embedded communication system: they use primarily visual cues and behaviors (actions) to communicate instead of sound. Inside the behavior communication channel, you have both what they do and don’t do. And when charted on the axis time you have: When does the horse do? And when does the horse NOT do?
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