“You have to earn your spurs” thoughts about what my horses taught me.

For those of you who know me personally you know that I have been infected by the horse back riding virus some time ago. I started late at the age of 50 and I have seen the good and the bad of this sport. The good thing is the work with these unbelievable greate creatures. The bad thing was an error I made that led to a 3 times broken pelvis, surgery and a wheelchair for many weeks.

Some of my friends and especially my wife thought I was crazy to get up again on a horse, but I gave not up and started riding again. This is something that is important to me, i am just not willing to give up and not willing to take the defeat. Not in my private life and especially not in my job as well.

Yesterday my riding teacher ( a young lady half my age ) came and gave me the Spurs for the next riding lessons and to use them from now on. For those of you that are not familiar with the concept. Spurs are at the heel of your boots and you might use them to put more pressure on the horse while kind of peeking them in the their bellies with these spurs. If horses are used to it, you might get better results out of your riding but with the usage comes the responsibility to use them wisely and carefully. 

So what is the deal about these Spurs ? 

First of all you should only use them and normally you get them if you can handle your horse and your riding skills are matured, just to prevent you from doing silly things with them.

So by no means you should use them if you are a beginner.

There is a saying that is coming out of the middle ages that you have to “earn them” basically by delivering a performance that is proving that you are able to handle them responsibly.

So coming back now… as said i started at an age of 50 i had some some severe setbacks.

But as I did not gave up finally I managed to get my Spurs so to say “I earned them”.

There is no free lunch on earth and the parallels to sales and management are so unbelievable visible for me. 

As a manager as many other managers I am currently hunting for talent and doing a hell of interviews with candidates. And somehow my impression during these interviews is more and more that some people think that they deserve a job no matter how they prepare, what they deliver and what they are able to tell me about the company that they are talking to. 

In most cases it is about the attitude you do have towards something you are doing. 

My horses taught me a simple lesson about attitude.

If I am not really serious about something I want them to do or not to do. 

They need a split second to sense that and will just start to ignore me.

My attitude towards someone and how serious I am about something is sensible for others. Horses are the perfect mirror to show you if there is a real will behind the attitude you are showing. This might be the reason why they get used quite often in trainings for managers as well.

Coming back to our previous example if you are applying for a job or preparing for an interview or just having an informal conversation with the hiring manager. If he/she gets the impression you are not serious about this job and by the way, the hiring manager will sense if you are not, he/she will simply not give this job to you. 

Even if your profile is nearly perfect, if there is not the aura of an intrinsic drive and a perfect prework showing that you in depth have understood whom you are talking to and why it is you who is going to be the best choice here. He/she will do the same as my horses are doing to me, you will get ignored.. 

You do also have parallels in a selling motion situation. Your customer will read you, will sense your will behind the attitude and will derive that all form your preparation, knowledge and your body language. And guess what happens if you are not prepared, not self secured and not intrinsically motivated. Your body language and behavior will reflect this and at exactly this point you will have lost whatever you tried to achieve.

So here comes what I learned from my horses:

If you really want to have something and it is hard to get, needs a lot of work, you might need to overcome your own fears or you already made some mistakes and need now to recover from them  

Whatever it is… 

You need to really mean what you are doing. You need to stand behind it. You need to believe in yourself and what you are trying to achieve. You might call it commitment.

If not, you get ignored, as my horses are ignoring me if they do feel that I do not really mean it.

So, for me it is working like this with my horses as well as all kinds of business situations and after it has been scary at first it is now fun to see the parallels between my attitude and the outcome.

Some might say that horses are the perfect 360 degree feedback instrument, unfortunately they come with a lot of their own attitude that needs to be handled as well 🙂

Just food for thought and by the way, happy riding 🙂if you own a horse by yourself. 

And thanks for spending some time with me and my thoughts....