My path to ALIVE Leadership
Have you ever spent some time around a herd of horses? It is usually easy to find the boss or the Alpha horse, because he or she is either seen fighting or all alone distanced from to herd, because no one wants to be around that individual. So for me I don't know why anyone wants to emulate that aggressive Alpha behavior in leadership.
In a herd of horses there will be one leader, the rest are followers and in a wild herd the leader is generally an older mare. Stallions come and go but mare’s stays for life. The lead mare is not necessary the bossy mare, it is the mare with the most life experience it is the one you can trust.
The way we develop trust is the same way for humans and horses it is through consistency. If you are consistent you are dependable if you are dependable you become trustworthy if you are trustworthy, horses and humans will be in peace with you and willing to develop openness and softness. Softness comes from the inside of the horse or the person.
This is the kind of reflections that started my own journey to become an ALIVE inspirational leader 2002. At that time I realized that struggling the way I did was not the way forward in my life and leadership.
I grew up in a family of five children, and I was number four. My biggest interest at that time was already grounded with animals and nature, and my dream was to become a veterinary. My father was an engineer, entrepreneur and businessman travelling around the world and my mother gave up her career as a pharmacist early to take care of the family.
I did not have the grades to enter the University of Veterinarian Science at the time, but some years later my father could proudly announce that 4 of his children now held a Master degree in Engineering.
I started my career with a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering at the Technical University of Linköping. The computer industry was taking of and to be an engineer was attractive in the early eighties. There were few female engineers at that time and the business world was wide open for me.
I met my husband at IBM and 3 children later, I refused to be put on hold in my professional life and started to study for a MBA in International Marketing at the University of Uppsala.
For 20 years I prioritized work before family and private life with an Alpha leadership style, with different management and leading positions in the Industry. I was successful and when I sold my shares in my first company I used the money to invest in my dream, a farm in the countryside with horses, dogs, cats and a healthy place for my family to grow up in, close to Stockholm.
Living the dream of my life I geared up, and at that point in my life I managed my job as Senior Associate with Booz Allen Hamilton, as a mother of 3 children in the age of 6 -12 years and as an active hobby horse trainer.
It was my own horse that reacted to my Alpha leadership style and gave me a reminder. One day when I came to catch my horse in the pasture for a jumping training, with my usual tight time schedule. She told me nervously pacing around, that there was something really frightening going on, and she did not want to leave her herd of horses. I was in a hurry so I told her to forget about it immediately and come along. She followed me restlessly pulling on the rope in all directions.
Horses were my hobby at that time but as a management consultant, busy leading complex projects somewhere in the world; I had no boundaries between work and private life. Suddenly everything happened. My cell phone caught my attention and I quickly picked it up, work was calling. A roaring truck pulled up in front of us and I brusquely stopped the horse from taking of, by pulling the rope with force.
The horse felt trapped, reared, kicked me down with her front hoofs and took of in panic leaving me on the ground bleeding. People came to rescue me and I was quickly transported to the nearby hospital. At that point it was not the physically injure that hurt the most; it was my heart, realizing what a pushy, not present and not listening Alpha leader I was.
From the outside it looked like I was light and alive but in reality I was in my head, struggling to perform and not living my life. I practiced to be in control and forcing an outcome, to look good limiting my self-expression, and to resist feeling things fully and ignoring my intuition. My life seemed to be light but it was not soft. Lightness comes from the outside softness comes from the inside
Its like when you train a horse, you train the horse to become light. You can train lightness and have the horse learn a lot of things and it may look good, but then you bring the horse to a new situation everything unravels. This lightness that are trained in to the horse are available when things runs smooth but if we would have trained softness it is available all the time. Softness is when you are totally calm trusting others, yourself and the situation.
I gave up my career as management consultant and I started my own ALIVE leadership journey with learning to be soft, to still my mind, and try to look at things as a reflection of what they really are instead of assuming and judging. I learned how to coach and I started to coach leaders and teams encouraging them to take the next step. I also educated myself as a facilitator in Horse Assisted Education in the US and Germany.
The horse is the best mirror in the world reflecting your behavior directly without judgments. They teach you authenticity, listening skills, intentional presence, value awareness and energy management. The first letters in each skill is creating the 5 steps of the ALIVE method.
My first ALIVE Horse Assisted Leadership training was held in 2007 and since that time more than 1000 participants have been in our program, here in Sweden and at other places in the world, with me as the facilitator. What strikes me during the leadership trainings with horses is how leaders and managers sometimes arrive, apprehensive and tense and how they by the end of the workshop show up soft and ALIVE.
In the beginning I was one of few Horse Assisted Coaches in Scandinavia, and I felt alone. In the HorsePower and Natural Leadership licensed partner program I started to train partners in Norway and Sweden. And we are now 30 partners practicing Horse Assisted Coaching with the ALIVE method.
On my own continuing journey to become an ALIVE leader I realized that I was not practicing the softness I intended to do. Working in a masculine environment for more than 25 years had left deep tracks. I needed to learn how to turn my masculine genius into a faithful of my feminine. With a deep desire to develop my own feminine leadership I joined Sistership circle and as certified Circle facilitator I´m now using circle as a tool to mirror leadership behaviors in the ALIVE education.
Today I am an inspirational leader practicing softness, the old mare in the herd, with lots of leadership experience to share to the world.
My mission is to create more authentic leadership in the world together with horses, and other inspirational leaders, and my number one thing is that I think we all need to learn how to express and manage our feelings being ALIVE.
In a herd of horses there will be one leader, the rest are followers and in a wild herd the leader is generally an older mare. Stallions come and go but mare’s stays for life. The lead mare is not necessary the bossy mare, it is the mare with the most life experience it is the one you can trust.
The way we develop trust is the same way for humans and horses it is through consistency. If you are consistent you are dependable if you are dependable you become trustworthy if you are trustworthy, horses and humans will be in peace with you and willing to develop openness and softness. Softness comes from the inside of the horse or the person.
This is the kind of reflections that started my own journey to become an ALIVE inspirational leader 2002. At that time I realized that struggling the way I did was not the way forward in my life and leadership.
I grew up in a family of five children, and I was number four. My biggest interest at that time was already grounded with animals and nature, and my dream was to become a veterinary. My father was an engineer, entrepreneur and businessman travelling around the world and my mother gave up her career as a pharmacist early to take care of the family.
I did not have the grades to enter the University of Veterinarian Science at the time, but some years later my father could proudly announce that 4 of his children now held a Master degree in Engineering.
I started my career with a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering at the Technical University of Linköping. The computer industry was taking of and to be an engineer was attractive in the early eighties. There were few female engineers at that time and the business world was wide open for me.
I met my husband at IBM and 3 children later, I refused to be put on hold in my professional life and started to study for a MBA in International Marketing at the University of Uppsala.
For 20 years I prioritized work before family and private life with an Alpha leadership style, with different management and leading positions in the Industry. I was successful and when I sold my shares in my first company I used the money to invest in my dream, a farm in the countryside with horses, dogs, cats and a healthy place for my family to grow up in, close to Stockholm.
Living the dream of my life I geared up, and at that point in my life I managed my job as Senior Associate with Booz Allen Hamilton, as a mother of 3 children in the age of 6 -12 years and as an active hobby horse trainer.
It was my own horse that reacted to my Alpha leadership style and gave me a reminder. One day when I came to catch my horse in the pasture for a jumping training, with my usual tight time schedule. She told me nervously pacing around, that there was something really frightening going on, and she did not want to leave her herd of horses. I was in a hurry so I told her to forget about it immediately and come along. She followed me restlessly pulling on the rope in all directions.
Horses were my hobby at that time but as a management consultant, busy leading complex projects somewhere in the world; I had no boundaries between work and private life. Suddenly everything happened. My cell phone caught my attention and I quickly picked it up, work was calling. A roaring truck pulled up in front of us and I brusquely stopped the horse from taking of, by pulling the rope with force.
The horse felt trapped, reared, kicked me down with her front hoofs and took of in panic leaving me on the ground bleeding. People came to rescue me and I was quickly transported to the nearby hospital. At that point it was not the physically injure that hurt the most; it was my heart, realizing what a pushy, not present and not listening Alpha leader I was.
From the outside it looked like I was light and alive but in reality I was in my head, struggling to perform and not living my life. I practiced to be in control and forcing an outcome, to look good limiting my self-expression, and to resist feeling things fully and ignoring my intuition. My life seemed to be light but it was not soft. Lightness comes from the outside softness comes from the inside
Its like when you train a horse, you train the horse to become light. You can train lightness and have the horse learn a lot of things and it may look good, but then you bring the horse to a new situation everything unravels. This lightness that are trained in to the horse are available when things runs smooth but if we would have trained softness it is available all the time. Softness is when you are totally calm trusting others, yourself and the situation.
I gave up my career as management consultant and I started my own ALIVE leadership journey with learning to be soft, to still my mind, and try to look at things as a reflection of what they really are instead of assuming and judging. I learned how to coach and I started to coach leaders and teams encouraging them to take the next step. I also educated myself as a facilitator in Horse Assisted Education in the US and Germany.
The horse is the best mirror in the world reflecting your behavior directly without judgments. They teach you authenticity, listening skills, intentional presence, value awareness and energy management. The first letters in each skill is creating the 5 steps of the ALIVE method.
My first ALIVE Horse Assisted Leadership training was held in 2007 and since that time more than 1000 participants have been in our program, here in Sweden and at other places in the world, with me as the facilitator. What strikes me during the leadership trainings with horses is how leaders and managers sometimes arrive, apprehensive and tense and how they by the end of the workshop show up soft and ALIVE.
In the beginning I was one of few Horse Assisted Coaches in Scandinavia, and I felt alone. In the HorsePower and Natural Leadership licensed partner program I started to train partners in Norway and Sweden. And we are now 30 partners practicing Horse Assisted Coaching with the ALIVE method.
On my own continuing journey to become an ALIVE leader I realized that I was not practicing the softness I intended to do. Working in a masculine environment for more than 25 years had left deep tracks. I needed to learn how to turn my masculine genius into a faithful of my feminine. With a deep desire to develop my own feminine leadership I joined Sistership circle and as certified Circle facilitator I´m now using circle as a tool to mirror leadership behaviors in the ALIVE education.
Today I am an inspirational leader practicing softness, the old mare in the herd, with lots of leadership experience to share to the world.
My mission is to create more authentic leadership in the world together with horses, and other inspirational leaders, and my number one thing is that I think we all need to learn how to express and manage our feelings being ALIVE.
