Lizzie Herron runs the Equestrian Leadership Consultancy which works with equestrian businesses to improve the leaderships skills of business owners and employers. Lizzie believes that effective people management is the key to the success of any business, and in particular, now that the equestrian industry is at a critical juncture with several issues coming to a head.
Conversations around leadership underpin the debates which are ongoing regarding social license and the economic viability of businesses, as successful leadership will play an essential role in ensuring welfare standards are advocated for of both the horses and humans involved.
What inspired you to start the Equestrian Leadership Consultancy and what services do you offer?
I had spent over a decade in a corporate environment where I was developing leadership skills myself, and also helping others do the same. I’ve had horses my whole life and over the years I started to notice a lot of the skills I was developing at work were largely missing from the equestrian industry. It’s something that’s been percolating for a few years, but when the pandemic hit, like a lot of people I decided I wanted to spend my time differently and that’s when I got started. I knew it would give me a lot of satisfaction to play a part in making the equestrian industry a better place to work.
I feel like there’s a real opportunity to enhance the way people lead their businesses, their teams, and ultimately make it more profitable and have a positive impact on the horses. If the people looking after the horses are happy, you are also going to have happier horses who perform better.
In terms of the services that I offer, a lot of the work I do at the moment is one to one with leaders who are facing specific challenges within their businesses – it could be with a specific person or it could be as a whole team.
How do you go about working with these different people?
I offer both one off sessions and also ongoing support. Usually, there’s a bit of a situation going on and usually a conversation needs to happen – and for that I offer my Confident Conversations kit. That helps to facilitate some reflection from the staff member. I also offer on hand support, via Whatsapp voice notes, and then I do follow up sessions too.
I think it’s important to zoom out of the drama of the everyday, and look at what worked and do some more of that.
Why do you think that leadership is so important to effective business management?
It’s a huge topic because it permeates every aspect of the business. In terms of equestrian businesses, we can get so lost in the every day that we forget why we started the business in the first place. It’s so important to stay connected to what that reason was, because if we lose our why as a leader, it’s then not communicated down to our staff and that’s when we lose the compass guiding the business. When that happens, staff become disengaged, and the efficacy of the business suffers because then it moves from being about profit rather than purpose, and when you lose that emotional connection to the work, the quality of it always suffers and when you’re working with horses, that’s when the problems start.
Why do you feel people leadership is so key to the equestrian industry in particular?
Well, the job is touch, and so is the industry, but we are one-up on a lot of industries because we have incredibly passionate people working within it. So many other industries would love to have the level of passion that exists within ours, as you can’t bottle that. But what’s happening, instead of it being nourished and protected and nurtured, it’s being exploited.
Effective leadership means the basics are looked after: HR, making sure people are paid properly, that they get the holidays they want, that they know their working hours. Staff want basic structure, and once you have that securely in place, then you have a staff member who isn’t worrying about that sort of thing and they can actually get on with their job.
When you lead properly and take care of your staff, and they feel respected, then you as the employer win. You’ll have less sickness, less attrition, and a team you can trust and rely on who represent your business in the way you want them to.
This all ties into the social license conversation, as staff who feel valued and empowered will also feel able to advocate for better welfare standards from the ground up.
What kinds of problems do you commonly see in equestrian businesses?
This won’t be surprising, but it almost always comes down to communication. I find it fascinating how we work with horses, who are masters of communicating, and yet we seem to really struggle! It’s about developing the communication skills of the leader, but also of those you are working with.
Often people aren’t aware of how their life stresses are effecting them, but it comes out in how they are communicating. What then happens is that communication comes from necessity rather than thought, and that’s where the problems begin. Taking the drama out of the situation allows for the conversations to be more productive.
I aim to set up two way conversations, with clear expectations, with a genuine intent and care about understanding the other person, as these are most productive. I often find getting people to open up in these conversations when I am coaching them sometimes surprises them, I’ve had people tell me that after getting used to having these conversations at work with their staff, they are also having better conversations with their partners! It’s about facilitating a balance and openness that is completely transferable.
Looking at the bigger picture, can you explain how you see people leadership fitting into wider narratives around social licensing the economic viability of equestrian businesses?
I think the big challenge around social license is that the equestrian industry isn’t too united. There appears to be a lack of overall leadership about how we challenge the social perceptions at the moment. We need to drill down to basics, about what it means to be an equestrian: it’s about welfare, partnership, what we can do for the horse and what the horse can do for us. There needs to be a clarity of message out there and for it to travel. And again, that’s about communication.It comes down to every day leadership, as that is what shapes the culture within equestrianism.
This whole conversation about leadership is around asking individuals to ask themselves what the intention is behind what they are saying, and that’s key to equestrians being able to advocate for social license effectively: we have to learn to take the heat and the drama out of situations to communicate effectively. We have to be able to be objective, not get defensive, or take things too personally.
In terms of the economics of the situation, in particular with regards to the recent budget, there’s a lot of information swirling around out there, but fundamentally the bottom line is that we need to make sure that businesses are set up in a way that is strategically sound and that they aren’t running at a loss, so people can make a career out of it. And that’s where effective leadership really comes into it.
When you have a high performing team of people who can run a yard, or whatever your model of business is, you can then trust them to go and do the job they’re there to do and can build on their skills. That means your business isn’t carrying any inefficiencies. If you can bake that sort of thing in, where your staff are able to have those meaningful conversations with clients for you, it frees you up to grow things economically.
I can say, hand on heart, that people who lead in this way, who are able to effectively share the mental load with their staff, have structure and organisation and open conversations, have more successful and happier businesses as a result. They have longer staff tenure, lower sickness absence, and they make more money.
You can listen to this full conversation on EQUK Chat here.
If you are interested in working with Lizzie to improve your equestrian business, you can contact her using the details below.
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