Horsing around in the office takes on a completely new meaning once you’ve attended one of the leadership and team building courses run by Zara Myers.

The high-flying management teams who’ve attended her sessions at Harness Change tend to leave with a similar memory – of the horse they interacted with which gave indications to their leadership and management style.

Zara restarted her business at Bigland Hall in May, using horses to explore executive team dynamics at bespoke one-day leadership courses and team building workshops.

“You have to remember that the horse doesn’t know what car you drive, where you rank in the company structure, whether you are the CEO or the janitor, it doesn’t care. It has no judgement. When you go into that arena everyone is equal,” she says.

“Working with the horses gives visual feedback, your leadership style comes across and the feedback is non-judgmental on your presentation style as a leader. It’s about relating what’s happening in the arena to what’s happening at work. It’s getting that person to understand what they are seeing from the horse, and get on board with the feedback.

“Does the horse see you as the herd leader, herd follower, see you as a threat, a hindrance to the herd? That’s why the reaction from the horse is so impactful, that’s the filter that it goes through. If you imagine your workplace, your team as a herd you will start to see the same dynamics.

“For example, a gentleman came here, very brusque, very aggressive, thinking he was going to get the horse across the obstacles and the horse wouldn’t follow…if you can imagine that conversation happening in a leadership programme in a classroom it

would turn into me versus him. Because it’s done through a horse and you’ve seen it work with the rest of your team…when the horse is reacting to you, what is it doing and why? What are you noticing? Why is it happening and when does this happen with your team? “

“For you to get the horse to work with you what needs to change? How are we going to engage with the horse now? You start to learn about people's leadership styles by how they are with the horse, some are more direct, and others take their time to get to know the horse. There’s no wrong answer, just different styles,” she says.

Zara, 30, was brought up around horses (her parents Mike and Sheelagh ran a horse riding centre in Flookburgh) and she could ride before she could walk. In 2007 the family moved to the riding school at Bigland Hall, near Newby Bridge, where she and her mother specialise in classical dressage.

She started to get the inspiration for the business when she was coaching children. “It was where my passion for development started, training people on horses is more holistic, you can’t come in with the wrong mindset when riding horses.” She started working with schools on work-based diplomas before joining leadership development company Strategic Resource in Ambleside which specialised in Management Due Diligence where they assessed senior teams for its ability to deliver on an investment strategy. “I trained in assessing senior teams and started to deliver on that as well as getting involved in the leadership programmes. It was a fantastic opportunity.”

In 2017, at the age of 25, she and business partner David Powell first set up Harness Change which they ran for a couple of years - including working with Jacqui Gale at Wax Lyrical – before they parted ways. Zara then went into HR and hospitality, before Covid hit and her father discovered he had terminal prostate cancer. She stepped back into the family business and was soon approached by CEO Jacqui Gale who asked if she would do some work with her senior team at Wax Lyrical/Portmeirion. “During Covid their senior team had never been in the same room before so they spent a week touring factories in the UK and Jacqui asked if we could do a workshop with the horses so they could form a cohesive team. We designed a workshop together looking at trust and collaboration, and we had some fantastic feedback. Afterwards, Jacqui said she would love to be a mentor for Harness Change. It was an exciting opportunity! Having Jacqui’s support and confidence led me to set up Harness Change again.”

Now she’s offering workshops and bespoke leadership sessions at the centre.

“When we do a bespoke programme I spend a lot of time learning about the business values so when we come to run the programme it is more of an extension to their business, rather than coming to Harness Change as its own entity. I do a lot of work on strategy, where they are now, where they want to be, and the challenges they are facing in the business and their personnel and leadership. I tend to find a lot of business leaders will have a clear idea about the skills gap and what needs to be done,

it’s good to explore what’s underlying or challenges that. Then I put a programme together.”

In the morning the participants work with the horses watched by their teams, then it’s time to look at how they could do things differently underlined by theory.

“In the afternoon we look at mastering the skills needed to lead the horse and your team, how does that leadership style feel? Behavioural change is tricky to put into practice back in the workplace because you are learning, you are going to get it wrong, and you can’t be expected to be perfect straight away. When you are working with a horse it’s time to experiment, test out different leadership styles, different ways of approaching a problem, and different decision-making. Usually, we do some kind of team exercise where we set out obstacles, work with the horse as a team and complete your task. This is where we tend to choose a horse personality to the task. For example, if the business is trying to get a sales contract with a particularly difficult client who is quite stubborn or rigid then let’s pick a horse that’s a bit stubborn. Getting the horse’s buy-in is going to be more challenging.

“As a team you have to work together to get that horse’s buy in, what does it feel like, what do you need to do to get the stubborn horse moving in the direction you want it to go. It’s quite easy to relate that back to the workplace challenge. Harness Change kicks off the development journey, and there’s a lot of work to be done back in the workplace,” she says.

This month she is working with Cumbria Chamber of Commerce putting on a Women in Business event and is also in conversations with several businesses. She’s also exploring setting up a workshop where people can explore the skills needed for networking and hopes to collaborate with other organisations on different programmes in the future.

“A lot of people are seeing the advantage. It’s a one-day workshop and people are seeing the impactful results, rather than enrolling on a six-month leadership course which take a lot of time and money.”

*The bespoke leadership programme for a maximum of 12 people costs £3,000 and workshops cost £250 per person.