Leadership lessons from Border Collies
Once upon a time, I attended a leadership training where we herded sheep.
Once upon a time, I attended a multi-week off-site leadership training somewhere around Bergen aan Zee in North Holland.
As we finished up, the facilitator announced we would need to wear good outside shoes for the next day’s surprise morning event.
Walking out the following morning, more than a few of us were excited to see a group of Border Collies by a man, all standing at a fence beside an open field filled with sheep. These were, evidently, international champion herding dogs that had just gotten back from a competition where one of them walked aways with top prize.
Now, intellectually, I had understood that working dogs were bred to do jobs with and for humans. Retrievers retrieve. Terriers catch vermin. Hounds hunt and howl. I had never seen what Herding dogs in action, let alone making the connection of, “duh.”
Scratch that. I had. The movie Babe.
Apart from Babe, I hadn’t seen any in action.
That day: I got to.
And.
Wow.
In less than a handful of minutes, all the sheep were herded into the exact place they were supposed to be going.
All the shepherd did was whistle, and multiple dogs took those whistles as differnet cues to move right, crouch, speed up, move left, go around, wait for the other, etc.
It was incredible.
Then, it was our turn
We went off in groups: four to a group, three groups in total.
Three people in the group were to act as the border collie, out in the field, herding sheep. One person was to act as the shepherd, yelling directions from the far end of the field telling us where we needed to go, how we needed to turn, and how fast we needed to move…while the other group’s callers did the same.
I was in the field, locked arm in arm, with two others, blindfolded; listening.
The dogs took, say, three minutes to get the sheep in.
Our groups took closer to thirty to forty-five.
It remains one of my favorite and most impactful leadership training exercises I’ve ever done.
Telling vs. listening
One of my inner wrists reads “Listen!” in Dutch. While herding the sheep, we were listening intently but it was hard to make out our shepherd’s voice from the others, yelling at their groups on other parts of the field.
We were told to go right.
No, the other right.
Back up.
Stop! Ditch!
Even if we were listening, we were blind to what was actually happening all around us. We were limited in many ways, but were still trying to get the job done—herding sheep.
We didn’t know if we were working together, in coordination with the other arm-locked-human-herders or if we were independent.
We didn’t have the perspective the people giving direction did; or the context; or literal visibility of what was happening.
Listening vs. telling
After the exercise—hah!—we heard what the experience was like for the “shepherds.” They noted how frustrating it was that we weren’t doing what they said…but we were doing what they said and had challenges with the instructions.
Saying what to do from afar misses context, but also its our of your control.
At some point, they figured out they needed to go one by one, planning some together in how each of the herding-groups would orchestrate towards the ultimate goal of getting the sheep into their pens.
The dogs were able to get this done, without whistles and no words.
Yes, they’re trained. Yes, they know how to do this. Yes, it’s part of their own make-up…
…it’s still dispiriting to realize how badly one does when comparing the results.
Though, ultimately, we did get the sheep herded, and into the pens.
Same results.
Different routes.