When Ruth Redding, an account manager, was sent on a management training course to improve her relationships with her colleagues by learning how to communicate with them more effectively, instead of being asked to address her boss or her peers, she found herself talking to a horse. In fact, during the course, which is organised by Manchester University Business School, Redding found herself standing in a pen whispering to an animal and communicating in a non-aggressive way. This form of communication, which is the subject of the best-selling novel The Horse Whisperer, later filmed with Robert Redford in the starring role, might appear bizarre on a stud farm, let alone a management training course. But horse whispering is among a number of unusual activities now being used to teach staff about every aspect of working life, from self-confidence to communication. In the 1980s and 1990s, it became fashionable to dump executives on a remote mountainside, or windswept Scottish isle, and leave them to survive a weekend in order to develop initiative, build team spirit and promote leadership skills. An alternative to the classic "chalk and talk" format, with the lecturer and obedient staff seated round a table, it all seemed wild and rather outlandish. Today, by comparison, it looks increasingly tame. A new generation of management training gurus are adopting a different approach. In Italy, stressed executives have been dressing up as gladiators to confront each other as their ancient forebears did, and in America, sales-people are herding cattle, while in Britain, one supermarket reportedly put its executives in Native American teepees for a weekend to develop a spirit of co-operation. Naturally, the originators of these new courses claim to have respectable psychological theories to back them up. Tudor Rickards, a professor at Manchester, was intrigued when he heard about the work done by the famous horse whisperer, Monty Roberts. "The idea is that instead of 'breaking' the horse, you co-operate with it. Traditionally, you would coax a horse into a box and then reward it by slamming the door shut. Monty leads the horse in and out of the box and offers it a reward," explains Professor Rickards. "Monty's approach is founded on the recognition of a foal's instinctive desire to be part of the herd. " He matched this with research from the Industrial Society, which revealed that often the difference between a successful and unsuccessful leader is trust. "As they observe the way horses react to certain behavior, participants think about how they themselves or other colleagues react to different management styles," explains Professor Rickards. "The discussion often leads to one about experiences of bullying and abusive behavior, a discussion that might not otherwise surface in a leadership course. We'vefound this helps the participants draw fine distinctions between being tough, being assertive, being supportive and being soft. " Team building is also the aim of murder mystery days run by a company called Corporate Pursuits. Actors mingle with participants and play out a scene until someone is found "murdered" Clues, such as photographs, personal items or a cryptic message, are arranged around the room, and small teams, often pitted against each other, will work to solve the mystery under the gaze of trained observers. Although fun and a sense of release is important, managing director Mandie Chester Bristow admits that this type of corporate clue do occasionally meets with skepticism among clients. "On one occasion, people were messing around and not taking it seriously at all, so I had to say to them, 'You're behaving like a bunch of school children. ' " Another challenge can be reporting the observers' findings. "We would never say, 'You've failed, ' if they didn't identify the murderer correctly. Instead, we would praise them for the progress they made and how they worked together as a team. " "There are lots of gimmicks in training and headline-grabbing courses at the moment, but what they deliver is often variable," says Nick Isles of the Industrial Society. "People often say afterwards that they enjoyed the event, but it's very difficult to measure how much they've actually learned from it. " He argues that ongoing training in the work place, or courses that last months, are a better way of improving aspects of business such as productivity and customer service. Questions:
When Ruth Redding, an account manager, was sent on a management training course to improve her relationships with her colleagues by learning how to communicate with them more effectively, instead of being asked to address her boss or her peers, she found herself talking to a horse. In fact, during the course, which is organised by Manchester University Business School, Redding found herself standing in a pen whispering to an animal and communicating in a non-aggressive way. This form of communication, which is the subject of the best-selling novel The Horse Whisperer, later filmed with Robert Redford in the starring role, might appear bizarre on a stud farm, let alone a management training course. But horse whispering is among a number of unusual activities now being used to teach staff about every aspect of working life, from self-confidence to communication. In the 1980s and 1990s, it became fashionable to dump executives on a remote mountainside, or windswept Scottish isle, and leave them to survive a weekend in order to develop initiative, build team spirit and promote leadership skills. An alternative to the classic "chalk and talk" format, with the lecturer and obedient staff seated round a table, it all seemed wild and rather outlandish. Today, by comparison, it looks increasingly tame. A new generation of management training gurus are adopting a different approach. In Italy, stressed executives have been dressing up as gladiators to confront each other as their ancient forebears did, and in America, sales-people are herding cattle, while in Britain, one supermarket reportedly put its executives in Native American teepees for a weekend to develop a spirit of co-operation. Naturally, the originators of these new courses claim to have respectable psychological theories to back them up. Tudor Rickards, a professor at Manchester, was intrigued when he heard about the work done by the famous horse whisperer, Monty Roberts. "The idea is that instead of 'breaking' the horse, you co-operate with it. Traditionally, you would coax a horse into a box and then reward it by slamming the door shut. Monty leads the horse in and out of the box and offers it a reward," explains Professor Rickards. "Monty's approach is founded on the recognition of a foal's instinctive desire to be part of the herd. " He matched this with research from the Industrial Society, which revealed that often the difference between a successful and unsuccessful leader is trust. "As they observe the way horses react to certain behavior, participants think about how they themselves or other colleagues react to different management styles," explains Professor Rickards. "The discussion often leads to one about experiences of bullying and abusive behavior, a discussion that might not otherwise surface in a leadership course. We'vefound this helps the participants draw fine distinctions between being tough, being assertive, being supportive and being soft. " Team building is also the aim of murder mystery days run by a company called Corporate Pursuits. Actors mingle with participants and play out a scene until someone is found "murdered" Clues, such as photographs, personal items or a cryptic message, are arranged around the room, and small teams, often pitted against each other, will work to solve the mystery under the gaze of trained observers. Although fun and a sense of release is important, managing director Mandie Chester Bristow admits that this type of corporate clue do occasionally meets with skepticism among clients. "On one occasion, people were messing around and not taking it seriously at all, so I had to say to them, 'You're behaving like a bunch of school children. ' " Another challenge can be reporting the observers' findings. "We would never say, 'You've failed, ' if they didn't identify the murderer correctly. Instead, we would praise them for the progress they made and how they worked together as a team. " "There are lots of gimmicks in training and headline-grabbing courses at the moment, but what they deliver is often variable," says Nick Isles of the Industrial Society. "People often say afterwards that they enjoyed the event, but it's very difficult to measure how much they've actually learned from it. " He argues that ongoing training in the work place, or courses that last months, are a better way of improving aspects of business such as productivity and customer service. Questions:
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