The Conscious Leadership Experience with Horses

Build adaptable, resilient, high-performing teams, even in a chaotic world.

As Featured in Austin Monthly's Top 4 Animal Adventures in Texas This Summer

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As Featured in Austin Monthly's Top 4 Animal Adventures in Texas This Summer 〰️

The #1 EQ Skill Your Team Needs

nspiring healthy, high-performance cultures today is harder than it used to be.

Throwing more money or people at the problem…
Increasing pressure…
Expecting employees to simply “get on with it”…

Leaders everywhere are discovering: those approaches are no longer working.

Today’s workforce is navigating unprecedented stress, uncertainty, and burnout. Remote and hybrid work have introduced communication gaps and isolation. Add in generational shifts and socio-political tension, and the leadership playbook of the past is quickly becoming obsolete.

Executives are asking:

  • How do we motivate teams that are increasingly intolerant of pressure?

  • How do we rebuild trust and enthusiasm at work?

  • How do we lead humans — not just performance — in a complex world?

The answer lies in conscious leadership.

What Conscious Leadership Unlocks

When leaders develop strong social-emotional capacity, organizations see:

  • Greater ability to manage stress, change, and complexity

  • More respectful and inclusive team dynamics

  • Stronger cross-generational collaboration

  • Reduced isolation in remote and hybrid teams

  • Higher innovation and creative problem-solving

  • More resilient, adaptable cultures

  • Inspired, sustainable performance

But here’s the critical insight:

Conscious leadership cannot be developed through information alone. It must be embodied.

8 Warning Signs of Low Conscious Leadership

Organizations often come to us when they notice patterns like:

  • Conflict evasion and unresolved tension

  • Finger-pointing and lack of ownership

  • Rumor spreading and eroding trust

  • High performers quietly burning out

  • Disengaged “going through the motions” energy

  • Stress contagion across teams

  • Emotional volatility under pressure

  • Leadership disconnected from frontline reality

Left unaddressed, these patterns quietly drain performance, culture, and retention.

Why Experiential Learning Matters:

Most leadership development stays in the cognitive layer.

But conscious leadership lives in the nervous system, in relational dynamics, and in moment-to-moment self-management.

Experiential learning accelerates growth because leaders:

  • Receive immediate, honest feedback

  • Practice regulating in real time

  • Notice their impact on others

  • Adjust and integrate on the spot

This is where our work with horses becomes uniquely powerful.

Why Horses?

Horses are masters of present-moment awareness and regulation.

Because their survival depends on reading subtle cues in their environment, they respond only to authentic, congruent leadership.

They don’t respond to titles.
They don’t respond to scripts.
They respond to who you are being in the moment.

This creates a rare learning environment where leaders can directly experience:

  • Self-awareness — seeing their real-time impact

  • Emotional regulation — staying grounded under pressure

  • Relational attunement — reading nonverbal dynamics

  • Adaptive leadership — adjusting approach moment by moment

  • Trust-based influence — leading without force

No slide deck can replicate this level of feedback.

The Executive Experience

In a guided session at Kenshō Stables, leaders:

  • Receive immediate, judgment-free feedback

  • Practice conscious leadership under real conditions

  • Experience how presence shapes performance

  • Build embodied adaptability and trust

  • Leave with insights that translate directly to the workplace

This is not theory.
This is leadership in motion.

The Bottom Line

The future does not belong to the most technical leaders.

It belongs to the most conscious, adaptable, and emotionally intelligent ones.

At Kenshō Stables, executives and teams develop the human capabilities that modern leadership demands — through an experience powerful enough to create real, lasting change.

Powerful, profound breakthroughs in one day.

Master Group Facilitator

Gretchen Fox Palmer is a Culture Change Strategist, high-stakes communications expert and published author who helps leaders and teams deliver transformational change. With two decades guiding Fortune 10 companies, Silicon Valley startups, and global brands, she combines deep EQ expertise, crisis navigation, and experiential learning — including equine-facilitated coaching.

Read more on FastCompany

Proven Results

Gretchen Fox Palmer’s EQ programs deliver measurable impact:

  • 87.5% of participants cite EQ @Work as critical to cultural shifts

  • 85% report improvements in personal well-being

  • 94% gain confidence in managing tough conversations

  • 76% feel greater company support post-program

Casual Environment

Participants are able to learn individually while connecting with their peers in a casual, tranquil, nature-based setting.

You can’t learn adaptability from a book. You have to feel it, practice it, and live it.

Working with horses develops leaders who stay steady through change, communicate with clarity, and create psychological safety in any environment.

Adaptability isn’t learned in theory — it’s lived on the ground.

Date: Week Day & Weekend Options

Time:12:30 PM - 4 PM Central

Lunch options available

Investment: $675 per person

Location: Kenshō Stables

FAQ’s

  • The purpose of equine facilitated learning (EFL) is to expand our personal awareness through a series of equine guided experiences.

    These experiences allow us to enhance our abilities to notice and learn from our emotions and feelings as well as those of other sentient beings (animals and humans).

    The EFL exercises are designed as building blocks to open new neural pathways in our mind and our body by stretching our ability to feel the presence and intention of others through using our entire bodies as a sensory device.

  • Yes! Equine facilitated learning exercises are done on the ground guided by a trained coach and horse professional. Horses are always in controlled environments (behind a fence or in a halter with a lead rope). These are non-riding experiences.

  • All horses will be under control in a fenced paddock or on a lead rope in every horse experience. In addition, you may refrain from being around a horse as much as you choose. We encourage everyone to explore fears like fear of horses, safely with professional guidance.

  • Absolutely not, you may choose to do whichever sessions you want; however, sessions build upon each other and so it is advantageous to complete them all.

  • Our workshops are intimate experience with group size capped at a maximum of 8 participants.

Still not sure if our workshops are right for you?

We want to ensure a positive and vibrant group experience for each participant at each event. You can schedule a 1:1 call with Master Facilitator Gretchen Fox Palmer to see if this event is a good fit for you.