Dominance VS Leadership - the differences

ElaineC · Dominance VS Leadership - the differences

I've been deliberately staying out of some of the discussions lately, but I have wanted to start this topic. Hopefully, it will stay calm and not need to be moved!

I believe that many of the issues being discussed lately have come from a lack of understanding of the differences between dominance, and leadership. Unfortunately, there are very few people who make a distinct seperation of the two ideas. Carolyn Resnick is one that I can think of that does, and I'm sure there are more.

Part of the problems we're seeing is that people don't realize that dominance is not leadership. A dominant horse or person makes demands, tells others what to do and expects it to be done now, without any consideration as to what else might be going on. Unfortunately, there are those that think this is also leadership - I AM BOSS, therefore I am a LEADER.

If you watch a group of horses, there will be one dominant horse in there somewhere. I own one - he's a complete jackass and can be a bully. He runs around, gathering up the herd making sure everyone is close enough to his liking. He throws his head, snakes out with his teeth, and if he sees someone coming up, runs out snorting and stamping to meet them head on. He'll drive horses away from him, he'll drive horses into the group, and spend all kinds of time and energy running around the perimeter making sure its all to his liking. However, he is not a leader.

No matter how much Ben wants to make the herd decisions, he doesn't get to. He doesn't pick where they are grazing. He doesn't get to choose when the group moves on, or where they stop. For all his nonsense and carrying on, the key decisions are not his, because he is not a leader. He is dominant.

A leader looks at the situation, and makes decisions. They make requests, they ask questions. They convince those around them that the group made the choice. A leader makes the right decision obvious and easy. They delegate, they let others express their individuality, but they don't let others take over the group.

Ben's herd won't move, until the lead mare decides it will. You have to watch long and hard to pick out who the leader is in the group, but she's typically near the middle. She moves through the herd, but never makes a ripple or causes other horses to move, unless she feels she needs to. One snotty look and a nose wrinkle is all she needs to back up anything she wants! When she decides its time to move to a new grazing spot, she lets my idiot-boy do all the snorting and stamping and running, as she calmly leads the herd to where she thinks they should be. I could watch them all day!

I think too many people try to be leaders, by being dominant. I also feel that you can't be a leader, if you are being dominant. Dominance takes a way the choice, and leaves no room for a partnership. If you don't have a partnership, you're not only having to do all your end of the job, but you're having to bully and force your partner into doing their end as well. Far too much work for me! Its very easy to slip into being dominant if you're frustrated, or stuck, but it just makes things worse. I've learned to step back, try to find a way through a problem so my partner understands his role. Not easy, when he's dominant himself! If I get at all dominant, a massive blowup happens every time, and I lose, every time.

Any thoughts on this? Discuss, please!

Niek

Interesting discussion to start, thank you for that, and i would like to ask everyone to indeed keep it calm and maintain respect for each other.. I hope i dont have to instill fear

Personally im no fan of CR, i prefer Mark Rashids aproach but thats just as it is personal

.

He talks about this alot in about all his books.. I think this cuts into a different discussion to, leadership or passive leadership as Rashid discribes it doesnt equal doing nothing..

Dominance and leadership are close... Leadership atleast in the animal world general equals Dominance.. I guess the thing that differs is how its achieved... Just as there are 2 types of humans there are 2 types of horses for leadership..

You got the bullys who will damn near kill the other horse if he does something wrong (i know one of these) and the truly "passive" leaders..

The herd copes eitherway.. While clearly we prefer to see the later of the 2. Especially because we can emphasize with the horses, i wonder how the horses go with that.. Do they care as much as we do ?

I personally think dominance for us is far closer to aggression and prolonged aggrivated intend than it is for animals.. We struggle to let go of these emotions and thus start to instill fear in the relationship.

Leadership can be "taken" ( i guess thats what you are hinting at with dominance) or given .. Im a firm believer of intent.. I firmly believe horses feel intent (regardles if our timing sucks or not) If our intent is centered (our energy) we can stay calm and not let emotions take the better of us (especially negative ones) when we strive to be rewarded with the leadership.

When you are "there" and your intent is right i do believe that when needed, becoming "firm" (and that doesnt equal nasty) does not instill fear or other negative feelings.. with the horse

PasoBaby_CarolU

Elaine, I think we've had a few discussions on this before. You might look at those where we discussed the difference between being the Alpha horse and being the Leader horse.

I have a herd like yours, I have an Alpha chicken who bosses everyone around, even herds the others out to the pasture with him so he won't be alone. But, he is not who the others look to for advice when something new happens, they look to my lead mare.

I think in the human-horse relationship, many humans get lost in the Alpha horse analogy, "Show em' who's boss!" is heard all too often, and many people rule with a bully fist. I do hope this is where natural horsemanship steps in and teaches people to be Leaders for their horses, who the horse looks to when they are afraid.

jackspark

You all got some splaining to do: Ok, my herd used to be led by my very benevolent old man but since his leg issues the snotty gelding has become dominant just as Elaine described and Carol mentioned. I don't see another leader in the herd. What should I look for IF there is a leader other than my juvenile delinquent? I think it's very subtle if there is.

Can my dominant idiot really be the leader?

Are leaders always good "guys"?

PasoBaby_CarolU

Nancy, herds are dynamic. Sorry to read of your old man. It's hard to watch. I watched Tina, my alpha/lead mare of 30 years slip through the ranks when her joints started giving way to arthritis. I finally separated her from the others. I just couldn't stand to see her pushed around.

It is not usually idiot LBE's who go first to investigate things (they're the ones eaten by the lions as foals in the wild), and it's not the bully horse (in my case he hides at the barn and looks out to see what happens to the LBE's first). When something sudden happens, your horses will LOOK at the Leader to see what they should do, if they should run or stand.

Not all Leaders are good leaders. Some run their herd into trapped canyons, off cliffs, or to places without water and they die. Nature is a tough teacher.

alexwein

Interesting, want to look this over more fully, but I wanted also to respond to Niek's post. I really like the idea behind this thread, because I myself have struggled a bit with the difference between being 'alpha' and being a leader. I had the good fortune, while reading MR's book on passive leadership, to have my horse with a herd of three other mares. I watched them quite a bit, and noticed that Dakota hung out closely with one mare in particular. What was interesting was that this mare was NOT the alpha leader, though there definitely was one. I'd call the latter the Clinton Anderson type leader. She 'led' if you want to call it that through applying pressure and having the other horses avoid it. Lots of pressure. If you didn't listen the first time, WHACK--she'd bite or even kick out. As a result, the other horses would move out of her way the minute she came close. They definitely respected her space!

But no horse really wanted to hang with her while she was behaving that way. It was fear, intimidation, and avoidance. Maybe there is a place in a wild herd for a leader who can garner instant respect and get the horses moving, help to keep order, whatever. Maybe that is what the alpha is good for.

But for day-to-day leadership, the kind that has to do with the everyday life of eating and hanging out and being with herd mates, Spice was not the leader, nor is she the one they trusted in new situations. That horse was Engie, the older mare, who did not seek leadership but definitely had the genuine respect and trust of the others. Dakota loved this mare and I could see the trust and comfort she felt being around Engie. Dakota is normally a pretty self-sufficient girl who often eats away from the herd, but with Engie, she would follow wherever Engie went. And I can't say I ever saw one single instance of ear pinning on either horse's part. I looked closely at what it was about Engie that garnered such trust in my horse. Engie is calm, consistent, kind, very fair and even in her behavior, never aggressive, but yet firm within herself, meaning she doesn't get pushed around. When the 'alpha' horse, Spice, comes around, Engie would simply move out of her way. Spice would never go after Engie as she would the other two if they didn't move fast enough. Engie, though RB in some ways on the trail (I've ridden all of these horses and know them well), is always self possessed and self contained with the herd.

Hell, I'd want to follow her! She's a great energy to be around!! It was a living example of MR's observations, watching those mares in that little herd. I could see the results of 'alpha' behavior, and to be honest, I want no part in it! I want my horse to feel about me the way she does about Engie, not about Spice!

How this applies to the way I interact with my young horse is the real key, however, and it's not so easy to separate out. I have come up against this often when deciding how I want to tackle a problem or new training opportunity. I have to think about what result I'm after and how I'm going to try to be a genuine leader as opposed to a bully, which is really what Spice the alpha horse is. And Clinton Anderson is, and all who train horses according to the idea of being the 'alpha' horse.

That is my opinion and something I truly believe. Is there a time for demanding respect from a horse, certainly! But that kind of interaction is usually something rare. When watching horses interact, with the exception of horses like Spice, those 'big' movements, and anything involving a kick or something with that kind of energy, only happen when many small, subtler clues are ignored. Thousands of small, subtle communications take place each day with horses, and it is pretty rare for them to involve physical force.

So, this is something I think quite a bit about and I'm starting to feel more comfortable in myself with being a 'leader' to my horse. I remember something Brent Graef said to me, several times in fact. 'Trust your instincts.' I'm finding that I'm drawn to Engie's type of leadership because it is natural for me as well. I'm learning that to be a good leader to my horse means, more and more, getting the heck out of my own way and trusting what my own intuition tells me. And of course finding teachers who can help me continue to develop my leadership skills in the direction I want to go.[/b]

jackspark

Hertha

Carolyn Resnick has a good description of the difference between a leader and a dominant horse.

It's much like people.

If a dominant person comes into a room, the common response is to move away or make oneself invisible and hope not to be noticed or picked out.

If a leader type person enters the room, the common response is to want to interact with them and be near them and want to be noticed by them.

Sort of like a game of 'good cop', 'bad cop'. The lead mare lets the dominant pushy horses keep everyone else in line. She herself makes friends and draws the herd members to her. And because other horses want to be her friend, they are respectful of her space and she only has to look or swish a tail as a reminder if anyone gets overbearing.

Gallop On

Last clinic I went to I heard a great analogy for dominance vs leadership, completely forgot it now. So that's no help.

But in my opinion, it's the frame of mind.
To be dominant is thinking "I WANT YOU TO DO THIS....NOW"
To be a leader is thinking "Can you/can I help you do this?"

gideon

Very early in her DVD on the Waterhole Rituals, Carolyn Resnick says,"What is a leader? A leader is someone who makes a request." She relates this to human behavior where we have a tendency to respond positively to someone who asks nicely, " Would you mind doing this little thing for me?" That morphs into "If you'd do this, I'll do that, and together we'll achieve something we both want." The result, in a herd of horses, is harmony, with most everyone working together for the good of the herd.

Dominance is forced on others, but leadership is given by the ones being led, and must be earned. CR says that horses resist dominance, but are attracted to leadership. She and Mark Rashid are the only two trainers I have read who understand the difference, and why it matters to the horse. The Waterhole Rituals are designed to develop a position of leadership with your horse, and being dominant will fail because you work your horse at liberty where she can leave you if she doesn't want your company. So you shape your leadership to get results with your horse, and she shapes your leadership to show you what she needs. It's a powerful concept.

Hertha

Thanks for that, Gideon. I was watching that DVD this morning for the second time.

Like you mentioned, CR says that dominant behaviour (by horse or human) encourages challenge. Polite leadership behaviour allows the horse to say, "No," and the tendency to challenge just doesn't arise.

She also makes the distinction between working with a horse having expectations that it is going to do certain things that you want, and working with a horse while being open to all the opportunities for requests you could make that appear in the session. She said it better than that.....will have to watch it again when it comes back from my friend.

Sunnypony

I asked a similar question in the last Parelli Teleseminar. Maybe it's interessting for somebody what Linda said?
(I think she didn't understand the question the way I meant, but it doesn't matter)

What's the difference between a dominant-horse and a lead-horse in the herd and how can I apply the different strategies (especially the use of phase 1-4) that these two kinds of horses use in the herd to my leadership and relation with my horse?

Linda:
That's interessting because I was just thinking about that this moring I was writing something and you know we talked about how we are able to train horses without force or dominance or fear.
But there is a dominance there and I think it is really important to understand how horses do dominance rather than how people do dominance.
So dominance is not a bad word but if you don't apply it the way horses apply it when you're with horses than it could be difficult.
So leadership is about some degree of dominance because you have to be the one whose ideas everyone want's to follow.
So how do you get to become the leader? You can dominate mentally, emotionally and physically, but I think people think about dominance as being strong, smack them, make it happen but that's not necessarily how it happens.
We all know somebody in our family who is very quiet but very strong, like my old grandmother was. When she spoke and she was very quiet but everybody at the table there was quiet.
So there's different ways how leadership come across but basically it's how horses do leadership that we want to learn from and that means not just emulating the things they do but getting the horses to think that you're like a horse and not a predator.

Hertha

Thanks, Sunnypony. That is very interesting.

It sounds like she is aware of the difference but hasn't really answered your question in the way that Carolyn Resnick makes it more clear.

It's all very well to say, "We have to do it more like horses do it," but the actual information about how they do it is missing.

Also, she's not distinguishing the difference, but lumping a need for dominance as part of leadership, which is quite a different idea.

Very interesting.