Working with horses taught me Inspirational Leadership—leadership that seeks to inspire others by who you are as well as what you do. Large, powerful animals, horses can easily overrule you if you attempt to dominate and use force. To lead a horse you must convince the horse that he wants to do what you, the leader, want him to do.

Leadership, when you strip away all the layers, is really about your ability to inspire others to follow you: Follow-ship. When you think of Leadership as being the ability to inspire follow-ship, then the question you must ask of yourself is, who do I need to be and what skills and abilities do I need to inspire others to follow me? Skills and abilities can be learned and being who you desire to be is about personal self growth and development.

Leadership is You! Becoming a great leader is about developing yourself and your skills. Before you can help others grow, you must know yourself and take the time to develop into the person that you yourself would want to follow.

Leadership is a prevailing topic and an essential need. In our increasingly smaller and more complicated world, we need exceptional leaders more than ever. There have been many great books written about leadership and I encourage you to read, study, and experience them so you can be a leader who makes a difference wherever you are. We have so many books on the topic of leadership because the subject is deep and wide, so deep and wide that not one book can cover all the aspects of great leadership. Each of us who writes about leadership writes from our own perspective and in a way that is unique for us and therefore unique for you.

Each one of us draws on our own experiences and from who we are to bring you many and various ways to view leadership and leadership skills. We give of our beliefs and of ourselves in our writing, so while some of the attributes of leadership may be the same they are delivered differently and you will hear them differently. You will therefore learn in a new way, the way that is right for you, the reader.

My book on leadership is written in the form of stories. These stories are of simple interactions with horses. They come from a variety of sources, my personal work with my horses, observing my husband Cliff, and workshop participants. In each of these stories I share leadership insights observed from these interactions. I have included the insights after each story so the flow of the story was not interrupted. I wanted to share my insights on leadership of self and others but I anticipate that you will gain your own insights as you read the stories. That is the wonderful thing about stories as metaphors: we each come with our own set of life experiences and filters therefore you may get something entirely different from the stories than the insights I have shared. It is my hope that you will enjoy and become more skilled in leadership of yourself and others from this book.

Copyright (c) 2008 Jean Starling