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Subject: What
is Passive Leadership? While Mark gives much of the credit to the "old man" in his books for putting him on the right track with horses at a very early age, he remains dedicated to finding quiet and effective ways of communicating with horses on a daily basis. One of the ways he does this is by a training idea he refers to as "passive leadership". Recently, Mark was asked to define a "passive leader", and how it effects horses during training. "Well, here it is in a nutshell. There are two types of leaders in a herd situation. The alpha, or lead horse that rules by dominance, and passive leaders that lead by example. The passive leaders are usually chosen by other members of the herd and are followed willingly, while alphas use force to declare their place in the herd. Passive leaders are usually older horses somewhere in the middle of the herd's pecking order. They are quiet and consistent in their day-to-day behavior and don't appear to have much ambition to move up the "alpha" ladder. As a result, there appears to be no reason for them to use force to continually declare their position in the herd. Alphas, on the other hand, are
usually pretty far from being quiet and consistent in their behavior.
They are often very pushy, sometimes going as far as using unprovoked
attacks on subordinates for the simple reason of declaring their
dominance. As a result of this behavior, the majority of the
horses in the herd will actually avoid all contact with the alpha
throughout the day. |
