20 Aug Join-Up
The world lost Monty Roberts recently, a remarkable horseman who spent much of his 91 years challenging an idea that had been accepted for generations: that the way to train a horse was to break it.
For much of the history of horsemanship, “breaking” was a fairly literal description. A young horse was taught to accept a saddle and rider through restraint, fear, and eventually submission.
Roberts believed there was a better way. As a teenager watching wild mustangs, he began to recognize how much they communicated through the turn of an ear, the lowering of a head, the movement toward or away. Those observations became the basis of an approach he called Join-Up, built around understanding and responding to the horse’s nonverbal language rather than forcing it into submission.
There is something moving about watching the moment when a horse makes the decision to come toward him. Roberts watches for the smallest signs that the horse is ready, then changes his posture, turns slightly away, and leaves an opening.
Eventually, the horse crosses the space between them.
Maybe what makes that moment so moving is how recognizable it is. We know something about what it feels like to be pushed and what it feels like to be invited. We know the difference between someone trying to get us to do something and someone taking the time to understand what might help us move toward it.
When we want someone to change, especially when we can see so clearly why the change would be good for them, it is remarkably easy to begin pushing. We explain, offer advice, point out what they may be missing. If they remain unconvinced, we come back with an even better argument.
But there is a peculiar thing about human nature. The more someone tries to convince us, the more we often find ourselves defending the other side. Pressure has a way of calling forth pressure in return.
Roberts understood that you cannot force your way into partnership. His work created an atmosphere in which the horse felt safe enough to move toward him, while the choice still belonged to the horse.
There is such a difference between trying to do something to someone and finding a way to be with them. We can become so focused on getting someone to change that we miss the relationship in which change has to happen.
Roberts’ ideas were so counter to tradition that he was expelled from a Hall of Fame after challenging its practices. Still, he kept showing what could happen when power gave way to partnership. His work reflected something that reaches well beyond a round pen. People, too, move differently when they feel understood rather than managed, when hesitation is met with curiosity rather than another argument, and when the decision remains their own.
There is something generous in that way of being with another living thing, paying close enough attention to notice what invites someone toward us, while respecting that we cannot take the steps for them.
This is what Roberts understood so well. The space between us matters. We can fill it with our reasons, our answers, our certainty about where someone should go. Or we can make it a place where another person has room to find their own way forward.
We spend so much time trying to figure out how to move other people.
Maybe what matters more is learning how to leave enough room for them to move toward us.