When a thousand-pound horse bolts around an arena, ignoring every command from a celebrated corporate executive, what’s really happening?

According to horse whisperer Koelle Simpson – it’s simply responding to something we rarely acknowledge.

The hidden language of our internal emotional state.

On a recent Inside Influence podcast episode, I spoke with Koelle about her extraordinary work using horses to reveal the invisible dynamics of leadership.

Her approach has transformed executives, teams, and organizations worldwide by making visible what most human interactions keep hidden.

Communication happens in the silence

“93% of our communication is nonverbal,” Koelle explained during our conversation. “Our bodies rarely have the capacity to lie.”

She shared a powerful story about a corporate leader who complained her team never listened to her instructions. When this same executive entered the arena with a horse, she experienced an immediate reflection of her leadership style—the more intensely she tried to make the horse walk calmly, the more frantically it ran.

The breakthrough came when Koelle asked her to get quiet.

Eventually she was able to tune into her own internal state. The executive’s tension, exhaustion, urgency, and frustration—not her words or gestures—were creating the horse’s response.

Once she embodied the calm she wanted to see, the horse immediately shifted to a peaceful walk. No additional commands needed.

“People don’t really do what we say,” Koelle emphasized.

“They respond to how we feel.”

Pressure reveals your hidden patterns

Most leadership training focuses on skills and strategies. But for me Koelle’s work with horses reveals something far more fundamental: the challenges we face are usually centred around unacknowledged emotions.

“As leaders we’re often embodying feelings like fear, a sense of inadequacy, or a sense of not being enough,” she observed. “This creates a ripple effect. People feel it from us, but we never talk about it.”

This challenges me to reconsider how I show up as a leader.

How often do we attribute communication failures to others not listening, when the real challenge is that our state speaks louder than our words?

The wisdom of boundaries

Koelle’s work reveals another counterintuitive lesson about leadership: clear boundaries strengthen connection rather than weaken it.

When leaders first work with horses, they often hesitate to express their boundaries. However, horses interpret this ambiguity as confusing and unsafe. In response, they’ll test limits—nudging, pushing and eventually becoming more assertive.

“If you’re withholding, horses will often push to get you to fully show up,” Koelle explained. “This isn’t aggression—it’s trying to get clarity about who you are.”

This same dynamic happens in our relationships when we avoid setting clear boundaries. Rather than preserving harmony, our lack of communication often creates confusion and ultimately damages trust.

Let go of the reins to gain influence

When leading through times of uncertainty or change, our instinct is often to tighten control. Yet I really noticed Koelle’s experience with traumatized horses revealed a counterintuitive approach.

“There’s a natural tendency to want to fix it,” she said about dealing with fear in a herd. “My most powerful lesson is I need to leave them all the room in the world to feel exactly the way they feel.”

Rather than trying to manage others’ emotions, Koelle focuses on her internal state: “When I cultivate a feeling of genuine calm in my own body, within 60 seconds, the horse will stand beside me completely calm. It’s astonishing.”

The neuroscience supports this approach. All beings naturally gravitate toward a parasympathetic nervous state—where creativity and wisdom flourish. When someone authentically embodies this calm state, our bodies follow suit.

“It’s terrifying to let go of control,” Koelle acknowledged, “but when you drop into what’s happening for you authentically, it can shift a room in minutes.”

Internal harmony creates external impact

The most moving story Koelle shared was about Maximus, a severely traumatized horse she met after he had been dragged behind vehicles by teenagers. Despite her expertise, Maximus would bolt whenever she approached.

The breakthrough came unexpectedly.

“I stopped trying to fix him and instead dropped into what I was feeling,” she recalled. “The moment I did that, he stopped running.”

Eventually, Maximus trusted her enough to lie down in her presence—a horse’s most vulnerable position. Then motioned for her to join him.

Leadership starts on the inside

When I asked Koelle what message she most wanted to share about her transformational work with leaders and horses, her answer was clear:

“Leadership is mostly a language of silence. Learning to listen to your own inner voice, so your outer voice can actually be heard”

In our culture of perfectionism, that’s revolutionary.

The path to powerful leadership isn’t about mastering others, it’s about mastering an authentic relationship with ourselves. Only then can we create environments where trust and genuine collaboration can flourish.

The next time you show up as a leader, how can you pay as much attention to how you’re feeling as what you’re saying?