The Five Roles of a Master Herder

Book excerpt: Includes Assessment Tool for Analyzing Your Leadership Style and Becoming a Better Leader Across several bestselling books, author and teacher Linda Kohanov has explored “the way of the horse,” an experiential wisdom gained by studying the nonpredatory power of horses. In The Five Roles of a Master Herder, she adapts these horse-inspired insights into useful tools for developing collaborative leadership and managing change. Over thousands of years, Kohanov writes, “master herders” of nomadic herding cultures developed a multifaceted, socially intelligent form of leadership combining the five roles of Dominant, Leader, Sentinel, Nurturer / Companion, and Predator. The fluid interplay of these roles allowed interspecies communities to move across vast landscapes, dealing with predators and changing climates, protecting and nurturing the herd while keeping massive, gregarious, often aggressive animals together — without the benefit of fences and with very little reliance on restraints. She includes an innovative assessment tool that will help you determine which roles you currently overemphasize and which roles you may be ignoring — or even actively avoiding. Through this powerful, at times surprising and moving book, Kohanov will show you how to recognize, cultivate, and utilize all five roles in the modern tribes of your workplace, family, and other social organizations.