The ROI of Authentic Leadership Development: What the Research Says About Horse-Facilitated Learning
When organizations invest in leadership development, the question is reasonable: What will this change: and how will we know?
Leadership training is not a decorative benefit. It is a business investment with implications for retention, engagement, productivity, communication, trust, and the quality of decisions made under pressure.
Yet not every leadership program produces a meaningful return.
The difference often comes down to one question: does the experience create genuine behavior change, or does it simply deliver information that participants understand for a few hours?
Authentic leadership development asks more of us. It invites leaders to examine how they actually show up: not only what they intend to communicate. This is where equine facilitated learning offers a distinctive and increasingly research-supported approach.
At Courses With Horses, horses serve as active co-facilitators. Through carefully designed, ground-based exercises and facilitated reflection, participants experience leadership in real time. There is no riding involved, and no previous horse experience is required.
The result is learning that is physical, emotional, relational, and difficult to dismiss.
Why traditional leadership training often fails to change behavior
Many corporate training programs are built around a familiar sequence: explain a model, discuss a case study, provide a workbook, and ask participants to commit to applying the learning at work.
This can create awareness. But awareness is not the same as change.
Research on the transfer of training has consistently shown that learning does not automatically become workplace behavior. Participants may remember a framework, agree with a concept, and even report that a session was valuable: then return to the same pressures, habits, and organizational expectations that shaped their behavior before the training.
Common barriers include:
Too much passive learning and too little practice
No opportunity to test new behaviors in a realistic environment
Insufficient feedback during the learning process
No clear connection between training and business objectives
Limited follow-up, coaching, or accountability
A workplace culture that does not reinforce the desired behaviors
A meta-analytic review of training transfer found that training can improve knowledge and performance, but transfer depends heavily on the work environment, learner characteristics, training design, and opportunities to apply the learning.
In other words, the problem is not necessarily that people are unwilling to grow. Often, the learning experience has not given them a strong enough bridge from understanding to action.
Leadership is enacted through tone, timing, posture, listening, boundaries, emotional regulation, and consistency. These qualities are difficult to develop through lecture alone.
The science of experiential and embodied learning
Experiential learning begins with a simple premise: people learn through experience, reflection, conceptual understanding, and active experimentation.
David Kolb’s influential model describes learning as a cycle:
Concrete experience
Reflective observation
Abstract conceptualization
Active experimentation
This cycle is especially relevant to leadership because leadership is not merely a body of knowledge. It is a practice.
You can understand the importance of psychological safety and still interrupt people when you feel threatened. You can value authentic communication and still send mixed signals when you are under pressure. You can know that trust matters and still attempt to control situations through urgency or authority.
Embodied learning makes these patterns visible.
When a participant works with a horse, their communication is not carried by words alone. The horse responds to movement, breathing, pace, focus, tension, and intention. A leader may ask for cooperation while physically communicating uncertainty. They may try to create forward movement through force, only to discover that force creates resistance.
The insight is not abstract. It is felt.
Research on experiential learning supports the value of active practice, reflection, realistic context, and spaced reinforcement for retention and transfer. The popular “learning pyramid” statistics often cited in business articles should not be treated as precise universal measurements, but the broader conclusion is sound: people are more likely to remember and use what they actively practice, reflect upon, and connect to real situations.
That is the foundation of equine facilitated learning.
Why horses provide unusually honest leadership feedback
Horses are highly responsive to changes in their environment. They notice shifts in energy, attention, movement, and emotional state. They do not evaluate a participant based on job title, professional reputation, or organizational status.
As Maureen Moons, President of Courses With Horses, often emphasizes, the horse responds to what is happening in the moment.
This creates a form of immediate, unbiased feedback that is difficult to replicate in a traditional classroom.
Human feedback can be delayed, softened, filtered, or influenced by hierarchy. A team member may hesitate to tell a senior leader that their communication feels intimidating. A colleague may avoid pointing out a gap between a leader’s stated values and their behavior.
A horse does not make that calculation.
If your approach is unclear, the horse may pause. If your energy is too forceful, the horse may move away. If your attention is scattered, the connection may weaken. If your intention and behavior become congruent, the horse may respond with greater calm and cooperation.
This is not magic, and it is not a claim that horses can diagnose a person’s character. It is an experiential mirror. The horse’s response gives participants a concrete opportunity to observe how their presence affects another living being.
A recent qualitative study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science followed eight leaders for 12 months after a five-day equine-assisted leadership development program. The researchers identified three connected themes:
Embodied self-awareness and leadership reflection
Transformative learning and behavioral change
Relational leadership and trust-based engagement
The study is exploratory, and its small sample means the findings should not be generalized without care. Still, it offers meaningful evidence for the mechanism behind horse leadership training: immediate non-verbal feedback can prompt reflection, recalibration, and changes in how leaders communicate and build trust.
What outcomes can organizations measure?
A credible business case should connect the learning experience to observable outcomes. The goal is not to promise that one workshop will solve every organizational challenge. The goal is to define the behaviors and results that matter, then measure them thoughtfully.
Depending on your objectives, relevant indicators may include:
Retention
Leaders influence whether people feel respected, supported, heard, and able to grow. Over time, these conditions can affect voluntary turnover.
Track:
Voluntary turnover in participating leaders’ teams
Exit interview themes
Internal mobility and promotion rates
Retention of high-performing employees
Engagement
Authentic leaders create clearer relationships between purpose, expectations, and contribution.
Track:
Engagement survey scores
“My manager communicates clearly”
“My manager cares about me as a person”
Participation in meetings and improvement initiatives
Productivity
Productivity is often influenced by the quality of communication and decision-making around the work.
Track:
Time to complete key processes
Project delays and rework
Output per employee
Decision speed and follow-through
Customer or patient experience measures
Communication and collaboration
Leadership development can be evaluated through 360-degree feedback, observation, and team-level surveys.
Track:
Quality and frequency of feedback conversations
Cross-functional collaboration
Conflict resolution
Meeting effectiveness
Clarity of roles and priorities
Psychological safety
Psychological safety is not the same as comfort. It is the belief that people can speak up, ask questions, acknowledge mistakes, and offer ideas without fear of humiliation or punishment.
Track:
“I feel safe raising concerns”
“Mistakes are treated as opportunities to learn”
Number and quality of improvement suggestions
Near-miss reporting in healthcare or safety-sensitive environments
Team willingness to challenge assumptions
Direct research on equine learning and psychological safety remains limited. It is more accurate to say that equine experiences may strengthen behaviors associated with psychological safety: such as patience, trust, openness, and non-punitive feedback: rather than claim that the outcome is guaranteed.
How to calculate the ROI of leadership development
The standard training ROI formula is straightforward:
ROI (%) = (Financial benefits − Total program cost) ÷ Total program cost × 100
The more difficult work is defining both sides honestly.
Include the full cost
Your total investment may include:
Facilitation and program design
Venue and materials
Travel and accommodation
Participant wages and time away from work
Follow-up coaching or reinforcement
Evaluation and measurement
Identify measurable benefits
Potential financial benefits may come from:
Fewer avoidable employee departures
Reduced recruitment and onboarding costs
Lower rework or error rates
Increased productivity
Faster project completion
Reduced absenteeism
Improved customer or patient retention
For example, if a leadership program contributes to avoiding two managerial departures and the fully estimated cost of replacing each manager is $60,000, the retention benefit may be $120,000. Add other attributable benefits, subtract the program cost, and calculate the return.
Use conservative assumptions. If several organizational changes occurred at the same time, do not assign all improvement to the training. You can use comparison groups, historical trends, manager estimates, or an agreed attribution percentage.
SHRM’s guide to measuring training ROI recommends considering both tangible and intangible outcomes. Engagement, trust, psychological safety, and leadership bench strength may not immediately translate into a dollar figure, but they are strategically important leading indicators.
A useful evaluation process follows the logic of:
Did participants engage with the experience?
Did they learn something relevant?
Did their behavior change?
Did team or organizational results improve?
What portion of that improvement can reasonably be attributed to the program?
The business case for authentic leadership development
The research does not support a simplistic promise that horse-facilitated learning automatically produces a specific percentage return. The empirical literature on equine-facilitated leadership is still developing, and many studies rely on small samples, qualitative interviews, or self-reported outcomes.
That honesty matters.
What the evidence does support is a compelling pathway:
Experiential learning can deepen retention and application.
Embodied practice can make invisible leadership habits more visible.
Horses provide immediate feedback without regard to hierarchy.
Authentic presence, emotional regulation, communication, and trust are central leadership capabilities.
These capabilities influence measurable outcomes such as engagement, retention, collaboration, productivity, and psychological safety.
For organizations considering leadership training for managers, horse leadership training is not a replacement for every element of a broader development strategy. It is a powerful complement: especially when your goals include authentic leadership development, emotional intelligence training for leaders, trust, communication, and behavior change that lasts beyond the workshop.
Invest in learning that can be felt: and measured
The return on leadership development is ultimately found in what leaders do differently when the pressure rises.
Do they become clearer without becoming controlling? Can they listen before reacting? Do they create enough trust for people to speak honestly? Can they remain steady when circumstances are uncertain?
These are not soft questions. They shape performance, culture, retention, and the daily experience of work.
At Courses With Horses, we customize each workshop around your organization’s objectives and desired outcomes. We help you connect the experience in the arena to the realities of your workplace, so the learning becomes more than a memorable day: it becomes a practical foundation for lasting change.
Book a customized Courses With Horses workshop, or contact us to discuss the leadership outcomes that matter most to your organization. Your investment in authentic leadership can become a lasting gift to your people: and a meaningful return for the future you are building together.
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