“That's what I've been doing to my team”

He was, by every metric, excellent. Revenue, retention, the board's confidence — all strong. And his team was quietly leaving him, one resignation at a time.

In the arena, he approached the horse the way he approached everything: directly, with intent, pushing for the outcome. The horse stepped away. He tried again, harder. The horse turned its body and disengaged completely.

Loïc asked him to stop trying to make something happen, and simply to be there. To breathe. To let the horse decide. It took several minutes for his shoulders to drop. When they did, the horse turned, walked over, and stood with him.

"That's what I've been doing to my team, isn't it?" he said. The horse had responded the same way his team did — avoidance, resistance, distance. In ninety minutes he understood something months of coaching had not surfaced. The work after that was fast, because it was finally honest.