Episode 300: Emma Jane Clarke, Martinstown Lodge: Leadership Coaching With Horses, No Saddles, No Cowboys, No Hiding
What happens when a senior executive walks into an arena with a horse and discovers the horse is not impressed by their title, their car, their bonus, their LinkedIn bio or their carefully manufactured air of command?
That is the business Emma Jane Clarke has built at Martinstown Lodge in Co. Meath.
No horse riding. No cowboy tricks. No corporate away-day nonsense with beanbags, beach balls or frostbite. This is equine-centred leadership development, where horses are used to help leaders and teams see how they really show up.
Emma Jane is no flake. Far from it. She was a senior leader in a government agency, managed large teams and multimillion-euro portfolios, and before that was the only female harvesting foreman in the UK forestry sector. Then, after a major accident left her in a wheelchair, she went after the dream: a farm, horses and a business helping people get out of their own way.
On Episode 300 of That Great Business Show with Conall O Morain, Emma Jane explains:
Why horses are brutally honest leadership mirrors
Why senior managers cannot bluff a horse
Why your thoughts are not necessarily reality
Why checking in too much can interrupt the flow of a team
Why confidence, presence and trust matter more than title
Why some CEOs need less PowerPoint and more paddock
Why no one, absolutely no one, gets to play cowboy
She also explains the business model, the client base, the expansion potential, the international ambition and why this strange-sounding idea is already working with serious companies.
And in Hire in a Heartbeat, Emma Jane chooses Steve Bartlett, Jay Shetty and, best of all, her 89-year-old mother Dorothy Clarke, who recently started her own podcast. That is competition. Family competition. The worst kind.
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