Maintaining pressure with people.

Wrangler asked me to present to the Young Leaders at the national FFA convention a few years back, which was a big deal for me, and I talked about using feel, timing, and balance in life.

I’ve been thinking of how it would be helpful for people to understand the three pressures, drive, draw, and maintaining pressure not only in handling livestock, but also in handling people.

When I was doing lots of horse expos, Crystal Lyons was doing lots of the church services, and it was very interesting to me to see people that were from all different walks of life and religions, and how Crystal could draw them in and maintain there interest, in a very unorthodox way. She would be horseback, sing, laugh, cry, get bucked off,
use the finest hick language (ain’t and ah shucks) and keep us all totally tuned in (maintaining)
While driving her message to us with just the right pressure for the mix mash of people attending. She was so good at drawing us in, maintaining our minds and driving her message to us with a pressure that fit everyone.

Cowboy church has grown in popularity in amazing amounts in the last ten years. We moved to Hubbard Texas a few years back, and went to Hubbard Cowboy Church. I wouldn’t really classify it as strictly a cowboy church, but a country church, because lots of the folks didn’t rodeo or ranch, but they were country.

Butch Boatright is the Pastor. He is a master of the draw, maintain, and drive. I watched how in that old dirt floor church, he could stand up there and let us have it, with a pressure that we didn’t even know he was letting us have it, then suggest a solution to head us in the direction we needed to go. Butch used the draw, drive, and maintain to spread the word. Pretty good for a welder turned preacher.

We were just at the NCBA trade show. There are hundreds of booths trying to sell you something. With that much competition, they must draw someone passing by in, then maintain their mind long enough to drive home the sale. You can see all different kinds of pressure. Some are way to aggressive for me and I blow right by them. Some are on their cell phone or computer and I walk right by, and the ones that fit my pressure make eye contact and invite me in with body posture. This is the draw or hooking me on. They better have a good way to maintain my mind or I am moving on. For me if they try to drive the sale to hard, I can’t take the pressure and will leave just like a breachy old cow. For me I need to be drawn, maintained, and I don’t like to be pushed, so very little drive. Other people are different and a good salesman reads that pressure, just like a good stockman reads livestock. It’s a feel and if you want to see a master at it watch Trent Johnson from Greeley Hat Works.

What about marriage? To be successful and last you need to learn to draw your partner to you to maintain your marriage. If you use to much driving pressure ( I’m very good at that) you must then change to a draw to get back maintaining a good relationship (I’m getting better at this because of lots of practice). If your not content, you need to change your pressure (easiest) or change your partners pressure (very difficult). If you can’t change the pressure to match, it’s going to be a challenge to get the most out of the relationship.

We could go on and on with the examples from raising children, teaching school, to managing a large corporation. It’s all about effective pressure. It has to change to fit the situation. When you understand this it will help you to create a life that fits your kind of pressure.
I hope these examples get your mind to working on how you can use effective pressure not only working livestock but in all things in life. Combine ” feel, timing, and balance” with draw, maintain, and driving pressure and you may end up being as content as an old cow in good feed on a warm sunny day chewing her cud. What could be better?

I have come to the realization that we have three kinds of pressure in cattle handling, and I believe in all things that are result oriented. Driving, drawing and maintaining are the three I speak of. Driving and drawing are the most obvious, but I feel the “maintaining pressure” is the one that we need to be most concerned with and work the hardest to develop.

My Grandfather told me of a man that could stop a team of horses someone else was driving with his mind, and the horses wouldn’t go until he got what he wanted. Ray Hunt speaks about horses acting gentle and calm while Tom Dorrance was around, and when he left they got much snortier. This is an extreme example of what I think of as a maintaining pressure.

I had a feedlot cattle manager ask me if I believe in “acclimating cattle”. This is a term Dr. Tom Noffsinger has used for settling cattle in a new environment. I believe in Acclimating every living thing I come in contact with to my pressure, and learning how to  acclimate myself to there pressure.

When I am presented with a horse for a demonstration, I start trying to learn how to communicate with the horse in the way he needs to accept my pressure from the moment I see him. The way I approach, take ahold of, groom, saddle and get on are done in a way for me to read what pressure he needs, and I and the horse learn what pressure works. It really helps me to “connect” with a horse and get more done with the least problems, and the most performance possible.

With livestock, you do the same thing. Your presence is very important. You may not know you are creating a negative pressure for the animal, but it does. We need to learn to understand when we are putting the maintaining pressure on the animal. We need our livestock to be in the physical and mental state to perform how we need them to perform. To get this we must “acclimate” them to the pressure of the environment we put them in. We need to learn how to do this, just like we need to learn how to get a horse to do what we need.

I like people, just like I like animals. When I go to a restaurant I get a lot of satisfaction out of making the waiter or waitress having the best experience they can have with me. It’s nice when they want to come to your table, rather than dread it. When I am working with a crew, and want to present some new ideas to them, I try to get them trusting me first, then instead of forcing an new rule or method, I try to get them to wanting to discuss how we can improve.

How we apply our driving and drawing pressure pressure effects our maintaining pressure. Sometimes we need to put a lot of pressure on to change somethings mind. I fell human nature is to use more pressure than necessary, and even though we get what we want, it makes it more difficult to have a high quality of maintaining pressure. If you don’t have the skill or fortitude to put enough pressure on you will overuse the drawing pressure(begging) and that will not create the maintaining pressure that is best.

We all have our own desires and goals on how we deal with living things. Some people may have a gift in higher level communication with animals and people.
If you have it great, but if not it’s up to you to work at it to get to the level you want to get to.

We will spend the next few weeks exploring how I feel on how to improve your maintaining pressure with horses, livestock, and people.

I hope I maintain your interest.