Rewilding Leadership with Kelly Wendorf and Morag Gamble

Learning to Lead Like Life Itself

How do we lead in a way that feels alive, kind, and connected to the living world?

In this episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World, Morag is joined by Kelly Wendorf, author of Flying Lead Change and founder of EQUUS, whose work brings together horses, neuroscience, and ancient wisdom to reimagine what leadership can be.

Kelly shares about leadership as a natural, relational process. Not command and control, but care and connection - moving from hierarchy to harmony.

Her principles of leadership — Safety, Connection, Peace, Freedom, and Joy — mirror what we see in every thriving ecosystem. The same qualities that sustain a healthy forest or a permaculture garden can also sustain our families, workplaces, and communities.

Morag and Kelly talk about what it means to lead from presence, to cultivate trust rather than fear, and to listen so deeply that the next right action becomes obvious.

“The lead horse doesn’t run at the front. She leads from behind, creating safety so others can step into confidence.”

Rewilding leadership is about remembering that life already knows how to lead. Our task is to learn again how to be in conversation with it - to listen to the more-than-human world, and to design our cultures, systems, and movements in ways that honour the web of life we’re part of.

This is a conversation for anyone sensing that leadership is less about power and more about participation - an invitation to step back into the flow of life and let nature show the way.

🌿 In this episode we explore:

• What rewilded leadership looks and feels like
• How the wisdom of the herd translates into human relationships
• The connection between permaculture and leadership
• Leading from behind: creating confidence, not control
• Presence as a regenerative force in times of change

Kelly Wendorf is a leadership coach, educator, and founding partner of EQUUS, an innovative organisation offering experiential learning with horses for leaders and teams. Her book Flying Lead Change: 56 Million Years of Wisdom for Leading and Living explores ho

Transcript

EDITED AND ABBREVIATED TRANSCRIPT 

Morag Gamble:
Hello, I’m Morag Gamble, and welcome to Sense-Making in a Changing World, a podcast exploring the kind of thinking and action we need for a thriving one-planet way of life. Each week I’m joined by educators, designers, authors, and change-makers who help us connect more deeply with life and navigate complexity with care.

Today I’m speaking with Kelly Wendorf — author, transformational coach, equestrian, and founder of EQUUS. Kelly’s work invites us to re-imagine leadership not as dominance or authority but as relational, attuned, and rooted in presence. Her book Flying Lead Change: 56 Million Years of Wisdom for Leading and Living draws from Indigenous wisdom, neuroscience, lived experience, and the deep teaching of horses.

In this conversation we explore how to lead from care and connection — what Kelly calls leading from behind — and how to cultivate that in ourselves and our communities.

Before we begin, I’d like to acknowledge that I’m recording on the unceded lands of the Jinibara and Gubbi Gubbi peoples here on the Sunshine Coast, in a hand-built solar-powered studio surrounded by permaculture gardens.

Opening Reflections

Morag:
Kelly, it’s a delight to have you on the show. Where are you calling from today?

Kelly Wendorf:
I’m joining you from the unceded lands of the Tewa people, part of the Pueblo Nation in northern New Mexico.

Morag:
You’ve spent many years in Australia too. What drew you there?

Kelly:
I first came as what I jokingly call a birth refugee. I was pregnant, and home birth had become politicised in the U.S. I wanted a natural birth and a simpler life, so I moved to Australia and eventually spent twenty years there in the Northern Rivers region. I started a magazine called Kindred and became involved in the vibrant community movements around Byron Bay — people experimenting with peaceful, nature-based ways of living. That’s also where I first encountered permaculture.

Morag:
That region has long been a living classroom for permaculture and community resilience.

Kelly:
Exactly. What struck me was how easily mainstream culture dismissed those movements as “hippie,” missing the depth of the dialogue taking place — people exploring agency, cooperation, and care for land and community. It shaped my understanding of leadership as something that grows from relationship, not from power.

Discovering Leadership Through Horses

Morag:
Your book and work focus on leadership. How do you describe the kind of leadership we need right now?

Kelly:
For most of my life I never thought of myself as a leader because the dominant model — control, charisma, power-over — didn’t appeal to me. But then a black horse named Nat changed everything.

I’d trained horses for decades in the conventional way, which still involved subtle coercion. Nat refused to cooperate. I could sell him, he could hurt me, or I could find a third way. That moment forced me to let go of everything I thought I knew.

I began to listen instead of command — to seek partnership rather than obedience. What unfolded was a complete shift from power over to power with and power for.

Working as a coach at the same time, I noticed my clients yearning for exactly that shift. They’d hit walls with their teams or in their own lives — their “black horse moments.” So I began pairing people with horses. The horses became teachers far better than I ever could. They show instantly whether we’re relating through force or through presence.

The Five Principles of the Herd

From observing horse herds — one of Earth’s most successful mammalian systems — I recognised five enduring principles that mirror the design intelligence of living systems:

1. Safety
2. Connection
3. Peace
4. Freedom
5. Joy

The lead horse is not the stallion of Hollywood myth. In wild herds the leader is usually a mare. She leads from behind, maintaining those five principles through care and presence. Her role is to ensure the wellbeing of the whole.

“The lead horse doesn’t run at the front,” Kelly explains.
 “She leads from behind — creating safety so others can step into confidence.”

This form of leadership builds capacity across generations. Each horse develops confidence by being trusted to lead at the edge, creating a resilient, self-organising system.

Leading from Behind

Morag:
That image of the lead mare reminds me of wise elders in community groups who quietly hold space for others to grow.

Kelly:
Exactly. It’s empowering and sustainable. Even what you’re doing here — hosting this conversation — is a form of leading from behind: giving others space to shine while holding a stable container.

Unfortunately, most institutions have modelled leadership on military hierarchies born from fear. Humans didn’t learn leadership from nature; we learned it from war. But nature shows us another way — leadership grounded in care, cooperation, and presence.

Unlearning Power-Over

To shift cultures of control, the first step is to recognise the water we’re swimming in. The power-over paradigm is everywhere — in schools, governments, even our inner dialogue of good/bad, win/lose.

Rewilding leadership begins with awareness: slowing down, questioning assumptions, and asking, “What’s this next action informed by?”

“Nature is our best teacher,” says Kelly.
 “When we walk through a forest and feel peace, that’s not just a pleasant sensation — it’s the essential ground of being from which everything healthy arises.”

Learning from Nature and the Garden

Morag:
That resonates deeply with permaculture. In the garden, leadership comes through listening rather than control — a conversation with soil, plants, and place.

Kelly:
Exactly. Whether with horses or gardens, it’s the same practice: slowing down, listening, and entering relationship instead of domination. It’s how life leads itself.

Nature Misses Us

Kelly shares the teaching of Uncle Bob Randall, an Anangu elder from Uluru who once told her:

“Nature misses us.”

That simple phrase changed her life. Many people carry shame about what humans have done to the planet, but shame keeps us separate. Nature holds no grudge; it simply wants us to return to relationship. Even a potted plant or a dog can re-teach us belonging.

“The living world wants us to thrive,” Kelly says. “It wants us to choose love over fear.”

Recognising New Kinds of Leaders

Rewilding leadership also means recognising the quiet leaders among us — the empathetic, sensitive people who naturally lead through listening and care but rarely see themselves as leaders.

“If a horse herd could choose its leader,” Kelly says, “it would choose those people.”

When we name and nurture these capacities, communities flourish. True leaders are often the ones we barely notice because they make everyone else shine.

Show Ponies and Boundaries

Asked how to deal with “show-pony” personalities, Kelly laughs and tells the story of Artemis, her lead mare, who calmly re-balanced a disruptive new horse not by fighting or appeasing him but by staying unwaveringly tethered to her values.

“She simply stayed in care and presence,” Kelly recalls. “Over time the herd restored harmony.”

The lesson: conserve energy, hold your ground, and let integrity do the teaching.

“Show up. Be joyful. That’s the leadership.”

Cultivating Presence

Presence, Kelly says, isn’t passive. It’s an embodied practice — learning to regulate the nervous system, to sit with discomfort without collapsing, fighting, or fawning.

Her course Assertiveness for Life and Leadership helps people build that capacity from the inside out — to hold tension, to stay grounded, and to lead through awareness rather than reaction.

Kin-Centric Leadership

Morag:
Toward the end of your book you write about kin-centric leadership. What does that mean?

Kelly:
It’s the understanding that everything is related — that the universe itself is our living community. When leaders come from that awareness, every decision serves the wellbeing of the whole.

“Everything touches everything else,” she says.
 “When we care for the whole, we lead in service of life itself.”

Rewilded leadership, then, isn’t a role; it’s a way of being — a design for thriving systems, just like permaculture.

Closing Reflections

Morag:
Thank you, Kelly, for this conversation and for articulating such a grounded, hopeful way of leading.

Kelly:
Thank you, Morag. I invite listeners to visit equusinspired.com
to explore our programs, especially Assertiveness for Life and Leadership. It’s powerful, practical work for anyone ready to shift from power-over to power-with.

Morag:
You’ll find links to Kelly’s book Flying Lead Change and her courses in the show notes, along with resources from the Permaculture Education Institute to help you design, teach, and live regenerative one-planet ways of life.

Thank you for listening. Keep tending the quiet wisdom of the living world — and keep leading with care.