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Animal Behavior
Reading Others: What Dogs Can Teach Us
Dogs know intuitively what humans sometimes need to learn. Here's one example.
Posted September 1, 2024 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Key points
- Reading people and groups is critical for leaders.
- The ability to read small cues from others may seem effortless to dogs but can be challenging for many people.
- Dogs can teach us how to make life a little better.
My dog, Matisse, is a therapy dog—by temperament and by training. We go to hospitals, hospice locations, and recently, we visited firefighters in Idaho, where the groups come for two intense weeks of work and then take a break. One morning, she met with probably 50 of the group members. On our car ride home, she collapsed from exhaustion. Focusing on others is hard work.
For fun, she visits a park and runs off-leash for 10 or 15 minutes. During that time, she’ll sidle up to some people, who smile and reach out to her. I imagine her thinking, “Hi. I’m a therapy dog. Do you need some dog love for a few minutes?” She lets them pet her for a bit and then moves on.
But sometimes, she approaches a person or group, stops, and does not move in. Somehow, she knows: this person isn’t up for a visit.
Watching her over time, I’ve learned a lesson: we need to adjust to whoever we’re interacting with. Matisse does it naturally; humans sometimes need to think about it.
When two parts of my life mesh, I try to notice. Right now, it’s my work as an executive coach and lessons from Matisse.
I am a coach for Boise State University’s Executive MBA program and work with several participants in their two-year program to help them identify and develop areas of leadership that they wish to improve. Often, it’s behaviors like becoming a better listener, finding ways to “lead from the side,” or even how to lead meetings (and not talk all of the time).
Many of those skills demand versatility: being able to read and adjust to… another person, a team, a group, an audience. What works with one person may not with another so leaders must find ways to adapt and mold their behaviors or ways of communicating to fit the situation. That ability to read the other, to understand from small cues—spoken and not—how to interact often seems effortless to Matisse but can be challenging for many people. I wonder if our egos get in the way sometimes, and that’s where I look to Matisse. She is ego-free, from what I can tell. She gives herself and her time to people who want to interact with her, who she can tell might need a calm, gentle presence for a few minutes.
Nothing profound but once again, dogs can teach us how to make life a little better.
