A few weeks ago I was at my friend’s house in the deep countryside. It was a day full of fun which my family enjoyed thoroughly, but there was one particular experience I wanted to share, because it gave me some invaluable insights on the leadership and management styles and philosophy from a seemingly menial task of herding the sheep.
Towards the evening the hostess asked me if I could help her to herd the sheep to the area away from the newly planted kitchen garden. They have some 15 sheep, and their dog had turned out to be useless for this kind of work. They just moved from the suburbs a few months ago and they learn the ropes of living on a farm as they go. So the dog they bought turned out to be a guard dog, not from the shepherd breeds. Tell me about learning from experience 
When she asked me to help, I assumed this was just a standard operating procedure, and gladly agreed, as I love all these authentic experiences that are not commonly encountered by a regular suburbanite.
This herding experience turned out to be far from the ordinary. What we were actually trying to do was to get the flock from one cross-fenced area to another on their property. While the hostess was trying to entice the sheep to follow her through the gates, I was actually acting as the shepherd dog, trying to flock them together and direct them to the desired gates. I had to run, try to circle them, intercept their movements, to play on their instinct to flock together and so on. It was some great twisted combination of physical exercise and the game of “Strategy” 
After quite some effort and about half an hour we managed to get them from one open area to a somewhat smaller fenced section, but we had to get them through two more gates to the desired destination. Then the dog came from the house and scattered away all the sheep. Bummer! At that point it was getting dark and we had to leave business of herding unfinished. Here is a perfect video amazingly authentic to my personal experience. Watch the video, it’s really funny.
But this exercise made me think about human analogy of management and leadership. This style of management -herding the flock- is actually not as uncommon as it might seem in our “enlightened” era and all the advances in management theory. Quite many managers in business and leaders in public arena are still treating their subordinates and constituents as a flock of sheep which needs to be herded and manipulated into going through the “desired” gates. In the clip it is referred to the dog’s tactics of “intimidating them [sheep] into going in the right direction”. Even if it is done in more subtle inconspicuous or sophisticated ways, this still is the underlying philosophy of those “shepherd dog managers”.
What I found from my “shepherd dog” experience is that this style of managing is very work intensive, exhausting, and not that effective at all. The sheep do not know why they need to go to the desired gate, whether it is to protect them from predators, bring them to “greener” pastures, or get them vaccinated against desease. (Admittedly, once in a while they are also herded to the gate to be taken to the slaughter house 
) But since the sheep do not have high level reasoning anyways, shepherding them could be the only means to get them to the desired destination. Especially if you have a trained real shepherd dog, not a volunteering human amateur Otherwise, the proverbial stubborn sheep will just display their proverbial trait to their best.
Then, a few days later after this countryside visit, I stumbled upon this video of Simon Sinek on How Great Leaders Inspire Action on TED.com And it was resonating exactly with my thoughts on the leadership from the shepherding experience. People – employees, subordinates, voters, students, children… - are not sheep. If y0u want them to do something you need to inspire them by showing them “WHY”, not just “WHAT” needs to be done. Of course the “WHY” should be somewhat worthy and compelling in the eyes of those who you lead. I think I will incorporate this shepherd experience and the video in my future MBA course on Leadership. Please, enjoy the video, it is quite inspirational.
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