You Can Lead A Horse To Water And YOU CAN Make Him Drink!
Jessica Glazer
Recruitment Director | Top Canadian Recruiter | Placing $100k-$500k+ Roles Across Canada | Fractional Talent Acquisition Specialist I Montreal-Based | Truth Teller | Top 1% on LinkedIn at MindHR Inc Placement Agency
There comes a time in a conversation where we say "We can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink"
Now I am all about screwing up expressions. Like I don't understand why we tell young girls "It's okay if a boy hits you or teases, it means he likes you". Now I know I grew up with this expression and I survived but aren't we telling the subconscious it's okay if guys hit us??? So I don't understand why we can't lead a horse to water and make him drink!!
If you walk a horse around enough, he will be thirsty. If you dehydrate them, they will be thirsty, they will drink. If he doesn't like the bucket of water and you change it, he will drink. If he doesn't like water but likes powder electrolytes he will drink. If he doesn't like cold water and your water is cold but you change it, he will drink. If he is hungry and you add salt to the food or soak his hay in water, he will drink.
So the bottom line is, you can bring a horse to water and you can make them drink, you just have to alter the circumstances around the horse and that is the same for your employees and your customers they might actually be thirsty and might really want to drink but they just need you to alter the situation so they actually drink the water you are offering.
Gest?o de Supply Chain | Gerente de Projetos | Gerente de Contratos
9 年Likewise, you can put your child in bed. You can't make him sleep. Or can you?
Retired.
9 年Maybe it's an age thing but I grew up with the adage/expression that "Boys cannot hit girls. And if they hit you, you can't hit them back." So hitting girls, whether you liked them or not, was never appropriate. For my own purposes I have changed the old horse adage to, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think." Only sometimes I substitute the word "horse". Oddly enough you get more reaction when you change "him" to "her".
Actually, the saying doesn't come from the meaning to MAKE the horse drink... The saying goes back to when unprocessed water was found, horses would only drink SAFE water, whereas a human would drink regardless and perhaps suffer the consequences of drinking impure or bacterial infested water. No horse, regardless of the level of dehydration would drink bad water, but thirsty humans did and continue to do so. So the real meaning is, drink only water a horse would drink.