In the fading light of a late Friday afternoon last June, American equestrian champion Eileen Verdieck and Swiss horse trainer Ingela Larsson were putting on a demonstration at the desert ranch of Sheik Ammar bin Humaid al Nuaimi, the 35-year-old crown prince of Ajman, the smallest of the seven principalities that make up the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.

But Verdieck and Larsson weren’t exactly putting on a pony show. They were there to discuss Hoofbeats, the Dubai-based company they founded last year to teach executives in the Middle East how equine-leadership skills can work in the corporate arena. To illustrate Hoofbeats’ core techniques, Larsson performed something Sheik Ammar saw as a minor miracle. She took firm but gentle command of Natsirpal, one of the royal stable’s most temperamental Arabian horses, and walked it to a training pool it had once violently avoided. While watching Larsson lead his horse to water and make it swim, Sheik Ammar said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

At the heart of Verdieck’s and Larsson’s business is something called “natural horsemanship,” a nonverbal form of communication in which a look or gesture can convey meaning and mastery. The technique was developed primarily by Pat Parelli, a horse trainer based in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, who exclusively trains riders and riding instructors. But it was Larsson and Verdieck who saw the parallels between managing horses and managing people. Before creating Hoofbeats, each woman had trained a lot of executives to ride. Now, according to Verdieck, “I’m [teaching] executives to run their businesses and deal with their colleagues by using their ‘horse sense.’ ”

To Westerners, such logic may sound, well, a little goofy. But the U.A.E. is horse country. Dubai, for example, is home to the world’s richest annual Thoroughbred race. Since 1996, the race has been held at the Nad Al Sheba Racecourse, with last year’s purse totaling $6 million. Hoofbeats has also gained some traction thanks to Verdieck’s minor celebrity status as the go-to horse trainer of local rulers. She and Larsson have been able to parlay that reputation into a recently built training complex, which happens to be near Sheik Ammar’s ranch. It’s there they teach leadership skills that work in both a corral and a corporate office. “The horse and its relationship with a human has many similarities with an employee and an employer,” says Larsson. “The corporate leader needs to understand his employees; he needs to know exactly how to communicate, and when and where to apply the right kind of pressure.”

To develop your inner horse sense, Hoofbeats charges anywhere from $100 an hour for a consultation to several thousand dollars for a day session specifically designed for corporate groups. Participants don’t need to know how to ride a horse, and there’s no required reading. The session usually consists of four or five students, the majority of whom have heard of Larsson and Verdieck through the Gulf’s closely knit business community. While the company won’t release its client list, Hoofbeats patrons include senior executives from Dubai Holdings, other members of the Gulf’s largest companies, and royals throughout the Middle East who moonlight as chief executives and chairmen.

But since Dubai is a global trading center, the word about Hoofbeats is spreading. The company recently attracted the attention of Mahomedzicar Osman, chief executive of Osman Yacob, an international food importer-exporter based in Pemba, Mozambique. On a business trip to Dubai, he made an appointment with Hoofbeats and was taught how to exude authority and control without spooking a horse.

Throughout the lesson, Larsson and Verdieck point out how subtle communication skills between horses and handlers can apply to executives and teams. “A leader’s primary role is to instill trust,” says Verdieck. “Once you get the horse to trust you, he gets into a comfort zone and will do your bidding. It’s that way in the business world too.” Working on the assumption that a horse is happiest simply standing still, Larsson teaches Osman how to get his assigned animal to perform unnatural tasks, such as walking backward and stepping side to side.

Neither Larsson nor Verdieck hammers home the business component of their lessons. Like their horse handling, their teaching style is more subtle. Since most of Hoofbeats’ students are already accomplished business leaders looking for a new tool to add to their already well-equipped management kits, Larsson and Verdieck simply draw parallels and let them come to their own conclusions. For Osman, the big takeaway was learning nonverbal-communication skills he thinks will serve him well as he continues to travel internationally and forges business relationships with partners who literally and figuratively speak different languages. “One is never too old to learn how to deal better with people,” says Osman. “And you can learn that by learning to deal with horses. I’m encouraging my executives to take such courses.”

Royals like Sheik Ammar are doing the same. To compete in a world of galloping globalization, local leaders like Ammar are encouraging the country’s business leaders to find a competitive edge wherever they can. In Dubai, it seems, horsing around can lead to serious business.