Interview! Richard Angelo, Legislative Attorney for Best Friends Animal Society
June 16, 2018
Interview! Joyce Briggs, President of the Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs
June 23, 2018
When you are speaking with someone, asking them to do something or to make a change in how they are doing something, do you ever feel like you are talking to a brick wall? Do you wonder why you’re even wasting your time? Well, I just may have a new tool for you … motivational interviewing.
As many of your know, I listen to many podcasts and many of them are in the area of health and wellness. I listened to a very interesting one recently about the concept of motivational interviewing that I thought might be of interest to all of us in the CCP community.
To listen to Chris and his interview with Ken Kraybill of the Center for Social Innovation, please check out this link: chriskresser.com/podcasts
Many of us are thinking about creating programs that will engage us in the community more so that we can share the resources we have available. On a daily basis, we work with the public to help them be able to do more for the cats in their community. I often wonder whether we sometimes continue to speak at people versus taking the time to find ways to better engage with them. In other words, if all we’re doing is handing people a listing of resources, or a paper that says do X and Y, will their behavior really ever change in a meaningful, lifelong way?
In the podcast I mentioned, Chris and Ken do two sample interviews. One is a very typical health interview like you might have with your doctor, and another interview is much more like a counseling session where they are really trying to dive deep into finding out the reasons why someone might have perceived obstacles to success. A lot of this process is about having the individual create his or her own solutions to successful behavior, which will help with buy-in.
As I was listening, I couldn’t help but wonder how much more empowered our community members might feel if they were engaged in their actions and solutions? I am thinking that this could be part of the 2.0 version of our Pets for Life-type programs.
If you would like to do some further research on Motivational Interviewing, feel free to check out this site: motivationalinterviewing.org/about_mint
Let me know what you think. Are people frustrating you? What are your challenges when working with people?
