Animal Welfare Professionals

HI! I'm Ann. Thanks for the add! I've been a long time shelter  volunteer and now board member. How do you all get volunteers, staff, and the BOD on on the same page to having an open mind about trying new things, ie... additional training for volunteers and staff, ect...even if it may not work out. We are all passionate about rescue, and many of us have had years of experience in it and seen a lot of changes. I absolutely love trying new ideas. There are those who are passionate but have a hard time with viewing new suggestions with an open mind. Basically, how do you get the discussion started, besides having documentation and statistics? Thanks for your input!

Hi Ann.  Since you've not had a response yet, I'll jump in even though my response will not be pleasing. My experience is that it is very difficult to convince others to open their minds to new things if they do not already believe in them.  Confirmation bias is common and very tough to break through, and you may lose people in trying.  Better is to go out and 'interview' people--not in the traditional sense, but in the way that we 'interview' an animal when we are doing capturing/free shaping--to identify those who already share your worldview, personality type, and way of operating, then bring those people on board.  You'll have much better luck that way, and much less stress and struggle.  

Thank you for your response and you are so right about it being difficult to change minds. It's very frustrating! Our BOD is definitely full of mixed opinions and strong personalities. UGH!

I made the same step from being a shelter volunteer to a member of our shelter's friends group several years ago, and I learned a lot in my time with the group. I think opening minds and getting everyone on the same page is a pretty common challenge. One thing that may help when proposing a new program or process is asking to do a pilot of it first. Map the whole program out (goals, resources needed, estimated time you'll spend, processes) so everyone knows exactly what you are proposing. Since they're short-term and not set in stone, pilots are much easier to commit to. One other thing I used to do was to do majority of the work on the pilot myself, especially if it was something that the group was resistant to because of time. Once the results started coming in and the pilot was successful we looked for ways to get more help. 

Thank you for your response and you are so right about it being difficult to change minds. It's very frustrating! Our BOD is definitely full of mixed opinions and strong personalities. UGH!

Our organization uses principles for inspiring change through change management. The most important piece is to create a guiding coalition or team of change champions that can help support the changes you want to make. From there you clarify your urgency, share your vision, share stats/facts and then meet with key stakeholders gain support. There will always be naysayers and when it comes to that, we use crucial conversation skills to get everyone on the same page. It's also about setting clear and transparent expectations of the staff and volunteers to trust and take leaps of faith with the organization as a whole. It's never 1 person driving change.

Thank you for your response and you are so right about it being difficult to change minds. It's very frustrating! Our BOD is definitely full of mixed opinions and strong personalities. UGH!