Welcome to the Animal Training Academy podcast show. I'm your host, Ryan Carledge, and I'm passionate about helping you master your animal training skills using the most positive and least intrusive approaches. Here at ATA, we understand that navigating the vast challenges you encounter in training requires a comprehensive base of knowledge and experience. It's common to face obstacles and rough patches on your journey that can leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
Therefore, since 2015, we've been on a mission to empower animal training geeks worldwide. We've aided thousands in developing their skills, expanding their knowledge, boosting their confidence, and maximizing their positive impact on all the animal and human learners they work with. We are excited to do the same for you. Simply visit www.atamember.com, join our vibrant community, and geek out with us.
And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this free podcast episode as we explore new ways to help you supercharge your training skills, grow your knowledge, and build your confidence so that you can craft a life that positively impacts every learner you encounter. We will start today's episode where I'm excited to welcome back to the podcast, the fantastic Dr. Christy Alligood.
Dr. Alligood is an associate professor at the University of Kansas and a doctoral level board certified behavior analyst with 20 years of experience in this field. She began her career with human operant research and has worked extensively in various settings to support children with challenging behaviors.
For over 16 years now, Dr. Alligood has also applied her expertise to enhance animal welfare through cooperative training, environmental enrichment, and behavior change strategies, all contributing to wildlife conservation efforts at Disney's Animal Kingdom. She has received notable awards for her work, including the Bean Award for Significant Achievement in Captive Breeding. And in addition to her academic role, Dr. Alligood serves as a consultant on Dr. Susan Friedman's behavior works team.
She teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses and frequently presents at conferences on behavior analysis and animal training practices. So without further ado, it's my very great pleasure to welcome Christy back to the show today. Christy, thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out with us again on the show. Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited about this.
I feel like this is an episode we've needed to make since we started this show, because it's going to talk about a topic that addresses a significant hurdle for many of you, our wonderful podcast listeners. And that is challenges that can arise when working in a team environment within an organization and striving to enhance the use of best practice tools and knowledge around animal behavior and training.
And recently, when I spoke with Susan about this topic, Christy, she suggested that it would be great to have you on the show to discuss this with me. So again, thank you for agreeing to this. And for you, the listener, this might be something you're currently facing or perhaps it's something you've encountered in the past. It's such a common challenge, especially when there is some kind of resistance to change within the organization.
And resistance to change may stem from various factors, could be related to organizational culture, the availability of resources such as time, money, skills, or specific personalities and individuals, including their mindsets, perspectives, and attitudes. Additionally, if management doesn't seem on board with facilitating change, this can make things extremely challenging, as that support may be and often is necessary to implement significant improvements.
There's a whole range of reasons why this might be challenging for you, and often it's likely more than one reason. And these challenges can arise anywhere. In zoos, animal shelters, training businesses, horse facilities, veterinary clinics, basically anywhere animals are cared for can be incredibly stressful, frustrating, emotionally draining, and leave one feeling helpless.
And in many situations, it can even result in decisions to leave roles, to leave organizations, because it all just becomes too much. Christy, before we go on, is there anything you'd like to add about this challenge? Do you think I've summed the problem up adequately? I think you summed it up really well.
I was just thinking, as you were mentioning all those different examples of settings in which animals are cared for, that the other thing they all have in common is that people work in all of them, and that's where some of these challenges come from. And we can talk more about that, but I think that's really some of the crux of what we'll talk about today.
So it's all behavior change, but potentially in some situations maybe a reframe, not sure if that's the right word to say, a new perspective in terms of what species we're trying to change behavior in could be valuable, and I'm excited to talk about that today. So I've prepared some questions in advance. We asked our members what they would like to hear about on this topic, and I've come up with some additional questions as well based on my own experience.
Christy, I've tried to organize them in a logical fashion, but we might jump around between a few topics and ideas, and of course my questions may change based on your answers. But with all that said, let's get started, and I want to start with culture, organizational culture. Could you offer, when I say that, could you offer your perspective in your words what that means? How important is it in implementing change, and how can it support or in the efforts to implement new practice?
Yeah, I think that's a great place to start, and we're really in sync on this because as I was looking at the question about culture, I was thinking, well, we have to start by defining what is culture. So really, I think from a behavior analytic perspective, and by that I mean we have this assumption that behavior is a natural science, and it's governed by natural laws, and we can learn about those laws through scientific methods.
So from that perspective, we can talk about culture as the behavior of a group of people who have some relationship to each other. So it could be an organization, it could be a neighborhood, some group of people, and typically when we're talking about culture, we're talking about the behaviors of a group of people over time.
So there are things that become, that are repeated over time in that group, and I think that can be a useful way to think about it in organizations, just to take a step back and think about when you, sometimes when we say the word culture, it feels really big and complex, and it can be, but we can also, if we think about it in that way, as it's a collection of behaviors that this group of people engage in, then we can start to look at those behaviors a little bit more specifically
and more individually, and then it, as we break it up, it maybe becomes a little bit more approachable in terms of the changes that we might want to make. And then I think the other piece of your question was the importance of culture to an organization and to making the changes that we want to see sometimes in an organization, is that right? Yeah, so how important is what you've described in implementing change and then how it supports or hinders efforts.
But before we move on, can I just pick your brain a little bit about that definition you've offered and build on it a little bit? I think that might be helpful for our listeners. We talked about the behavior of a group of people who have some relationship with each other over time, and it's interesting to think about behavior in a group context, because we're so used to thinking about it at the individual level, which understandably, and tell me if I'm wrong, we're still doing in this space.
But with that definition, the behavior of a group of people who have some relationship with each other over time, is there some reinforcers that become commonly accepted? How do we think about this behavior of a group versus behavior of an individual? Yeah, that's such a great question, because when we talk about culture that way, and you talk about the behavior of a group, we're not moving away from our idea that behavior is a study of one, right? Because that group is made up of individuals.
So it really, at the end of the day, it is always individuals behaving. It's just that there is a, even if it's just one animal care team, right? One animal care team can have a culture. And by that, we mean the things that they typically do on that team, you know, and do over time. But it's all individuals that are doing those things. It's not really that like the group doesn't behave, the individuals in the group behave in similar ways.
And on the topic of reinforcers, I think this is a really interesting thing to get into for this whole topic. And one of the things that is really, well, really the main thing that's really different when we start talking about human behavior versus, you know, what we're typically talking about in training and thinking about reinforcers for animals is that when we move into talking about humans, we start talking about verbal behavior and verbal communication.
And that opens up a whole other world of consequences that can impact behavior that you don't really have in the same way when you talk about animals. And so not that animals can't also have social consequences that are important to them. But when you bring the verbal element into it, that brings a lot of additional pieces. And so many times that verbal social element is a really important set of consequences to consider when we're talking about culture. I'm assuming reinforcers and punishes.
Yes. That's why I say consequences. Definitely both of those things are in play and negative reinforcers and negative punishes. Yeah. All the things. And how do we think about that? My brain is coming up with the words social reinforcers. Can you articulate this better for me? What are these reinforcers and punishes? Yeah, sure.
So some examples that we might think about would be, you know, a lot of us positive social attention from people that are in our environment is a big reinforcer to one extent or another. And then also many of us to one degree or another would also like to avoid or escape confrontational type interactions with the people around us. And so I would characterize that as a negative reinforcer, a social negative reinforcer.
So those are, I think those are two big examples, particularly in organizational environments where, you know, those positive attention type interactions, both with our coworkers and with our leaders and with people from other organizations can be a really powerful, positive reinforcer. And then avoiding those, those more confrontational or sort of negative interactions can be or escaping them can be a really, it can also be a very positive, I'm sorry, a very powerful negative reinforcer.
Yes. I'm thinking about an example of, of sitting in a team meeting and I won't obviously say where or who was there. So it's a real life situation, but I'm not going to name anything or anyone. And there was a behavioral challenge that this team was talking about. There was a, I would label it as limited amount of behavioral or applied behavioral analysis knowledge in the group.
And there was suggestions and labels being thrown around and then the comment, well, let's not change anything because we've always done it this way. And so why change it? And as an individual sitting there, if I speak up, did I speak up a little bit against what I was sensing was a little bit of group consensus. And, but I'm sitting there with this knowledge that is making me really perceive things differently. And it's really challenging.
And so I'm trying to avoid that confrontation, maintain relationships. That's a really challenging space to be in, isn't it? It is. And it, there's all kinds of, you know, when we're training animals and we think about their reinforcement history, their learning history. So what they bring to the session and how that impacts, you know, their behavior during the session, we could think about that team meeting the same way.
What's the learning history of everybody that, you know, that's in that room that they've brought into that conversation. And the learning history of that group might be that when you speak up against sort of the group consensus, that there are social punishers involved in that interaction.
And that learning history might prompt you to, you know, have that sort of conflict that you're talking about, where you think, well, I, I'm not going to speak up because I don't want to risk that confrontation. And there's that avoidance piece we were talking about.
Well, I think it's important because I want to get to the second part of my question, obviously, but I think it's important if you're a listener and listening to this and you're thinking that I had a situation that shares similarities in some way to what Ryan's talking about, or I can completely relate to what Christy's saying and the challenges. Firstly, I just want to point out a couple of things, Christy. You, the listener, are not alone.
This is something that occurs in animal training organizations, but just organizations in general. And it's not easy to think about all of those individual learners in that space, those human learners and what their learning history is and what their reinforcers and punishers are and what your relationships and the motivating operations are for everyone. There's a lot to process.
And so take a breath and be easy on yourself because you're doing a great job if you're here listening to this podcast. I'm really glad you said that. And I think too, I love that you said go easy on yourself because the fact that we're saying, you know, that this is a, that could be avoidance response to avoid the confrontation doesn't mean that, I mean, we're not necessarily being critical of that response, right?
It's just a way of sort of describing what that, the behavior principles behind that response and some ways to think about that. But it doesn't mean that you have to take it upon yourself to be the person that runs toward confrontation in every meeting. No, definitely, definitely not. And that can have a big toll on you. So you gotta look after yourself and juggle that. And again, it's not easy.
And by talking about these things in this episode, and that's easier to do than to be in place and say, so we're just acknowledging that. Now, I think considering what you've shared so far and what we've talked about, for the listener, there's probably some obvious things about how important this is and how it can support or hinder efforts. But in your words, can you answer that part now?
How important is this in implementing change and how can it support or hinder efforts to implement new practices? Yeah, I think you're right. The listeners probably can see where I'll go with this. But I do think that culture is hugely important to this set of questions. And so something for leaders and supervisors, and also those who are not in that position, but just want to sort of think carefully about this.
Something to consider is that there are at least a couple of different ways to go about trying to impact change in an organization and improve practices, which is I think what we're all trying to do with the changes that we're trying to put in place. So one way is for leaders in the organization, supervisors to sort of decide what is best for the organization, for everyone in it, and then just communicate what that is and the expectation that it needs to be done.
And sometimes that can be successful. And that's particularly true when it's something, when it's a change that's smaller or simpler to implement, and it's easy for everyone to understand the rationale for it. But when we're trying to build strategies, like putting a new system in place or making a major change to training practices, it can be really beneficial to involve staff at several different levels of that process.
And I think you have listeners that would be at various levels of that process. And we all know what it feels like to want to be involved no matter what level we're at in terms of having input in how changes are made and how they're implemented.
And gathering that input usually, and using it in the planning, can be, can really be the difference between a change that sort of dies on the vine and it doesn't get fully implemented or sustained in the long-term, and a change that grows and blooms and is maintained over time. So those are the kinds of changes that we want to make to organizations, right?
If we think we've got a new practice that's really going to be beneficial to the organizations and the animals in our care, we want that change to be sustained over time. And so that process of bringing in input from different levels of the organization involves thinking about that culture piece.
It involves thinking about the behavior of different individuals and different sort of groups of individuals in the organization and what kinds of consequences and what kinds of antecedents, which we can talk about too, are important to all of those groups of people. So yes, big considerations there. You say there are a couple of different ways to implement change and improve practices.
And thinking about what that looks like, we are talking about the behavior change of individual humans across all of those teams and in all of the different roles of the organization. And I juggle in my mind about how to best articulate that because it can, I think, come across as overwhelming when you think, okay, I've got to train an animal. This is how I do it. I know how it works. And I know how many variables can come up and where I've got stuck in the past.
And now I've got to implement that with human learners across the whole organization. And that's a lot of pressure to put on yourself. So again, my articulation of this is passion thinking on the spot, not well thought out. I had this question to ask later, but it seems relevant to ask now, Chrissy.
If you're someone in an organization and you listen to this podcast, you listen to the Animal Training Academy podcast show, you absorb information, you see areas for practice, you're conscious of the culture there and where the hurdles and opportunities are. But considering you're going to make behavior change with so many different individuals, what steps can the listeners take to stay focused on celebrating progress? Because behavior change takes time. We know that.
Without becoming overwhelmed by the bigger picture, because if we just let our mind focus on that end goal, without all of the approximations that are required from where you currently are to that space to get there, it can quickly become quite overwhelming. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think there are a couple of different pieces that I heard in there, but the piece about how to stay focused, I think what my mind goes to is tracking.
Just like if we were thinking about in animal training, if we want to be able to celebrate those successive approximations, then we have to track our progress and our animals' progress. The same thing applies here that we want to have really clear goals. But as you said, if you're really just focused on that end goal, sometimes it's hard to sustain that momentum to get there.
It's good to have some intermediate goals, some successive approximations to be able to celebrate when you hit those targets and be also know when to pivot if a strategy is not quite having the effect that we wanted. It's stalling and we need to pivot to something else. Having those approximations in place can help us to do both of those things. I'm just trying to think of an example and seeing if we can put this into a real-life situation. I'll throw one at you, Chrissy.
I apologize for putting you on the spot and apologize for my on-the-spot thinking. Feel free to interject at any time where you feel like there's possible value in reframing anything that I offer. Let's say we're in a zoo environment. We've got an educational demonstration for visitors that requires trained animals. You're in a team situation. One of the animal's behaviors has started to break down and you come up with a plan to remedy that.
There is mixed levels of knowledge in the team with regards to how behavior works. Some team members aren't implementing the strategy as you think you have talked about. You're feeling a little bit overwhelmed by what you perceive as the culture and your communication skills, relationships. You want to tackle this because this is something that you can see that's recurring. What kind of goals might the listener of the show set for themselves in a situation like this? Yeah, what a great question.
I think some of that comes down to thinking about... Part of the challenge is that there are, as you said, those differing levels of understanding of behavior principles and you're trying to work from that foundation. It can come down to, I know I need to have a conversation with this other person. Maybe it's a leader or maybe it's a teammate. What is my goal for this conversation? That can be a first question. Is my goal to convince this other person that my plan for this is the right plan?
Is my goal to find some kind of common ground for this person so that we can start to build a relationship? Those would be long-term versus short-term examples. Maybe your ultimate goal is to affect some change through the type of plan that you think would be effective.
If you don't have a good foundational relationship with the person to begin with, then an intermediate goal might be, my goal for this conversation is just for us to find some common ground so that we can move forward from that perspective. Maybe the next conversation is, let's find a small action that we can agree on that comes out of that common ground. You can make those approximations from there.
That way, again, it helps to be able to celebrate after those conversations, celebrate those small successes when they occur and also when they don't occur to think, oh, that was something I need to think more about and think about what I want to do differently next time to try to get to that next approximation.
I feel hesitancy in saying what I'm going to say next because I just feel like I'm a broken record because I feel like podcast episodes just always come back to crucial conversations and whether it's that book or a similar piece of content that's from different authors or different content creators that likely are saying very similar things, but it comes back to building that skill in yourself and building some new behaviors in yourself.
Also, consistently putting on your behavior glasses or your behavior hat. If you have the goal of, okay, I don't have the best relationship with, let's say, one of these individuals in this situation that I just put forward and my goal, therefore, is to put some deposits in my trust account, we'll operationalize what that looks like for your individual situation and then you go forward into the conversation and achieve your goal.
It's challenging, isn't it, because the stuff that's happening with the non-human learner and the educational display isn't necessarily going to change. Is it a hurdle for some individuals to get over to be able to shift focus momentarily onto the human learners? I think so. It's understandable because we all got into this because we care about the animal's quality of life and we want to make the best improvements that we know how to make.
We have those ideas and it seems like, well, we could just change this thing and it would make things better. It's hard not to really push for those things and to fall back on those strategies that we already know, which are explaining and delivering information and saying, well, this is why we should do this. It's completely understandable.
We also know from lots of behavior evidence that delivering information in that way is not always successful, is often not successful at creating behavior change and creating action.
One thing to think about when that is hard, because it is often hard, is that I think we set up a false choice for ourselves sometimes when we think about, well, I can either push for this change right now and get this animal's quality of life improved or get this presentation improved or whatever the goal is, or I can take a step back and think about what would I need to do in order to really build this change in a sustainable way over time.
Maybe that involves building a relationship and it might take longer. The reason I say it's a false choice is because when we fall back on that known historical behavior of pushing for that change, it may make things worse actually, and it may not create the quality of life improvement that we want for the animal. It may not be a choice between immediate change and long-term change. It may be a choice between long-term change and either no change or partial change or something similar.
Thank you for sharing all of this. This is super helpful. Just to pivot just a little bit, staying on the topic of culture and thinking about everything we've discussed so far and some of the other valuable considerations, in my personal opinion, when thinking about the kind of culture we want to create and the words growth mindset come to mind, the words learning, the words safety. So safe to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.
How do we work towards a growth mindset within an organization? Someone asked this in our membership, Christy, which is why I'm asking this now and struggling to articulate it in the way that I know that I want to articulate it. For example, which was offered in our Facebook group, members-only Facebook group, a team may initially embrace positive reinforcement training practices.
So you might get this excitement in the team, this acknowledgement that other zoos, other organizations, other vet clinics are doing fear-free, other zoos are implementing training programs. We're going to do that too. But then to maintain that, you need all of those elements of culture I just mentioned and the willingness to keep evolving and improving.
Any input you have for those listening in terms of listening to this podcast, thinking about culture, incorporating that in their thoughts so far about any changes that they, the listener wants to make? Yes. And I think there's kind of two parts of this topic. So I want to, and one of them you already mentioned, and I want to come back to, because there's, I think there's a lot on that, which is having your behavior analyst hat on and thinking about perspectives. So we can come back to that one.
But I think from the standpoint of thinking about those kinds of cultural goals that you were just mentioning, like having a growth mindset as part of the culture and having the culture feel safe to make mistakes and having that collaborative environment. A lot of that comes down to what we sort of started with, which was when we talk about culture, what is our definition of that? And in behavior analysis, we talk about operational definitions, right?
So how do we, when we have a label like this, what are we labeling? What is the behavior that we're looking for specifically? And with these kinds of things, with cultural things, there can be a couple of levels of this, right? When we talk about, well, we want to have a growth mindset. A question that we can ask is what would it look like if we had a growth mindset? What are the kinds of things that our team would be doing?
What are the kinds of practices that we would have in place that we would follow? And how would we interact with each other if we had a growth mindset? And that you can sort of start the process that way, and that can sort of roll into some strategies and some actions that you can take to start to move towards some of those things.
So you can kind of do it at this, in an organization, a lot of times we would work through an infrastructure at multiple levels, we would talk about our values, and then the vision for the organization, and then the mission, and then the strategies, and then the actions. And I think growth mindset probably would fall under values as for an organization, and then you can sort of move through those levels. I sort of went straight from values to strategies there, right?
Like what would it look like if we had this? And then the next question would be, what sort of actions can we take as a team in order for these behaviors that we're identifying to occur regularly and sustainably on our team? So that's one part of it is thinking, really breaking it down. We also talk about it in behavior analysis as a task analysis.
So when we have a behavior or a set of behaviors that we want to teach, or that we want to ensure that that behavior continues, we break it down into its component parts and think about what does this really look like, and what order does it need to happen in? And then we make sure that we are tracking whether those things are happening. So that's kind of a perspective on that piece.
And then I know that also for many of your listeners, they want to think about, I'm assuming, they want to think about culture and how to strategize around some of these changes. And also they're asking questions about, well, if I'm not personally in the position to affect these changes for the organization, I'm not in a supervisor role, I'm not in a leadership role, then what do I do?
How do I, if I have ideas for changes that I think would be really helpful for the organization, how do I, as someone two steps down from a leadership position, how do I go about that? So again, I think it's important to, I'm just going to say this again, it's so important to think about this idea that just explaining the change that we want to make and why we want to make it is often not going to be effective.
And the reason for that is, and you can think about maybe a time when listeners, you can think about a time when someone has tried to explain why you should do something differently and it was not effective and why was it not effective? And it's likely because of the contingencies that are in place on your behavior, right? There are other reasons why you do things the way that you already do them.
And someone explaining to you why you should do it differently is often not going to be enough to override those reinforcers and punishers that are already in place that produced your behavior. Now, the same is true of our leaders in organizations. So often we'll go to them and we'll say, I really think that we should implement this change and I think it would be beneficial for the animals, I think it'd be beneficial for our team and here's why.
And it may not even be that the leader necessarily disagrees with the idea, it may just be that there are other contingencies in place that are stopping that idea from, or stopping that leader from taking action to implement your desired change. And so the thing I want to talk about in terms of putting your ABA hat on is thinking about, is doing a little bit of perspective taking, right? So thinking about things from that leader's perspective.
And often we forget to do this because we get so excited about the behavior analysis portion of caring for animals and learning about that and implementing it to improve their lives that we forget that all the people around us have those same kinds of behavior principles impacting their behavior. And so with someone in a leadership position, some things to think about for perspective taking would be what kinds of pressures are being placed on that individual in terms of job expectations?
Are there things that make their job harder and what are those things? What kinds of, we could try to identify individual's reinforcers just by observing their behavior, right? So is this a person who likes to avoid conflict? Is this a person that likes a lot of social attention or not? Those kinds of things and trying to, and again, some of that is about relationship building and learning about other people and what's going on in their lives.
So yeah, and then another thing is the degree or like extent of information that a leader needs to have in order to make a change. So sometimes they need a lot of information and we can talk about what form that might take. And sometimes they just need a little bit. So it's, again, it's learning that over time.
And then the other piece that we often forget about is sometimes we think about those things from the consequence side, like what are this person's reinforcers and punishers, but we forget about the antecedent side of the ABC sequence, right?
So are there things, if I'm requesting a certain action towards change, like for example, if I want to, if I want approval for funding for some learning opportunity for individuals on my team to be able to learn something about behavior principles, what can I do to make that requested change easier? What can I do to make it easier for this leader to say yes?
And that's going to vary depending on their challenges and the expectations on them and all of those circumstances, but that's why it's important to do that perspective taking and do that relationship building and try to kind of gather some of that information so that you can, again, bring it into your crucial conversations and try to use that to build towards the changes that you're looking to make. Yeah, I love that. It reminds me of something I learned at Wellington Zoo when I worked there.
They had a form you could fill out when you wanted to request to do a project. And one of the questions on that form was, what are the risks associated with this project? And then the next question was, how would you mitigate these risks? And then there was a question, something along the lines of how would you report that?
And I just found it so helpful in getting projects approved after I learned that, because you take that to a manager and firstly, they're like, well, I've literally had a manager say to me, no one's ever done that before. Like pre-thought of all of the risks and then came up with solutions to those risks and then told me how they were going to report back to me. And it just got approvals for me. That was part of a package of things that got approval. So I really love that.
And then I'm just sharing some stories because I think they're cool. Yeah, that's great. What would it look like if we had a growth mindset? When I work with teams and we're in a team environment and we're doing portal or maybe we're doing some training, we do a lot of training with horses and then dogs with zoo teams and chickens to build some skill with some, what I would label as easier animals and some of the animals that they're going to be tasked with within their collections.
And in the team environment, when we have a trainer bravely doing some training in front of their peers, we go around in a circle and everyone points out something that that individual did that they liked and something that the animal did that they liked. And then they ask a question as well of that person. They get curious. And what I love about that is just watching it happen.
And but to the feedback from that is that's one of the favorite parts of the day is learning these new skills about how to give feedback. And I appreciate that if that's one of the favorite parts and there's reinforcers involved for these skills in this context. So that's something that came to mind when you asked a great question. What would it look like if we had a growth mindset?
Also, listeners of this show, you should be really grateful for Christy because I'm just going off on tangents and I sent Christy a list of questions. And when I'm asking her my tangent questions, she's bringing it straight back to the list of questions that we had agreed to talk about. So express gratitude for Christy for being an awesome guest and on to it in that way.
Now, Christy, another question that we got from our members thinking about when you're in an organization, whether it's a training business, a vet clinic. I know we had some questions from people working in a horse context. So within organizations where they're training horses or zoos and you're not in a leadership position and you have this information and it's maybe contrary. You want to do things slightly differently to the way things are being done.
And I've had this question from keepers as well when they say, you know, I want to just do some training and I hope that people will see what I'm doing and they'll get curious and we can build growth that way. Just throw that at you, Christy. What does it make you think? What are some effective ways for someone to model better practices when they're not in a leadership position and input is not formally requested from them or change is not formally requested? Yeah, that's a good question.
So I think, I mean, you kind of hit it on the head there already with the modeling, right? So if that's where you can start, you know, you sort of have to think about what can I control in this situation. And if your own behavior is what you can control, then you can model those best practices.
And then if input is not formally being requested or there's no sort of system in place to give input or to make suggestions, then it likely will be down to some of that relationship building that we talked about in order to be able to start to find some common ground and agree on some actions. And to be clear when, you know, we're talking about sort of doing that cultural change planning, like thinking about how do we develop a growth mindset? How do we make this a safe place to make mistakes?
And then thinking about what would that look like and all of that, you know, individuals can do some of that, right? Can think about, well, what would a growth mindset look like? And it might look like some of the things that you just mentioned, Ryan, which is, and that's a great way to think about that is, you know, sort of talking, you know, talking to other people who are in these positions about, well, I'd really like to help my team develop a growth mindset.
What are some actions that you've either taken or that some practices that you've experienced that have been successful in that? So I really love the one that you talked about with basically, you know, celebrating successes and getting curious. So if we say those are two things that would be really important to a growth mindset, this is a part, this is a daily practice that promotes that, that's been successful.
That's something that, you know, as an individual, you could just pick that one action and see if you can kind of plant that seed with, you know, the individuals that you do have relationships with and try to, you know, get that ball rolling. And it could even be that you just start with one other person that you celebrate those successes with each other and get curious with each other. Maybe it doesn't even start with the whole team or the whole organization.
It just starts with one other person. And then you kind of build it from there. And that's, it really is just about continuing to think about what you can control at that moment and what you have influence over and trying to build it from there. Just take that next step that you can. I'm torn because I've got so many things I want to talk about, but appreciate we've been going for nearly 15 minutes now. So I'm aware of the time, everyone.
And I just want to, before I miss the opportunity, give credit to Sarah Owings, a US-based dog trainer and now cow trainer doing an amazing job training her whole herd of cows and wonderful teacher of human beings who helped bring that idea. I call it the Sarah Owings rubric of how we process and what actions we can take after we've just done a training session or watched someone else do a training session. So kudos to Sarah Owings for those questions I shared earlier.
So in the interest of time, we had more questions. I'm going to try to wrap them up into one question. So I'm going to bring up multiple things, put them under an umbrella and see if we can efficiently, quickly answer that. So there are times in a zoo context, so you're an enthusiastic keeper or enthusiastic employee in a zoo clinic or trainer in an organisation you've just joined, and you're asked to do things in your role.
And they conflict, you get some dissonance in your mind about, this doesn't feel aligned with my understanding of what's best for the animal in this situation, but I've got these consequences from my team of either doing or not doing these things. I can see that, I've listened to Christie and Ryan, and I can see that, okay, to get behaviour change here, it's going to take time. I've got to focus on the approximations required of all of the human individuals involved.
And in the meantime, I need to continue to do what's being asked of me in my role, with my job description, in my organisation. So some examples that I've thought about from my time in zoos is handling reptiles specifically, no choice given, aversives. I would just use my judgment to say that the animals did not enjoy, without getting too technical, what was happening there. But you have to be at a certain place, at a certain time, with an animal in your hand.
Or someone offered the example in our membership of working with horses in disability programmes, where the movement of the horses is important for the rehabilitation of the client, but that's not necessarily always what's best for the horse. Can you just share some thoughts, Christie?
Because we've talked about the culture, we've talked about the approximations required, the antecedents and consequences, we've put it all in behaviour jargon, but we've still got to show up to work tomorrow and process what's being asked of us. And we've decided we're going to stick it out. How can we best navigate getting through this period? Yeah, I think that can be, you've identified something that can be really challenging.
And that conflict, that misalignment between what we think is best and what's being asked of us. And I think that it comes down to a judgment call about what each of us is comfortable with, saying yes to and for how long. And that will be an individual thing.
I think what I would want listeners to know is that when we talk about these strategies for sort of bottom-up change, where you're doing this perspective taking with leaders, and you're building relationships with your co-workers and all of those things, that's not to say that there might not come a point in your relationship with an organization where you decide that what you're being asked to do is no longer acceptable, and it's just not a good fit for you, and you move on
to another opportunity. That could be also something that is within your control that you decide to do in order to make effective change in animals' lives. And that's perfectly fine. And I don't want anybody to feel like it would be a failure if they made that decision rather than sticking it out and continuing to do things that are misaligned with their ethics. So I think in a lot of cases, it's probably going to fall somewhere in between.
Somewhere in between the extreme of, well, I'm willing to say yes to what I'm being asked to do indefinitely, even if no change ever happens, and the extreme of, I am quitting tomorrow because this is no longer acceptable. It'll probably be somewhere in the middle for a lot of people.
And so it might consist of a process that looks like trying to identify what you can control and taking some of the steps that we've talked about, and then having a personal limit at some point of if what you're being asked to do is seriously misaligned with what you think is the best practices for quality of life of the animals in your care, that there's a limit to how long you'll say yes to it, and that's as it should be.
Yeah, I think that's a really great way of articulating that, being in the relationship where you feel like you're going to say yes indefinitely to something that's unsustainable. And I just want to also wrap up on this, Christy, and get your thoughts. Again, for the listeners of the show, I'll share a personal story.
I remember, Christy, when I first learned about Crucial Conversations, and I was in an organization where there were some things that I thought were disrespectful being aimed at me, but I didn't think it was being done with malice. And I knew that I liked the individual, and I knew that they were there for the same reason that I was there, because they love the job, and they love the animals, and they wanted what's best.
And so I sat down and went through some of the questions that are offered by the book Crucial Conversations, answered them, and used those answers to frame a conversation with this person. Christy, it felt so uncomfortable doing these behaviors that I'd never done before, and not knowing what the consequences were going to be. So I just want to say for everyone listening, I want to share gratitude for listening today.
And I think you're entering into a conversation where it takes vulnerability, and it takes courage. And I just want to honor the listeners, Christy, and acknowledge them for just being here and listening, and if they put some of this into action in any way, shape, or form, just honor that vulnerability and courage. Absolutely. I'll join you in that for sure. It's not easy to do.
And as we kind of opened up with that verbal behavior aspect that gets added when you're working with humans can make things, sometimes it makes things easier, right? Because sometimes we wish we could talk, we could have a conversation with an animal in the way that we do with a person. But sometimes it makes things a lot more complicated and a lot more difficult, because it introduces a whole other category of important consequences.
So reinforcers and punishers for us and for all of the people around us. And so what you just described about it being difficult to engage in some of those new behaviors in a conversation is part of that, those verbal social reinforcers and punishers that just they do, they're real and they can make things feel really hard. And so, yes, I will join you in celebrating any small approximation or step into the pool that anyone takes under this umbrella.
Well, I could just keep going and going but I'm not going to. I think we've shared a valuable amount in the time that we've had to share it. But I am going to ask Christy to share her availability as well. If you have any questions or if you have any thoughts or if you want to share anything, you can reach out to me at Animal Training Academy at any time.
And Christy, for those who might be interested in hearing more of your perspectives or asking questions or exploring your services and what you can offer them if they're in an organization and an organization is open to getting external help, where can people go to find out more about you, what you do, BehaviorWorks, the work of Susan and get in touch with me? Sure. So the BehaviorWorks website is behaviorworks.org and there's a lot of information there.
And I can tell you about a few of the things that I'm involved with for outside health for organizations, just email me directly at caa at behaviorworks.org.
And then the sort of ongoing opportunities that I'm involved with include a course called How Research Works and that's for animal professionals who really want to be evidence-based in their work but maybe don't have the background in understanding, you know, peer-reviewed literature on behavior research and want to get some of that foundation so that they can access that literature and use it in their work. So that's an eight-week course we're just finishing up around right now.
There will be another one in the spring so there'll be an opportunity then. I also run a journal reading group and that is held once a month and we do three-month sessions and each three-month session has a different theme that we focus on for those three months. So right now our focus is on reinforcer assessments and this is the last one for 2024 and I have not set the topics for 2025 yet and I would welcome suggestions from new participants for those suggestions.
That is a really fun group to be a part of. It typically includes behavior analysts who work with both animals and sometimes even people and then lots of different kinds of animal professionals as well and so we get a lot of great differing perspectives on the things that we read which is really fun. And then another piece to that work at BehaviorWorks is our career connections section of the website that you can look at and that includes a couple of different things.
One of them is just a consult with me which is essentially just a conversation that I gather some information from the individual beforehand but it's a conversation about their educational goals and or their career goals and what steps they might take next to try to get towards those goals. So that's really fun too. So lots going on at BehaviorWorks and any questions about any of that folks can email me directly.
Wonderful and we will of course link to all of this in the show notes as well so you can view the listener in whatever app you're listening to the song can find links to that information about everything Christy just shared in the show notes.
Christy this has been so much fun so from myself and on behalf of everyone listening and all of the learners human and non -human learners that the listeners will go out and work with and have a positive impact on we really appreciate you taking the time to come and hang out with us today. Thank you so much. My pleasure. And thank you so much for listening as well. This is your host Ryan Cartlidge signing off from this episode of the Animal Training Academy podcast show.
We hope today's conversation inspired you and equipped you with new tools for your trainer's toolbox. Remember every challenge in training is an opportunity to learn and sharpen your animal training geekery. Embrace the rough patches learn from them and keep improving and don't forget the path to growing your skills and expanding your knowledge continues beyond this episode. Visit www.atamember.com to join our supportive membership where you will find a community of just like you.
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