Episode 21:

Jolanda Jansen

Transcript

Toban Dyck  00:03

This is the extensionist conversations with great thinkers in agriculture. I’m Toban Dyck and I’m Jay Wen.

Jay Whetter  00:15

Hi, Jay, hey, Toban. Yeah, the big long pause I was waiting for you to ask me how I was or say hi.

Toban Dyck  00:21

You often say, yeah, hi, Toban. So actually, I was waiting. I was

Jay Whetter  00:24

shaking things up, changing changing diversity. You just got to be more adapted to change in your old age. I know it’s hard.

Toban Dyck  00:34

Is this a segue? I feel like, definitely, oh, now that we’re talking about,

Jay Whetter  00:41

well, I’m just like, it’s always so what I really like about the podcast is that every time we talk to somebody, I’m learning some new communications tactic and and, well, I just keep going back to Dyck bra and the always the telephone message and Mark Campbell, and the you be the heat to Mark talked about a bunch of things, but like the the whiteboard. So getting people to say, what are you going to do differently? And put it on a whiteboard, yeah, and then follow up a month later and and ask them, so how did you go with your personal pledge there? And I just, I think, you know, if you can get people to think in different ways about adopting new ideas, that’s good. And then for me, if I’m also receptive to adopting new ideas, so then it’s not just talking about it, but you’re actually living it. Yeah, I think the podcast is a good way for me to think of new things to do.

Toban Dyck  01:38

I agree. I mean, you know, we have these, you know, as we kind of develop our training modules and like these, these sessions, that there’s that there’s interest in using, using this information that we get from from the podcast, from our really smart guests, becomes like, It’s overwhelming. There’s so much information there that you become kind of overloaded. And I guess, because that’s like, a really key, it’s probably not uninteresting, right? Yeah. So what do you do with a flood of information? Yeah, right. So there’s a, I think there’s part of me that just wants to, like, you know, shove it aside, be like, I’m good as it is, right? I can talk to these things. How do you how do you take this kind of, what seems like an overwhelming amount of good things, right? Yeah, you think we get, like, just this list of amazing key points from every buddy we talk to. You know, my brain can’t handle all that, right? Do you

Jay Whetter  02:39

remember that cognitive load. So I had to break I was in Quebec City recently. Yeah, right, right. I was talking to the University of Laval scientists about science communications at the invite of Adele Perez Lopez, great scientist out there who does some canola work. So Adele wanted me to come out there and speak for an hour on improving science communications.

Toban Dyck  03:01

You sent me a picture of that you use the birth forest PDF.

Jay Whetter  03:06

Yeah, I figured I would build on the brand nice, and so it’s mean. Condensing it all into an hour is probably a good exercise, because then you hit at the high points. And I really hammered home my PowerPoint presentation one, and I think people really, really resonated. And then after my presentation, this other, this other scientist there, who was prepping a seven minute talk on his research, said, Do you want to, like, just sit in and walk, you know, as I walk through my slides, and I say, oh, yeah, sure, might as well. And so he had about 20 slides, and they’re full of all this information. I said, okay, is this? Is this important? Yeah. And I said, Okay, when? What about this? These texts right at the very bottom of this really busy slide. And he said, Oh, that’s like the key part of my presentation. I said, Okay, well, you’ve got, you’ve got seven minutes, and on slide 15, buried at the bottom is your key point, right? So what happens when you get to six minutes and 45 seconds and you’ve just got to this slide, yeah, yeah. And you’re and you’ve got a cram in your key point in 15 seconds, yeah? And it’s buried at the bottom. So let’s so reconsider. And again, maybe I was, maybe I should have been asking sort of questions more like, how would you, how might you rewrite this to hit that key point anyway? So I so I got, I got to him say, Okay, well, let’s put this key point on its own slide, yeah, and make it bold. And then the first 15 slides. Reconsider whether you need all of that information to set up your key point, because you want people to remember this, and you don’t want to be rushed at the end anyway. That was, that was, I felt like I was actually being useful.

Toban Dyck  04:48

Well, it was, it’s probably the best time to get information from you a because you just, you’re in the zone, like you’re dialed that you just spoke for an hour. You’re like, I’m in Who else wants Who else wants PowerPoint analyzed?

Jay Whetter  05:00

Stuff. Yeah. Anyway, it was, it was, I felt it was quite rewarding. And then, and then, I mean, I’m waiting for feet from feedback from Adele, and I should ask him how he would rank my presentation. Yes, you’ll find out about later in this episode. But, you know, ask him on a one to 10, how would you rank it and then, and then say, how could I make it a nine if he gave me an eight, or how do I make it a seven if he gives me a six?

Toban Dyck  05:30

Yeah, totally, you should. You should super pumped about, like, the training sessions we have, I guess at this point, they will have happened already, but, yeah, I’m excited about this stuff. It’s fun to talk to people about it, yeah? And it’s like, you know, I still deal with the fraud, like the fraud thing, yeah, remember that, or that episode where you don’t deal with it at all, but, well, I feel like, but

Jay Whetter  05:54

I think that that the way we structure these is that there’s lots of back and forth totally. So we’re, we’re in a room, and we’re learning together, yes? So it’s like, we’re not, we’re not, we’re facilitators, yeah, and we’re sharing knowledge, but we’re facilitators. Anyway, we should get on with that.

Toban Dyck  06:10

Oh, our producer just explained fraud. Explained fraud. Well, what was it? It was feeling like a fraud, yeah, like, so you imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome, that’s what it was. So you feel like, you know, yeah, yeah. I’m like, you know, communications, professional, a parent, you know, and a farmer. But it’s like, some days I feel like, what, you know, I’m just, why am I such a soft skills, such a soft side? Like, yeah, sure, I can call myself that. No, it’s no one’s gonna argue. But, but, yeah,

Jay Whetter  06:40

I think you’re highly qualified for this. So from my perspective, fishing

Toban Dyck  06:47

that’s always a risk. Don’t worry, Toban, you’re great.

Jay Whetter  06:52

Always Learning how to communicate better. Well, I mean,

Toban Dyck  06:55

it’s funny. So communications thing. So we talk about this stuff all the time. We talk to agronomists who talk to farmers. We talk to all sorts of people, skills development. Great. Good on it. On point, I can do it stand in front of a group. My biggest challenge on the farm is my own communications. So like the communications between my dad and myself, like, that’s, that’s, it’s a difficult, it’s an incredibly difficult thing. And it’s, you know, I, at one point, I want to do a deeper dive into this, maybe on the podcast. But I think a lot of innovation waits kind of in the wings of, or just sits there amid these poor, poor communication between, between generations on these, on these, these family farms. And I, you know, I think that’s interesting,

Jay Whetter  07:43

so many things to unpack, and which just means more and more things to talk about in the podcast. But perhaps we should get onto that. Let’s do it before I ramble too much, let’s get on to Yolanda Jensen.

Jay Whetter  08:02

We’d like to introduce you to fuel positive. This Canadian clean tech company, co founded by Luna Clifford and Ian Clifford is addressing one of the biggest challenges farmers face, reliance on costly and unpredictable nitrogen fertilizer supply

Toban Dyck  08:16

chains. Fuel positives break through green ammonia technologies designed to give farmers independence, lowering costs, cutting emissions and removing supply chain risks. Their first farmer owned system is already installed near Sperling Manitoba, ready to produce both fertilizer and ultimately clean fuel directly on farm

Jay Whetter  08:36

through its current financing. Fuel positive is funding the activation and demonstration of this system, marking the beginning of commercialization by decentralizing green ammonia production, fuel positive is delivering fertilizer independence and resilience for agriculture.

Toban Dyck  08:53

For more information about fuel positive and the work that they’re doing to lower costs and cut emissions, visit fuelpositive.com you com.

Jay Whetter  09:04

Do you like what you’re hearing and want to support the extensionists? If you are an agriculture company or association looking for a powerful way to get your message in front of Canadian farmers, then partner with us. Our listeners are farmers from coast to coast.

Toban Dyck  09:17

When you advertise with us, your brand isn’t just another commercial break, it becomes part of our story. Ads on the extensionists are personal and trusted. Our listeners value what they hear on the podcast.

Jay Whetter  09:29

Whether you’re looking for a 62nd ad somewhere throughout the podcast or even an exclusive episode sponsorship, we have options that will work for

Toban Dyck  09:37

you. So if you’re ready to get your message out there and connect with farmers across Canada. Let’s talk. Visit the extensionists.com for more information.

Jay Whetter  09:50

All right, our guest today is Yolanda Janssen, and Yolanda is a communications consultant and co owner of st Anna advice. That’s the English. Pronunciation based out of the Netherlands. Welcome Yolanda.

Jolanda Jansen  10:04

Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Jay Whetter  10:07

So as we usually structure this, we talk, we get to know you a little bit. Then we talk about the business and some of your your objectives, and then we get into the meat of some extension and communications practices. And skills, Toban, what do

Toban Dyck  10:24

you think? Well, yeah, I think that’s great. So, you know, you, you don’t know who we are, maybe, maybe a little bit of a introduction there, right? Yeah, sure. So, yeah, where are you? Oh, you’re gonna start, like, was gonna throw it to you, Jay, well, my name is Toban. Is Toban. Is pleased to meet you. So I’m also a grain farmer in southern Manitoba, Canada. So Manitoba is middle province in Canada, so I’m just, just for context and perhaps some color. I am in the middle of wheat harvest right now. So as we talk, my dad is unloading a truck of wheat, and as soon as this podcast is over, I’m going to put on some different clothes and jump into the grain truck and and join them on the field. But long history of communications in agriculture so and then I started my own company, Burr forest group that does specializes in agricultural extension. So that’s how Jay and I know each other, but I’ll pass it to Jay for a quick intro as well.

Jay Whetter  11:25

Yeah, I grew up on a farm in Manitoba, but I’m not farming anymore. My brother is the farmer, and I’m I’m a journalist communicator. Toban and I are both also longtime agriculture journalists and communicators, and at, you know, a recent stage in our careers, we realized that we could, rather than just being journalists and talking about what’s going on, we try to take some sort of leadership role in improving agriculture, communications in general. And so, so the podcast here is one of our objectives as we kind of evolve in our careers. And so we were bringing people like you in to share ideas on on research and communications. Yolanda, so, yeah, so we really appreciate having you. And sometimes in Canada, we, especially Western Canada, we feel like we talked to ourselves a lot. You know, it’s the same people the same group, yeah. So to have you bring a European perspective and your experiences. This is, I think, going to be so valuable to us here on the Canadian Prairies.

Jolanda Jansen  12:31

Welcome again. Thank you so much. So high expectations here, yeah,

Jay Whetter  12:36

we want to get to know before we get into the business, your, your business and your, your day to day. We want to know a bit about you. So I know you’ve got, you’ve got three children and but you and you grew up in the Netherlands, you were interested in animals, horses. I think so. Do you still have horses in your life?

Jolanda Jansen  13:02

Oh, no, no. Well, no, not, not anymore. No, I, I tend to say every everywhere that I as a hobby, I still ride horses. But if I’m really, really honest, it has been a couple of years ago, because since kids came and busy and no time, and and, and so I think now I have a kind of a barrier to get on the horse’s back again, because I know how much must wake it will take me to recover. For three weeks I can’t walk anymore, so I’m still planning to kind of my intentions, my my my dreams again, to start writing again. But, but for now, no only animals in my life at this moment, or I think our dog recently bought a dog in the fields, and yeah, and the spiders and the mosquitoes in our inner garden, but that’s about how exciting my animal world is at this moment.

Jay Whetter  14:09

I think, what kind of what kind of dog did

Toban Dyck  14:11

you look at? A puppy? Yeah, yeah. Oh,

Jolanda Jansen  14:14

that’s a lot. That’s another story, a long story, but it’s a Ruben dog. So it comes from the islands, the Caribbean islands, Aruba, so, and it’s called a kunuku, which is a very fancy name for being, you know, a kind of a stray dog is a lovely, lovely, lovely dog. So actually, we get it, we get an extra child,

Jay Whetter  14:41

yeah, for sure. Is it, is it a is an Aruban dog an actual breed, or is it just, did it happen to come from Aruba and it was looking for a new home?

Jolanda Jansen  14:51

It’s an unofficial breed, because it’s kind of a well inbred population on that island. So it’s, they kind of have their own characteristics. So. So being very independent, being very naughty, but really being on Coast, so don’t really like to swim, but like to snorkel. So some some very specific behaviors I think they have adopted during all those years of inbreeding and

Jay Whetter  15:21

the dog likes to snorkel, or you do,

Jolanda Jansen  15:24

yeah, he really no, no. He really goes. He really dies. So with a head in the water.

Jay Whetter  15:34

So you scour the blowing bubbles, you scoured the world for a dog that is disobedient, and you couldn’t you have found one of those

Toban Dyck  15:43

in the family. Oh, that’s great. That’s great. So you also like, you also like skiing. It’s according to our notes here. Where do you like to go?

Jolanda Jansen  15:57

Oh, to Austria. So it’s actually quite strange, because I’m not sure if the listeners know that the Netherlands is a very flat country, so really, really flat. And that means that we don’t have mountains, we don’t have snow, or hardly any snow. So during winter times, a lot of Dutch people, they go to Austria or Germany or France to go skiing. And so I did that already when I was a young girl. And then during my studies, I thought, how can I still have a very expensive skiing holiday, and then maybe I can combine it with a bit of work there. So I started to be, I was educated as a skiing instructor as well. So I, I taught people how to ski, and using a lot of communication skills there to convince people. But no, it was really, a really nice combination of of still having fun in the snow, but making not making it not so expensive.

Jay Whetter  17:02

What did you learn about people and communications when you were a ski instructor? Like, what were some of your takeaways?

Jolanda Jansen  17:09

We are all human beings. So, you know you have we had everyone in our glasses, individual group classes, from very young kids to very old adults, people with different backgrounds, the very rich, the very poor, the very well, every everything, people with status, without status, but in the end, they are just all human beings with fear, with reflexes, and who just also wanted to have a nice time. And that telling people how to ski is not, and I think that is also a bit of a bridge to what we are going to talk about today. But I can tell to people, you just have to do your snow plow and just, you know, do this with your legs. And then they will say, and then, you know, if they go down and you know, they forget everything and do things differently. And so there is a real difference between telling people what they need to do actually making them do it. So I think that that was a valuable lesson learned there as well.

Toban Dyck  18:13

Yeah, dude, are you gonna do go? You go, Yeah, you think I’m gonna say the same thing. Yeah, sure. Do you do the pizza and fries in? Yes, yes. Oh, that’s so good.

Jolanda Jansen  18:26

Great example. So I had so with the kids. Of course, you always say Pizza, pizza, pizza, because they have to break so. And then I had a kid there and and he really started to cry, because every time I was kind of getting a bit of annoyed, like, you know, listen to me just do the pizza. And he started to cry. And I was like, Okay, so, okay, okay, calm down. So what is wrong? And he said, I can’t do a pizza. And I again, I explained, and he said, Yeah, but I don’t understand, because pizzas are round. Oh, yeah. And we, of course, with pizza, we mean the wets rights of pizza, yeah, so, and that was such an eye opener, like in his mind. So when I say pizza, he thinks of a round circle. So he was actually continuously trying to make his legs go round instead of making them into a triangle. So, so that was really a surprising again. Also about communication, yeah, I think I’m clear in communication. Yeah, I’m clearing communication. You say pizza. Everyone knows what a pizza is, right? And he also knew what a pizza was only to Yeah, so it was, it was actually quite sad. So I really apologize to the to the little to the little young man, and said, Oh, you’re so right. I have explained this wrong. You know, it’s a slice of pizza. It’s not around.

Jay Whetter  19:57

That’s so great. Yeah, that is fantastic. Good. Should tell, but I never would have thought we would get into something, a key communications message when, when it’s you, don’t you, you assume what’s in people’s heads is the same as what’s in your head. I know, I know he can be completely different. Amazing. So in when you were doing skiing instruction in Austria, were you speaking Dutch or German, or were you actually mostly speaking in English,

Jolanda Jansen  20:27

mostly Dutch, because we have a lot of Dutch people going to Austria, but also German and English, and sometimes you kind of give a language course, because it’s like, we’re going down. We’re going downhill. Hannah bernada, UK, yes, languages all together. Specifically with kids. Of course, when you have a mixed group with kids, you of course, want to connect with them as well. So with adults, you hope they can understand English a bit, but so sometimes it was a challenge. So again, also today, I’m sorry my English is not made fully perfect a bit fast, maybe I try to find the right words if possible, and otherwise, please correct me.

Toban Dyck  21:09

So how many languages do you speak? Yolanda?

Jolanda Jansen  21:15

So Dutch and English, German is like skiing German. So I can talk a lot in German about the weather and about skiing, but don’t ask me about agriculture or so I had to. So once a person asked me, So what are you doing for your studies? And at that moment, I was busy with my PhD study, and it was on other health, and I really had to dig deep to find the word for other in German, because that’s not a word in your vocabulary you use, you would use often. So that was a very funny I tried to describe, like tits and teats of cows and all this kind of thing. So it became a very awkward,

Jay Whetter  21:59

so German. I remember I listened to a linguist. She is when it was an English woman, but she was talking about how in German they they use Descriptors to create very long words for things. And so she was saying, like in in German, MIT, like for your hand in English, we say MIT, which means a different something else entirely in German, but they call it a hand shoe, which is so, so what? What does an utter in German? Is it a like a cow milk

Jolanda Jansen  22:33

in German? It’s, it’s, it’s oiter, if I’m correct, and hand, hand shoe or a hand glove, it would be the same in Dutch. So Dutch and German is very similar. So we would say Hans Hoon with somebody to come back to your question. No Dutch English. That’s but at school, we learn German and we learn French as well, because there are not so many people talking Dutch in the world, and we have our neighbors being either German speaking or in Belgium being Dutch France and German speaking. So French and German speaking. So, so yeah, we have to kind of learn a couple of languages, but it’s with languages. If you never use them, then you also kind of forget them. So don’t ask me to have this conversation in French, because

Toban Dyck  23:28

mon non plus. So I was gonna say this because I gotta get it off my chest, because my wife and I watch a lot of this YouTube show called itchy boots. And her name’s norley schoenmaker, and she travels the world. She’s from Netherlands, and she travels the world on a motorcycle. So she has multiple seasons, and each season has probably, like, 100 and 100 plus episodes, and she’s fantastic. And so we just find, like, we just learned a lot about Netherlands because she’s talking while she’s riding motorcycle around the world. And it’s very, very, very interesting. So I could not say that I’m speaking to somebody from Netherlands, and we feel like we know Nora Lee, because we watch her multiple times every day. You ever get a chance, you should watch the show. It’s really good.

Jay Whetter  24:12

Well, you could put it. You could put on a head cam or a helmet cam, and you could talk about utter health. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. You could get right in there as you’re walking through the barns, or Yeah, or in the lab. What Yolanda tell us about st Anna advice, what is the what is the company and what

Jolanda Jansen  24:37

does it do? We do a lot in a very broad field of everything related to animals and communication, kind of our payoff is that we believe that if we want to improve the health and well being of animals, there is only one species we need to know most about, and that is the human being. But, you know, understanding human. And how their brain works, and how we can motivate people to change their behavior. You can never help the health and welfare of animals. So we often, you know, think you know things need to be improved for you know, better animal welfare, or better production or whatever reasons. But in the end, it’s always an owner, whether it is a farmer or herd manager or cat owner, who needs to change his or her behavior. So yeah, if you want to do something with that, you need to include a bit of Social Sciences and do whatever you’re planning to do. So that’s the field we are working in on all different levels. So on policy level, so helping people to improve their say, disease control programs or policies directed to changes in in agriculture, for example, on company level, so we help companies to improve their communication strategies, also to train, for example, their teams on veterinary practice level. So we train veterinary practices, both companion animals as well as livestock and mixed and equine swine, on improving their communication as a practice, but also improving their communication in the conversations that they have with their owners. So could be advisory conversations with a farmer. Could be consultations with a pet owner or a phone call with a distressed, I don’t know, dog owner. And we train on the individual levels. So really, individually, help people to improve their communication skills. So we have open courses to do that. A bit of research still. So we still do some research and education as well. So at many schools, we educate communication skills. Write some books, write some papers.

Jay Whetter  26:57

What is the research? As I say, a lot. Do you do communications research, or is it actual animal health research?

Jolanda Jansen  27:07

It’s, it’s Animal Health Research. So we are involved in a couple of research projects on the effect of, for example, communication skills training, on communication skills of herd health advisors. So does the communication skills training has an effect on how veterinarians communicate to dairy farmers, but also totally different topics. So we recently, we’re now, I resubmitted it yesterday, a publication on incivility and workplace harassment in veterinary clinics. A lot of veterinarians have problems with clients being raising their voice, or being not so civil anymore, or colleagues maybe being not so civil, which could also be a reason for mental health dropout in a veterinary practice. So so we investigated that, and then the results are quite shocking. So two out of three veterinary professionals do perceive, say, instability or bad behavior, transgressive behavior is what we call it, on a daily basis, more or

Jay Whetter  28:17

less. So is that from clients talking to them, raising their voice to them as vets, or is it the vets themselves raising their voice to their customer or customers or their co workers?

Jolanda Jansen  28:30

No, no. It’s really from clients to vets or from co workers to vets, and also vet nurses. So we said veterinary professionals, meaning vets nurses, receptionists, people working in a veterinary clinic, but they suffer a lot from how clients treat them or how colleagues and supervisors treat them. So it’s about sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying, aggression.

Jay Whetter  28:54

So like, is that, or is it just because you’re in that world that you’re ultra sensitive to it, or is there something about vets that that make this

Jolanda Jansen  29:05

sound like one of the reviewers? No, it’s so we submitted the publication, and of course, we compared that to, for example, human healthcare and and the Nationals, the national average in our country. So for any other profession, and it’s three, if I recall correctly, it’s three times higher. So in a veterinary industry, it happens three times more often than in healthcare, and it happens seven times more often than in, say, the general Dutch population. So yes, something is, I think, special about the veterinary profession. Why is that? What makes, yeah, various reasons. So, one, I just have to be concerned. Iterate of time here. So various reasons. So one is education. So I think in healthcare. So again, in human healthcare, this also happens a lot. But in human healthcare already there is education on how to deal with emotions, how to deal with the social aspect of being a veterinarian, how to deal with frustration of your clients, how to deal with sadness, how to deal with anger, how to deal with all these kind of things. A second part is expectation management. So an example is, it could also, also be related to agriculture, right? So, you know, I can, I can call in distress, or I can say, I have an emergency with an animal. As a vet, I can say, Oh, don’t worry. You know, we have managed to pull this in most cases. You know animals. We pull them through. Have hope. You know we will, we will make it work. We will do our best to save your animal. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s all going to be fine. It’s all going to be fine. If then the animal dies. You get a very frustrated owner, a very sad and disappointed owner, and probably need someone to blame. So probably say you did not do your best, or you promised me that he would be he would recover. If, if you do it differently, if, if, if you would say at the start to the owner, you know, please, prepare for the worst. This looks bad. This is a very severe condition. Prepare for the worst. We will do our best. But, you know, keep that in mind that we don’t know how this will go, we will do everything in our power to save your animal, but prepare for the worst. If then the animal survives, you’re the hero. If then the animal dies, then at least you did already some expectation management, and they were already prepared for that. So these are these little say, communication skills, things that I think more and more in human healthcare, people are trained to do that, but in the veterinary healthcare, we are still in the beginning of of learning how to deal with that to prevent this bad behavior from clients even happening. So I think often we create this often, not, not often, but in many times also we create these situations ourselves. If you would say, oh, it just takes five minutes. Just, you know, your consultation, you know, just takes five minutes. The vet is busy and they have to wait for an hour. Of course, you’re disappointed, and you get upset as a client. So I think that’s, yeah,

Jay Whetter  32:40

that’s great. I’m thinking of so people who go into veterinary medicine do it because they love animals. They don’t realize that the biggest stresses in their lives are going to be the owners of the animals, and they so those human interactions that they tried to avoid, that’s why they became a vet, not a doctor, is because they they’d rather deal with animals than humans, but they don’t realize that they’re dealing with humans at almost at a higher emotional level, because they’re so emotionally attached to their pet or their or their cattle or their their pigs or their sheep, and

Jolanda Jansen  33:13

so we had it in our research, yes, so exactly confirming

Jay Whetter  33:17

blindsided by this human this massive human burden that they were hoping to avoid by becoming a vet. Anyway, I’m just kind of imagining, yeah,

Jolanda Jansen  33:28

exactly they said it to us, you know, if I like, if I would have liked humans, you know, then I would have, you know, studied medicine, so I became a vet because I like animals, not because I like humans. And I’m like, oh, there’s something wrong at the start of you know, when you just start being a vet, to understand that there is also this big human part you need to understand. So yeah, so it is exactly what we got back from, from our research, but also from many other studies as well. So during covid times, a lot of vets were very relieved, specifically the companion animal vets, because they’re kind of relieved, like, Oh, thank god no owner in our consultation room. So I just can take the animal owner needs to stay outside because of covid, and then, you know, I could just treat the animal and give the animal back to the owner. And really smooth consultations, really short, really efficient. So some really were kind of, you know, happy with not seeing the owners all the time during covid 19.

Toban Dyck  34:29

Yeah. On the policy side of what you guys do at St Anna advice. Is that a policy that takes a bit of a communications bent, or is there kind of, is there a kind of policy expertise within your within your shop, or how does, how does the policy work? How does, how does that look?

Jolanda Jansen  34:49

So we are, yeah, we are asked for as consultants then. So there is this big question. So it could be on. So in the past, it was, for example, in other health and we want to improve other. Health in the Netherlands, reduce the use of antibiotics. How can we? Can we change people’s behavior? Now, at this moment, a very relevant topic is tail docking in swine. How can we tail docking? Tail docking? Yeah, so it’s prohibited, but it’s unofficially still kind of allowed as a as a way to prevent tail biting or to prevent welfare problems. But of course, it’s just with good prevention you would not have tail biting and therefore would not need to tail dock. So it has a huge impact on farm management if you are not allowed to dock the tails of the piglets anymore. So that means behavior change, and that means doing different things and just telling people that they should stop tail docking because they have good reasons for it to do it, otherwise they wouldn’t do it at this moment in time. So these are kind of policy questions, and specifically also on antibiotics that we are, for example, involved in, or obesity in pets. And how can we decrease obesity in pets, where we would help?

Jay Whetter  36:15

Awesome. Thank you. Well, I think we could jump off of that policy into some of the communications training and exercises and skills that that you have in your head that we want to get out in the next part of this podcast. So there’s always new policy coming along in agriculture, often to the frustration of farmers. So with this tail dock, I think this tail docking could apply in a lot of cases where there’s a real practical reason to dock the tails, yet for animal animal welfare reasons, rightly or wrongly, the government policy comes along and says, No, You can’t. You can no longer. Dyck the tails, what is the communications challenge for you? And, yeah, and how to so we’ll kind of talk through this, because I think this is really important. So do you go back to the government and say, You know what this policy is off for these reasons. And then, and then, if the government doesn’t back away, then you have to take this and help. I mean, not this is, this is you’re in the middle of all of this. I’m not saying you have to do this, but you’re help. You’re helping the whole industry kind of through these processes. So do you do you push back on I guess there’s going to be a number of waves to this question. But do you take that tail docking policy and go back to government and say, This is why farmers do this. This is why your policy is not going to work. So that’s part part one. And then, and then we, then you take, okay, and then we, then you have this policy, and then you have to somehow convince farmers that this is what they have to do. So let’s go. Let’s push back on government first. How do you influence policy?

Jolanda Jansen  38:09

So well it well, it first starts with us being asked, I think that is already a major success that we have achieved in, I think, in our country, but probably also in many other countries now that they start to consider so when they design a policy, often being designed by veterinarians or by agronomists or by technical specialists who know a lot about the disease or about the crops or so that they now slowly start to understand that there is more to that than more to changing people’s behavior than just having the technical knowledge. So the fact that they start asking us or ask other social scientists to to support them in developing their policies is already a big win, I think so. So when there is, of course, a question, they also demand an answer, so that gives us also a good position, but we always work together, and one of the most difficult questions for them to answer is, what is the desired behavior? So for example, so an antibiotic usage or pesticide use in crop farming, it’s like we want to reduce the use of pesticides, or we want to reduce the use of antibiotics. Okay, fair enough, for all different reasons. But what does that mean on a farm in a daily practice? What specific behavior do you want to change? Because improving wealth, health and welfare, just improving management is too vague. So if you want to have communication campaigns that are effective, you need to really boil it down to a very specific behavior. This is the current behavior. This is the desired behavior. Here, what do we want to change? And then you have to in a level, deeper dive into, okay, what are current barriers and drivers? What are current motivations for such behavior? So, for example, with the tail docking, it’s it has to do with a lot of fear. So there is a lot of emotions there. So you can say to people, you should not do it this anymore, but the fear of opening your stable and see all the tail biting and see all the blood and all the horror is is is such a shocking thing that you that you will do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening, and when it takes something very, say easy, to tail docking them as a piglets, which is, of course, also creates, I don’t know, a welfare issue, but at least not the severity of what you have seen later on in their lives if they start tail biting. So we have to understand that in policy making, there are deeper levels of emotions, of reasons why people do not do what they what they do, and that is a big challenge, because from a policy side of things, they they always think it’s a lack of knowledge or it’s it’s a technical problem, but it’s often not a technical problem. So as an example, I can May, I may ask you both, so do you eat birthday cakes? Yes, if there’s a birthday you eat you bet. Do you drink alcohol? Yes, you drink a beer. Okay, so we all do well. I also do that, so it’s not to blame you or whatever. So yes, we have, we have our say, our we have our behaviors or our New Year’s resolutions. What if I say to you, okay, and I also, I can also ask you, do you want to be healthy? Yes. Do you want to be healthy? Yes. Do you want to have cardiovascular diseases? No, do you like to have a cardiovascular disease? You get where this is going, right? I do. So this is what we do. So what I would do, if I would be so how we how, the way we do it now in agriculture is like I would say to you now, well, you want your a good health for yourself. You know that your health is important. Did you know that you know eating sugar is very bad for your health? Scientific evidence has shown that by eating this birthday cake you have, you increase your risk on cardiovascular diseases. By drinking the little beer, you increase your risk on these diseases. Oh, I have a lot of scientific evidence that proves that you actually should stop doing that. So, yeah, if you really take want to take care of your health, you really should do that. Right? You really should. And how does that make you feel? If someone comes with all these say evidence based good advices, you probably say, I will not swear at you, because this is a podcast. Who are you to me? Look at yourself. You know, how healthy are you? As if you do not, you know, eat sugar, as if you are so very healthy yourself. So it really creates resistance. And I think that is my bottom line here, that this is often, in many cases. Of course, there is sometimes a knowledge problem, but often it is not a lack of knowledge. So yes, all farmers want their soils to be healthy. All farmers don’t want to use in general, in basically, they don’t want to use pesticides. They don’t want to use antibiotics. Yes, they want to have high production. Yes, they want to have good animal health. If you ask them, they all say, Yes, of course, I want that Yeah. And if you start to convince them, saying you have to work on your biosecurity of your or you have to work more hygienically, because evidence based show this And isn’t this, then you know, you probably say, Yes, I know. If I say to you, you know alcohol, drinking alcohol is bad for your health, you say, yeah, yeah, I know. But that doesn’t make you change. You know that doesn’t make you not drinking that during the birthday party. So there are deeper motivations, yeah, why people do what they do?

Toban Dyck  44:32

So I think we both want to ask some questions here. But first of all, I love that exercise. I think that was great. I loved how you turned it on us and asked us questions, because it’s interesting, because when you say that, when you say those things, of course, I want health. Of course I want, you know, but I want my cake, you know, to eat it too, like that whole thing, you know. So what? I don’t know what you Jay, but what? When that was happening in my head, knowing that these things, sugar alcohol, are not healthy for you, but heck, I enjoy them so much, I’m not going to give them up. So I already, in my head am naturally building like resistance and a defense, like I’m thinking of like a defense for my behavior, to maintain my behavior. So I’m already thinking, Yeah, I know there’s information out there, but I’m already thinking, Yeah, but that information does not really, you know, let’s say, let’s say account for like, the like, the kind of, the gustatory or whatever it is, the Epicurean pleasure of eating, like, the frosty balloons on a birthday cake or or a nice, like, smoked old fashioned at a great lounge somewhere, right? Like, so these, these things are like, Yeah, but yeah, there’s information, but what about, what about life enjoyment? So then I’m already kind of building a natural defense for my behavior, which is interesting, right? Because it has

Jolanda Jansen  46:00

Yeah, just to interrupt that exactly is social. It’s a psychological principle. This is called cognitive cognitive dissonance. So you’re experiencing dissonance now between what I believe I and what you want. So I want, you know, to be healthy and what you do, but I still drink this very cold beer, but I want to be healthy, and I drink this beer, and I know it’s not good, but still, I do this. So there is, this is just a very well studied principle that the Yes, but reply Yes, but all just one beer is okay, or Yes, but I do exercise a lot, or Yes, but I eat my veggies and my fruits. So I’m not that unhealthy. There are other people who are worse, and there are other people who drink more, and other people, I’m not obese, so I can take that extra sugar because I’m so all these, this defense mechanism is a is a normal principle, so you’re healthy. So because your brain works because it’s a defense mechanism when we are confronted with our own ambivalence, then that happens, and that is exactly what agronomy or say, extensionists or farm advisors experience when they propose something to a farmer, and a farmer is confronted With, yes, I do want this, but I don’t have time, but I don’t see the return on investment, but so you get all the yes buts, and that is a very powerful way to show that there is ambivalence. And we are. We are all humans. So why would we expect farmers to be different?

Jay Whetter  47:37

We look at ourselves, in many cases, agronomy and extension, is it’s just sharing an idea or sharing a concept and just, you know it’s and then the farmer can decide whether or not that’s the right move. Fair enough. I mean, and if the farmer doesn’t do it, at least you’ve done your job in sharing the practice. But what about if it’s a new policy that the farmers are opposed to that legally now have to do like so how do you So, there’s two approaches where you know this is the best practice. Do it or not. You know, you know, at the end of the day, do I care? I guess you do. But and then there’s the required practice that is now and law within your country or your state or province, is there, is there a different approach for you, communication wise, between those two scenarios.

Jolanda Jansen  48:42

Well, I think when there is a law, of course, it is much easier, because you can just say, Okay, I don’t care what you do, but this is the law. So one way or another, you get, you get penalties, you you you you know, you get, I don’t know, lower income, or you get fines, or you get so is your risk to take. So what we see with policy measures, when there is when there is a law, when there are clear norms, when there is enforcement, then we see that’s a strong driver for behavior. But the problem is that in most policies, we either don’t like to enforce rules because of all political reasons, or the rules are not being so strict, so they can be flexible. So from a communication side of things, what you say, you as an advisor, you go to the farm, you give your advice, and you go away. I think that mindset from an advisor point of view needs to change. So at this moment in time, I come to a farm and I say you This is wrong. So I would say, for example, other health, you need to improve the hygiene during milking. You need to improve feeding of your Dyck house. You really need to improve you really need. Do something about it. If you want to comply to all the rules and regulations, if you want to comply to quality standards, you really have to change this and this on your farm. And you also should instruct your workers on your farm, your milkers, or your employees on your farm, or maybe your son or your daughter who helps you to do things differently. So this is my advice by what happens in our brain is that if you look at this from us social science point of view, we know we have three basic needs. So we have a need for competence, we have a need for relatedness, and we have a need for autonomy. So if you say to a farmer, you do this wrong, or this could be improved, or this is we did a checklist. And you know, these are your critical control control points in our brain that works as you make me feel less competent. So what you’re actually telling me is I’m not a competent farmer. I’m in this business for 30 I’m in this family farm. I already do this for 20 years, but now you’re going to tell me that I do this wrong. So even if they would agree with you, somewhere in their brains, it’s like with all quality schemes, it’s continuously telling me you are not competent. So that is one. The second thing is, then autonomy. So telling to people you have to do this, otherwise you have to change this. You, you, you, this is what you have to do. You create a lack of autonomy. And I think that happens on a policy level, in general, I think that there is a lack of autonomy for many farmers at this moment, and that creates a lot of resistance. Who are you to say what I have to do? I’m an entrepreneur. I have my own business. I have my farm. Why should I do this? I want to make my own decisions, and the third one is relatedness. So yes, I can agree with you this good advice. You are right. I actually should do this. But if it means that I have to tell my workers that they have to do things differently, it also means losing face to them. It means that I have to admit that what I taught them before is not good, that however I trained them before was actually not the right way to do or it would create a conflict with my father or with my son, because we’re in a family farm, and yes, I know you’re right, but my father, it’s how he always did this on his farm. So, you know, I just can’t have that conversation with him, because I don’t want to damage that relationship. So if you as an advisor, come to a farm and think like I can just tell point out what is wrong. I can tell them what they have to do and how they have to do that with the people around them that that is a good advice. Yes, technically it is a good advice, but that doesn’t probably a lot of people will say, yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you for your advice, and then do nothing. So you have to change that around. And probably you’re now going to ask me how to do that, and I have an answer on that. Okay, before I answer that, yes, I still fear.

Jay Whetter  53:06

How do you do it? Yeah, we want you to answer that so, so rather than just having a podcast of you talking to yourself, answering your own questions, let’s so we’ll ask the question. So how do you I mean, that’s a lot of so that to review competence. So you don’t want to make the farmer feel like they’re they’re not a good farmer. So you have to, you have to present a new idea in a way that builds upon their knowledge. Not not saying you’ve been doing this wrong. This is how you should be doing it. But you could say, you know what you’re what you’re doing up until this time was actually the right, the best thing to do based on what we knew at that time. Now we have new information, which suggests that maybe adapting to this practice might be better. I’m just spitballing here, so we don’t want to demonstrate Yeah, and then relatedness, so that family dynamic, or that worker, that staff dynamic, is such a challenge, especially with young farmers with a new idea, trying to get the rest of the farm family to adopt it often. So that relatedness is key, and then the autonomy, I think that’s a big when Ottawa or when Amsterdam. I don’t know what the capital it’s Amsterdam. Yeah, has this new idea that kind of coming, coming down from on high. And this is how farmers have to do this. The farmers say, You know what? We went into farming because we don’t like people telling us what to do. It’s kind of like the vets. We went into veterinary medicine because we wanted to deal with animals, not humans. We went into farming because we want to deal with we just want to farm. We don’t want to have to deal with government. So again, how do you take all of those dynamics and get a farm to consider a new practice?

Jolanda Jansen  54:59

Yeah, it’s. Well, it’s, as you say, a huge problem at this moment in the Netherlands, with a distrust in government, because there are so many enforcements from a quality point of view, from animal welfare point of view, from environmental point of view. So as a farmer, you just at this moment in time, you have no idea what to what rules to comply to, because they have become so complex and creating, again, a lot of frustration. So rules that that were okay, so you were an okay farmer two years ago, and you just changed everything on your farm based on that policy. Now can suddenly be totally wrong because the policy has changed, but you, of course, did make the investments. So I think this is, this is something that really is a frustration. And I think in many countries, if, if you look at this from an advisor point of view, the key problem here, and I probably may will repeat this many times again during this conversation, is to just start asking questions. So in your example, where you would say about the competence, where you would go to a farmer say, okay, given your experience, you’re such an experienced farmer. And now, you know, we have new insights, this and this and this. Again, you are starting to bring the information. But what happens if you were just start by asking, What do you already know about this topic? What have you already done? What do you already know about the importance of biosecurity on your farm? Or what do you already know about prudent use of pesticides on your farm? What are strategies you already have tried? What would be beneficial, what would be helpful? What do you know about the importance or the reasons for antimicrobial resistance? What do you know about the reasons for the policies policymakers to actually have this policy installed? So what do you think are the reasons behind that? And probably they already know a lot. So you can already make your conversation much shorter, because you don’t need to convince them that the policy is there. You don’t need to convince them about what that antimicrobial resistance or pesticide resistance is, is an important thing. They already know it. So we spend a lot of time in telling people and convincing people what they already know, as I gave the example before, telling you that alcohol is bad for your health. Yeah, I know. So you can continue to share information and more evidence, but that doesn’t work, so questions do help. So if I ask you, what do you know about the risks for alcohol use, you start thinking, and then you start thinking and saying, Well, I know alcohol, maybe it’s not that good. And I know I’ve heard somewhere there’s something to my brain. So when I ask something, when you ask something to a farmer, like, what would be the reason behind this, or why would this be beneficial for you, you start to create some movement in the brain, and that is what you want, because then you already start considering things that may be beneficial for you. So if we would just stop telling people what to do, but if we would start asking questions, so the same would be for autonomy. So competence with asking about, you know, what do you know about this before you spread knowledge? Autonomy would be like, Okay, well, thank you for all sharing all that knowledge. I also have some ideas and suggestions on how we could improve this. On your farm, would you like me to share that so just asking that little question before you start your monolog, like, I don’t know would be just, just asking the question, would you like me to to give more information on that? Just the fact that at that moment in time the other person can say, Yes, please. Already create something in our brain and makes people listen. So if you just give your advice, which becomes unsolicited advice, yeah, you can say that, yeah, they already start thinking of many other things, but they don’t listen to you. But if you say, Would you like me to explain that already creates a feeling of autonomy, a feeling of control of the situation, and also the ability to say no, which, of course, often out of politeness, they will not say no, but it is a kind of a psychological trick, also to give people the feeling, or at least the illusion, of control. Another example, if I say to my kids, if we go, if you go out, you have to wear a jacket because it’s cold outside, you really have to wear a jacket. Every morning we get into a fight. Oh, I don’t want to wear a jacket. I don’t want to wear a jacket, you know, so stressing morning. But if I would give them the illusion of control, if I would just say, Okay, we’re now going outside. Which jacket Do you want to wear today? This jacket or their jacket, then they still were like, jacket jackets. And I say, Yeah, but you know this jacket or that jacket? Oh, give me this one. So. It gives them an illusion of control. I’m still the one who decides that they go out with a jacket. It gives them an illusion of control. So not saying to a farmer, do you like to make? I don’t know, a review of your soil or do you like to but what would you like and so what review would you like us to do, or what follow up would you like us to do? Saying, Do you want a follow up of this meeting? But what follow up would you like to have? So that creates also control of the of the situation, and of course, it’s steering also a bit. But I think that that these are all techniques can be helpful. When it’s about autonomy, when it’s about relatedness, it would also be like, how can I make How can I help you in supporting your employees on the farm? Or how can I help you to transfer this message to your employees? Or what would you need to make this applicable for your employees, or what would you need in order to convince your employees that this is the best way forward? So again, more questions, yes, answers,

Toban Dyck  1:01:10

yeah, that’s great. So have you, have you found, like, I mean, there’s lots to talk about here, because I agree with the questions thing, and I it’s a it’s always that fine line of you don’t want to be you talk about the illusion of control or autonomy, and I get that you don’t want to be patronizing, either or condescending to to people others like, Oh, are you sure you want to do that? You know, that kind of thing, but, but I hear your point, and I think it’s a great one. Have you found through your work that approach to be successful, and that has it led to farmers adopting practices or information in a higher, higher rate.

Jolanda Jansen  1:01:54

Yeah, so many research has been done and is currently going on. Many great researchers at this moment in Scandinavia. Also, youth group is working on that with Katerina Swenson. We have Alison Bart and Chris and ryer in in the UK, doing a lot of work on motivational interviewing. So motivational interviewing is actually the things I did just now asking the questions creating change stocks or reasons for change, and what would be a reason for you to stop drinking alcohol? What would be a reason for you to skip that cake? How can I help you? Or what strategies do you think could help you to say no to that cake or to the to the cold beer? So these are motivational interviewing. Is a very well studied technique in human healthcare, in psychiatry, in addiction, and addiction literature and lifestyle change, literature of humans. And we are now in the process of how effective is it also for lifestyle changes on farms and in farm conversations and yeah, many research at this moment in time is really creating the evidence base around it that it really helps to have different conversations, and therefore creates also a different, different openings. I think we always say that’s also something we say as a company, you know, and many others also say it is, if you do what you did, you get what you got. So if your current approach as an advisor doesn’t work, then please reconsider your communication skills, because if you would use a bit of more motivational interviewing techniques, I think in your in your conversations, then I think your conversations will be more effective, but also you will be more appreciated, because farmers are often really patronized. Yeah, I think that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a big problem here. And I really wish that they are seen as entrepreneurs, as persons, as human beings, not as robots, as and that they are being taken seriously in all these conversations on policies, not talking about them, but talking with them. Because in the talking, in the conversations that you have with people, your norms are created, your thoughts are formed, your knowledge is established. And yes, of course, publications and journals help, and in farm journals help. And yes, going to open Farm Days help. But in the end, it’s about people learning from people, and we need to be able to facilitate those conversations better, instead of just saying we have this policy. Now you farmers. Just do it because that that doesn’t

Jay Whetter  1:05:03

work. Well, I’m so glad we ended on that, because it’s it that’s motivational interviewing concept that you walked us through. Sounds like a great communication tool, which I look forward to trying out. And I’m just thinking like in the case of you with utter health and which is one of the major focuses for you, I guess, in your training, not, not necessarily what you’re doing all the time, but so if you, if a farm hired you or some advisor to come and deal with a potential utter health problem, would you go walk into the herd and say, so what do you? What are you seeing here? And what are you? What are you trying to improve? Like is that how you might start the conversation with the farmer as an advisor?

Jolanda Jansen  1:05:55

Yes, just, just good to know. I’m not, I’m not advising farms on their health. So I’m advising the advisors on their communication, but so don’t ask me about how how to improve other health on the farm.

Jay Whetter  1:06:10

But how would you advise the advisors to have

Jolanda Jansen  1:06:14

so it’s Yeah, so it starts very open, and I think that’s where you also see the effect of why it is so powerful to bring a new pair of eyes to a conversation. Because often you get as a as a vet or as an advisor, for like, 20 years, you’re telling the same thing to the farmer. It needs to change this. And for 20 years, nothing happens. And then suddenly a new person comes in, and then miraculously, the farmer suddenly changes. Because, yeah, this new guy said this and this and this, and you are, like I said it already 20 years. So this all has to do with genuine curiosity and asking those questions. So as a new person, when I come to a farm, I can just start openly. I can just say, Tell me about your farm. Tell me about the history of the farm. Tell me about how you see the future of your farm. Tell me about you know what you feel is important for the next coming years and that already. So in this, say, social opening, that already gives you a lot of information on priorities, on what is on their needs. So if they, for example, say, you know, I’m very busy with the kids, and I love my kids, and I want to spend time with them, you know, hey, time is an important thing. So if later on, I would frame my advice, I can say you need to improve this on your farm, because it will give you a return on investment. But the farmer doesn’t care, because return on investment is maybe not as key priority. But I can say you can do this on your farm, or if you would do this on your farm, how much time would that save you? How much extra time would you now have to spend with your kids? And then suddenly it becomes relevant. So it’s very difficult if you already know your client, your farmer or and the same for farmers, the other way around as well. If you know your advisor already for such a long time, it’s very difficult to start asking these questions again, because, yeah, you know each other already for so long, but things may change. So how you thought of things 20 years ago may not be the same, or may now suddenly become relevant. So to ask these genuine open questions is very powerful. Another powerful thing is the scale question. So if I would ask you, how are you feeling today? On a scale from one to 10, what would you say?

Toban Dyck  1:08:46

Seven feel okay.

Speaker 1  1:08:51

I’d say like 807. Or eight.

Jolanda Jansen  1:09:01

Okay, so then, and then I can continue the conversation. Then I can say, Okay, what makes it a seven? And then, yeah. Now you don’t need to answer that, but then you already start thinking, okay, because of this, and because of that, if I would have started this conversation saying with, how are you, you would just say, Oh, I’m fine, yeah. And so. And that is also if you would ask a farmer, how are, how are things going on a farm? Oh, fine. How’s production going? Oh, great. You know, how is, how is animal health? Oh, okay. And then you have the conversation stops, but if you would then ask further questions, so say, great, good to know everything is great on a scale from one to 10, but it’s great. Oh yeah. Well, on eight, Wow, excellent. Oh, that’s, that’s great to hear. What makes it an EIGHT? Oh yeah, because I’m happy, because of the wheat harvest has gone right and this, and isn’t it, we have good production. Okay. Well, great. Good to know. Just out of queue. Curiosity. You also you didn’t say a nine. So what makes it an eight, not a nine? Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, I have some issues with this and this and this, and it’s so you really create more in depth, in more depth in your conversation, and an openness for sharing, maybe difficulties or problems or barriers you didn’t want to talk about before. So, and then it doesn’t matter if you set seven or if you said eight, it’s not a 10, and it doesn’t need to be a 10, but just, you know, explain, you know, what is it that doesn’t make it a nine, or what is it that doesn’t make it a

Jay Whetter  1:10:40

seven, yeah. So how would you, because we need to wrap up shortly. When you came into when you decided that you might be interested in doing this podcast, you had no idea who we were or what we were trying to do. So how would you rank your your experience over the past hour? She didn’t know? Out of 10. How was this interview? Out of 10?

Jolanda Jansen  1:11:04

If I want to make it easy for myself, I would say a 10, because then you have no follow up.

Speaker 1  1:11:11

Don’t say 10.

Jolanda Jansen  1:11:14

A lovely conversation. It’s too short. Always too short. Always so many things to talk about, right? Definitely, definitely a nine.

Jay Whetter  1:11:25

What would make it a 10? I love it. I love it.

Jolanda Jansen  1:11:29

More time, more time. We should make a series, you know, and have more specific topics and to talk about, I don’t know, whatever.

Jay Whetter  1:11:37

I definitely want to do a podcast on motivational interviewing. I love that concept. Yeah, and you mentioned a number of names who are specialists in that. Maybe you could say them one more time, and maybe we should ask about interviewing them. But I would love to interview you again. To Yolanda, this has been an absolute pleasure, for

Toban Dyck  1:11:58

sure, for sure, and it’s especially relevant. I do want to hear those names again too, because Jay and I are actually doing a tomorrow. This is my way of reminding Jay about it as well. We are, we are teaching a course tomorrow, a training session on communication, so we can bring this motivational interviewing to that virtual follow up that we’re doing. So this is very relevant, and we’re going to put it to use right away. But yeah, those names would be

Jolanda Jansen  1:12:28

great. Yeah, yeah. So it’s good to dive into that. Of course you can, there’s, there are lots of there’s lots of information on motivational interviewing. So it’s by, originally by Miller and roll Nick in human healthcare, but now in livestock, for example, there are many people working on that. Alison Bart, Bristol University, Kristin ryer, Bristol University. They are kind of a group together, having published many things on this. Katerina Swenson from, if I’m correctly, the Swedish University, veterinary University, I’m not sure exactly, is, has published a lot on that, Linda daughterstein, PhD student that we have supported in her research, also published a lot on on this. So it’s good to see they’re more so specifically now focus on livestock. There is more knowledge being created on this topic, but good to know that motivational interviewing, if you Google it, you get a lot of information.

Jay Whetter  1:13:32

Yolanda, thank you so much. Yeah, this has been an absolute treat, for sure. It has been great to meet you virtually through the podcast,

Toban Dyck  1:13:41

yeah, and like, I think the, I think the idea of interviewing guests more than once is a good one. I feel like we should explore that idea, because it’s like, yeah, an hour is too short, and I have a whole bunch of questions written down here that I did not get to, get to ask. So, yeah, definitely ripe for a follow up. I

Jay Whetter  1:14:04

Hey there, listeners. If you’re enjoying the conversations here on the extensionist, you will probably love to get our newsletter.

Toban Dyck  1:14:10

Yeah, it’s the best way to stay connected with us, with Jay and and myself. Yours truly, I’m excited about the newsletter to be honest with you, because I think well, so many of our guests have sorry. Why are you excited about say that differently? Jay, so many of our guests are they say so many things of interest, right? And I feel like the newsletter will be a great will be a great way to share that with our

Jay Whetter  1:14:36

listeners, like quick take homes, yeah? Summaries, yeah. Absolutely, one liner, absolutely,

Toban Dyck  1:14:41

absolutely, I think about each each guest, we could probably write a whole bunch of articles from each of our guests, right? So to give our our newsletter subscribers, like summaries of, you know, the key takeaways of these things, plus, plus information on upcoming guests. All they got to do, all listeners have to do is. Go to the extensions.com and follow the prompts to sign up for the newsletter. I think it’ll be I think it’ll be great.

Jay Whetter  1:15:11

I really enjoyed meeting Yolanda, so thanks to Mark Campbell for mentioning her in the interview we had with him last year.

Toban Dyck  1:15:18

But yeah, that conversation was so, like, bright and was crisp, and just like, I love her energy. And, man, yeah.

Jay Whetter  1:15:31

Like, if you know, the virtual ones aren’t as easy as in studio, obviously, but I felt she had enough energy. I felt like we were sitting right across the

Toban Dyck  1:15:40

table from, yeah, she carried that deficit. No, no problem. And it was, like, it was, yeah, I I just get so I get wrapped up in this idea of, we speak to people, you know, we now, we’re doing this more, which is great, you know, across the pond, overseas, and you see, you get this, like, global sense of the of agriculture, and you you start to kind of develop a picture of how a lot of the challenges are exactly the same. But there are various people who are in groups who are more advanced, like, who’ve gone further down the road than us right then here in Canada, or whatever, you know, and there’ll be, there’ll be, you know, vice versa in some cases, but it’s like, how? So you have it on a nation by nation level, these communications challenges. But how do you take that globally? How do you like, okay, how can we now bring this to to Canada and implement it? I find it so fascinating.

Jay Whetter  1:16:33

Well, I just enjoy taking those ideas and sharing them with people. Maybe that’s our job. But I really liked my highlight, and there was a few, but rate right at the end, when she was talking about that, motivational interviewing, yeah, like, how did, like, how does this? How do you feel about this? Or, how do

Toban Dyck  1:16:53

you one to 10 versus how you feel? Yeah, that’s good. That is good.

Jay Whetter  1:16:57

Yeah, on a scale of one to 10, what do you think about your weed control, yeah, you know, like, or on a scale of one to 10, how do you feel about your diseases in your crop or your or your other health, or how you’re doing? But no, I just rambling, yeah,

Toban Dyck  1:17:15

well, I think, I think, like so, so what is the takeaway there, right? So you have, okay, so you have this one to 10 thing. But is that, is, is that it, or is it the fact that it’s different, right? So is it the fact that you’re asking the one to 10? And that would work every time, because if you say, say, you ask one to 10 every time you become known as the person who asks one to 10, people gonna be like, seven, and they’ll be like, Why? Like, I don’t know. Well, then becomes the fine of, how are you feeling?

Jay Whetter  1:17:45

Yeah, except the follow up is, and how do you make it an EIGHT?

Toban Dyck  1:17:49

So, right, sure, yeah. But I’ll get right to my point. My point is, I think diversity is the is the it might be the crux. So you can’t ask the one to 10 every time ask it differently. Yeah, find ways to ask the same thing differently, right? So I think but, but, but, but, I don’t want to lose the one to 10, because I think that’s really good, and so I definitely going to use that. But I agree with you, the motivational interviewing is very It’s good. It’s a good way to think

Jay Whetter  1:18:22

about I mean, if you’re an agronomist doing a wrap up on the year, maybe you could say, like, on a scale of one to 10, how was your canola crop this year? And then, and then, kind of, rather than sort of giving a lecture about you needed to do this on weed control, or you need, I’m not saying agronomists do this because they usually have very good relationships with their customers, but, but I’m just thinking a new approach to getting to getting at the issue, the real top issues for the farmer, and then how to walk through, yeah, what they might do differently next year to address those, but through this motivational interviewing,

Toban Dyck  1:18:59

yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s fascinating. I think we just, we learn. We learn so much on this podcast. It’s, it’s, it’s wild, hey, like, my head, I’m thinking, like, how do we really can this, yeah, like, we have these interviews with so many great people, and it’s just like, man, yeah, everything is just, is kind of earth shattering. It’s like, holy cow, this could change things, right? Yeah, every, every, every interview. It’s like, how do we Yeah, how do we do this? Do people know? People need to know? How do we tell them? But no, it was. It was such a great it was. It’s such a great interview. I love, I love how, like, you know people who live in certain countries are just just born into diversity, right? So some people you know grew up in Switzerland is another example. You grew up speaking like, five languages. I’m like, how amazing, how rich of an experience must that be? They don’t necessarily know, because that’s what they grew up with, but you that’s insane English and, like, I can butcher maybe two other languages. I mean, like, seriously,

Jay Whetter  1:20:13

butcher. I can butcher one other language. This has been the extensionists Podcast. I’m Jay wetter

Toban Dyck  1:20:21

and I’m Toban Dyck. Till next time,

Jay Whetter  1:20:28

this has been a burr forest group production,

Toban Dyck  1:20:30

we also want to thank the people working behind the scenes to make this podcast happen. Abby wall is our producer and editor. Ashley Robinson is our coordinator, and Michelle Holden is our designer.