Conversations for Change
The right conversation changes everything.
Most of us who work with animals do it because we want to make a difference. We’ve spent years building the knowledge and skills to help so it can be deeply frustrating when clients leave the consultation agreeing to everything we say then doing nothing we suggested. What if the problem isn’t them, but how we approach the conversation?
Conversations for Change is a structured communications training programme based around Motivational Interviewing (MI) that helps veterinary and rural professional teams develop a more collaborative approach to client conversations, changing not just outcomes for animals but how consultations feel for everyone involved.
Moving from Fixer to Facilitator
Working with animals naturally attracts fixer personalities. We hear a problem, we see a solution, our helping instinct kicks in, and we can’t hold back from giving our advice. While we’re usually not wrong, we just don’t seem to be getting the right response. And yet we keep doing it, even though most of us know from our own experience that being told what to do and why we should do it rarely makes us actually want to do it.
Motivational Interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based approach to having conversations built on the insight that people are more likely to change when they come up with their own reasons and plan for doing so. MI training provides you with the skills to shift from being a fixer to a facilitator who guides clients towards their own solutions rather than providing them.
Experience the Difference
Leveling Up Your Conversation Skills
Learning MI is like learning how to perform surgery. You start with an overview of what good surgical technique looks like, practice the individual skills until they become second nature, and then put them together into a complete procedure with supervision and feedback on models and real patients until you reach competency. From there, you learn how to apply those same skills across many different surgical procedures you encounter in practice.
MI is not something you can learn overnight or from a single workshop. Like any complex skill, it requires deliberate practice, regular feedback, and time to embed before it becomes natural. Our programme is structured across 18 months, with the first six months focused on developing core competency in the foundational skills, and the following twelve months building proficiency through application to the specific conversations that matter most in your role.
1.
getting Oriented (Weeks 1-2)
Before practicing MI, you need to understand what good practice looks like and why it works. This stage introduces the theory of behaviour change, the evidence base for MI, and an overview of the skills you'll be developing. You'll finish this stage with a clear picture of what competent MI practice looks like before you start practicing it yourself.
2.
Foundational Skills (months 1 to 3)
The building blocks of every MI conversation. This stage focuses on the core skills of empathic listening: open questions, reflections, affirmations, summaries, and how to share information and advice in a way that invites rather than instructs. Skills are practiced in everyday conversations first, where the stakes are low and the opportunities are frequent, before being applied in professional contexts.
3.
Putting It All Together (months 3 to 6)
With foundational skills becoming more automatic, this stage introduces the full MI framework: the four processes, recognising and responding to change talk and sustain talk, and navigating barriers to change. Skills continue to be practiced in everyday conversations alongside increasingly complex professional contexts, with supervision and structured feedback on recorded conversations.
4.
Context-Specific Application (months 6 to 18)
The same skills applied to the specific conversations that matter most in your role. Veterinary teams work through condition-specific modules covering both what to communicate about a clinical situation and how to communicate it in an MI-consistent way. Farm advisors and rural professionals work through modules relevant to their context. Other organisations develop bespoke modules tailored to their specific needs. Each module includes assessment of both content and communication competency.
Training Pathways
No two individuals, practices, or organisations are the same. Conversations for Change is designed to be adaptable, fitting around how you work, what your team needs, and the conversations that matter most in your context. Whether you’re looking to develop your own skills, transform how your whole practice communicates, or build a programme for your organisation, there is a pathway for you.
For Individuals
If you want to develop your communication skills independently, you can join one of our small cohort programmes. You’ll move through the stages alongside a group of peers from different practices, which gives you the practice partners and shared learning that skills development requires.
Individual cohorts run with up to ten participants from different practices, with monthly group coaching sessions delivered online and individual feedback on recorded conversations at each assessment point.
What’s included:
- Access to all online learning modules for each stage
- Monthly group coaching session with a trained facilitator
- Individual feedback on recorded conversations at Stage 2 and Stage 3 assessment points
- Condition-specific modules of your choice at Stage 4
- Certificate of completion at each stage
Cohorts will be running periodically throughout the year starting in January 2027.
For Veterinary Clinics
The research is clear that individual training without whole-team buy-in produces modest gains that fade quickly. When everyone is working from the same framework, something different happens to the culture of a practice. We work with the whole team, from vets and AVPs to receptionists and practice managers, with the practice as the buyer and delivery tailored to your size, species focus, and schedule.
Whole-practice delivery is flexible and designed around how your practice actually works. You choose the format that suits your team.
Online modules give each team member the flexibility to work through content in their own time, with monthly group coaching sessions bringing the team together to practice and reflect. In-clinic facilitated delivery brings the training to your practice, working with your whole team in your own environment using your own clinical scenarios. Offsite group workshops give your team a dedicated space away from the practice to learn together, and work well for practices wanting a more intensive start to the programme.
Most practices use a combination. A facilitated foundation session to get the whole team started together, followed by online modules and monthly coaching to embed skills over time.
What’s included across the 18-month programme:
- Foundation delivery in your preferred format
- Online learning modules for all stages
- Monthly group coaching sessions
- Individual feedback on recorded conversations at Stage 2 and Stage 3 assessment points
- Up to three condition-specific modules at Stage 4
- AVP certification for completed condition modules
- Practice accreditation on programme completion
Pricing is based on practice size and delivery format. Get in touch for a quote specific to your practice.
For Organisations
For veterinary schools, industry bodies, agricultural organisations, and large practice groups, we develop programmes that integrate the training into your existing frameworks and workforce. The foundational content is the same, while the delivery and context-specific application is tailored to your needs.
Organisational programmes are scoped and priced individually. Get in touch to start the conversation.
One-Off Workshops
Not ready to commit to a full programme? Our one-day introductory workshop gives you and your team a hands-on experience of MI-informed conversation in a supported environment.
The workshop covers the evidence behind MI, the foundational skills of empathic listening, and hands-on practice with real scenarios. By the end of the day you’ll have a clear sense of what collaborative conversation looks and feels like and whether it’s right for your team.
Cost: $3,500 per workshop with up to 20 participants. Travel and accommodation additional for delivery outside Palmerston North.
Workshops are a great starting point for understanding MI and experiencing the difference a collaborative approach makes. Developing lasting skills requires ongoing practice and feedback beyond a single day. Ask us about our full training programme.
Two and three-day formats are available for practices wanting a more intensive introduction. Contact us to discuss.
Communication Snapshot
Understanding where your practice or organisation currently sits is the first step toward meaningful change. The Communication Snapshot gives you an independent, structured assessment of how your team communicates with clients, combining four sources of information:
- Staff self-assessment: how your team perceives their own communication skills and confidence across different consultation types
- Client experience survey: how clients experience communication with your practice, capturing what they value and where they feel unheard
- Recorded consultation analysis: a sample of real consultations coded against validated communication criteria to identify specific strengths and development areas
- Written report and debrief: a clear summary of findings with specific recommendations, followed by a conversation to discuss next steps
The Communication Snapshot is available as a standalone service and is a natural starting point for practices or organisations considering Conversations for Change.
Priced from $3,000. Contact us to discuss what’s right for your practice.
Consultations feel less like pushing uphill
Instead of bracing for resistance, you find yourself having conversations where clients are doing most of the talking and arriving at their own reasons to change. The difficult conversations that used to drain you start to feel different.
Clients follow through more
Not because you've found a better way to persuade them, but because the plan came from them rather than being handed to them. The gap between what you recommend and what actually happens at home or on the farm starts to close.
Your team finds a shared language
When everyone is working from the same framework, something shifts in how the practice feels. AVPs and nurses step into conversations with more confidence. Receptionists handle difficult calls differently. New staff can get up to speed quickly with a shared approach rather than figuring it out alone.
What to Expect After Adopting MI
Switching to a more collaborative approach to conversations takes practice and feels unfamiliar at first. But practitioners who make the shift consistently describe the same changes.
And perhaps most importantly, you start to feel like the expertise you’ve spent years building is actually making a difference. Not just in the room, but for the animals in your care.
About Carolyn
Training Director
I remember being an excited new graduate, bursting with the knowledge I’d earned through years of hard work, and wanting to share all of it with every client I met. I settled comfortably into the role of expert in the white coat, and that tendency stayed with me as I moved into research and teaching roles at Massey University. For over a decade I believed that giving good advice was the same as helping people. I had no idea my fixer instinct was actually getting in the way of my mission to help people help animals.
It took a simple 30-minute exercise at an introductory MI workshop in 2022 to change the trajectory of my career. When I started applying the skills to my clinical practice and personal relationships, the shift in how conversations felt was immediate. For the first time I understood how to actually demonstrate empathic listening and support people through change rather than pushing them towards it.
Read More
As part of building AkoVet, an organisation founded on the belief that lives are made better when we take the time to learn from each other, it became a priority to close the gap in MI training for animal health professionals. This was my motivation for enrolling in a postgraduate diploma in Health Behaviour Change at the University of Canterbury to explore the evidence base in depth and understand how to integrate MI into veterinary practice in a way that actually works.
Conversations for Change brings together the science of how people change with the same philosophy and approach that earned me multiple university, national, and international teaching awards, including a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy and the Prime Minister’s Educator of the Year in 2022. I also bring my skills as an internationally recognised veterinary epidemiologist to evaluating the impact of MI training on people, practices, and the veterinary profession to constantly improve how we deliver it.
FAQs
What contexts do you provide MI training for?
While our training is grounded in veterinary clinical practice, we work across a range of animal health and welfare contexts including rural and farm advisory, animal welfare and rescue organisations, and compliance and regulatory roles. If your work involves having conversations with people about animals, the programme is relevant to you.
Can't I just attend an MI workshop?
Most of us leave communications workshops feeling inspired and equipped, but the research evidence consistently shows that those short-term gains in confidence and skills fade quickly without ongoing practice, coaching feedback, and support from our managers and colleagues. While a workshop is a great way to get a general overview of MI and understand how it might fit with your practice, changing deeply ingrained communication patterns requires more than a day in a room. That’s why we’ve structured our 18-month training programme around what the research says works.
Check out these references below for more detailed information on the evidence behind training MI:
- Schwalbe, Craig S., Hans Y. Oh, and Allen Zweben. “Sustaining motivational interviewing: A meta‐analysis of training studies.” Addiction 109.8 (2014): 1287-1294.
- Madson, Michael B., Andrew C. Loignon, and Claire Lane. “Training in motivational interviewing: A systematic review.” Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment 36.1 (2009): 101-109.
- Söderlund, Lena Lindhe, et al. “A systematic review of motivational interviewing training for general health care practitioners.” Patient Education and Counseling 84.1 (2011): 16-26.
Barwick, Melanie A., et al. “Training health and mental health professionals in motivational interviewing: A systematic review.” Children and Youth Services Review 34.9 (2012): 1786-1795.
Can I learn MI on my own?
A big part of MI is the relational component of developing connections with other people through conversation. You can learn the theory independently, but without practice partners and structured feedback your progress will be slower and you risk developing unhelpful habits without realising it. We know not everyone has the opportunity to practice within their workplace or home, which is why we are introducing cohort-based learning for individuals.
How long does it take to learn MI?
That’s a bit like asking how long it takes for someone to learn how to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano. A lot depends on your current skill level, your natural aptitude, and how much time you spend practicing. Some people will get there quickly and some people will require more coaching and deliberate practice, but everyone can learn MI eventually.
For most people, achieving basic competency in MI usually takes around six months of regular practice with feedback. Achieving real proficiency across a range of clinical contexts takes much longer, which is why our programme runs over 18 months. MI is not a technique you learn once in a workshop and tick off. It’s a skill that evolves over time with the reward of improving the quality of conversations you have in your professional and personal life.
How does your program handle staff turnover?
Staff turnover is one of the reasons we built the programme the way we did. New team members can onboard at any stage, and we aim to develop practice champions within your team who can support ongoing learning without relying on us long term. Your shared communication approach and resources stay with the practice regardless of who comes and goes.
Do we need any prior knowledge of MI?
No. Stage 1 starts from scratch and assumes no prior knowledge. If some team members have existing MI training, we can assess their current level and place them appropriately in the programme.
How much does training cost?
Programme pricing is based on practice size, delivery format, and the modules selected. Contact us for a quote specific to your context.
Ready for a change?
If you have questions about training options or want to find out whether Conversations for Change is right for you, fill in the form below and we will be in touch.
