Hello and welcome to this webinar on effective communication, a guide for farm vets. My name is Fiona McGilvery, and I run Macvet Cattle Communications Limited. I'd like to thank the webinar vet for hosting this webinar, and I'd like to thank you for your interest in this topic.

So in order to give you some context into this presentation, I'd just like to share some background on my career and areas of interest. I qualified in 1998 and worked in practise for eight years. Before moving into the world of animal health, first as a vet advisor and then in marketing roles.

In 2016, I set up my own consultancy business, and one of the services we provide is communication, is training on communication. And on coaching communication skills. In last year I completed a Master of Research degree at Nottingham University vet school.

And that studied nonverbal communication on farm. And I'm excited to share that the research will soon be published in the Journal of Dairy Science, so please keep a lookout for that. And for a bit of variety, I also am a qualified personal trainer and run group exercise classes.

So throughout my career, I've had er conversations that I've enjoyed, dreaded and found frustrating, depending on who I was speaking to and what it was about. My formal interest in learning more about communication and how my experience of it could be improved, began when I worked in animal health, and I'd enrolled on a course that was designed to help me to work with difficult people. And that course sparked my interest to learn more about human behaviour and how it influences communication.

My approach to creating this webinar on effective communication was to incorporate information on behaviour and behaviour change from fields such as neuroscience, psychology, ethology, and nonverbal communication. I'd like to point out that throughout the presentation, I'll be talking about humans and cows. So if you are working with other farmer species, I hope most of the principles presented are transferable to your relationship with the farmers that you work with.

OK. So the webinar's been structured into 3 segments which should help us get to the heart of how to have more effective communication on farm. The content within each segment is covered in greater detail, with practical sessions included in the communication skills training courses that are delivered by Macvet.

Today we'll start by considering what is the purpose of the interactions that we have on farm. For example, we'd like better uptake of the advice that we give. We'd like farmers to feel more engaged around herd health planning.

We want to encourage behaviour change to improve herd health and performance. By defining what are the benefits of effective communication, we can have a better appreciation of how to achieve it. Which brings us on to the second segment where we're going to deconstruct what we mean by communication.

We're gonna define what communication is, how our messages are transmitted and and received, and consider how the use of verbal and non-verbal communication can influence effective conversations. We're going to focus on dyadic communication or conversation, so one to ones. It's worth considering that other means and methods of communication, so things like written documents and emails or speaking to groups of people, they can present different challenges to achieve effective outcomes.

And it's possible to improve those skills, too, but this, that's outside of the remit of this presentation. And then in the final segment, I'd like to challenge a view held by some, which is that good communication, good communicators are born that way. Communication skills can indeed be learned and developed through effort and practise.

And by adopting a growth mindset, you get the opportunity to improve your non-clinical skills such as communication, and which is so important when it comes to having effective conversations. And then to help with this, we'll look at some verbal and non-verbal skills that you can put into practise straight away if you choose. And I always encourage people to try these skills out on friends, family, and colleagues to help build confidence, so that you feel more comfortable with this approach once you get onto farm.

OK. So again, going back to the communication trainings when we run these, we often like to start by asking everyone to consider or think of an example, or a couple of examples of what it's like as a farm vet when things go well. And the general feeling is that things go well because expectations have been clearly set and mutually understood.

Their communication seems to be a really common factor when we're asking people to think about what went right and the associated elements of that. And what, and the situations where things went well. But then let's turn to when things go wrong.

And often the people involved have different expectations of a situation. And the outcomes can feel quite unpredictable. Experiencing these situations can feel quite traumatic and stressful.

Now, of course, it's unrealistic to expect that things won't go wrong again. However, we know that communication can influence positive or negative outcomes. So surely it's worth exploring and spending a little bit more time learning about, communication.

So as we said before, we're gonna start with the end of the beginning, so we want to know where we want to get to by our use of communication skills. So what influence does effective communication have on our vet farmer relationships? Ultimately, we're aiming to make the people we work with feel comfortable during our interactions.

And this fosters a sense of trust, so we can have more open and honest conversations. Being able to understand others' emotions and seeing things from their perspective makes us more empathic. And that helps us to better understand the actions that people take if we appreciate their reasons for taking those actions.

Effective communication makes people feel more engaged in conversations and discussions and in the activities and planning that we often do on farm. And when there is trust, empathy and engagement, our interactions are more likely to influence behaviour change, which should in turn facilitate better herd health and performance. So, let's define what we mean by engagement in general terms.

Engagement is a term used in psychology, and it's often used to describe the way someone is involved in performing a task. People can demonstrate positive engagement through active participation in a task, putting in concerted effort, and adhering to set guidelines or rules. Feeling a sense of belonging to a workplace, a group or community can mean you're more likely to feel engaged in associated tasks within those groups.

And if someone is completely absorbed in and mentally focused on a task, on the task in hand, this shows a strong sense of engagement. But why is it useful for farm vets to know what engagement is and how to recognise the level of engagement that farmers might be showing? Well, Let's say you've established that lameness is something that needs to be tackled on the farm.

You've developed an SOP and you've rolled this out to the farmer and to the farm workers. So what might engagement look like with regards to this plan? So perhaps the farmer says they're prepared to make the changes you recommend.

They're happy, they seem to smile, nod, agreement. Is that engagement? Well, let's have a look at some other options.

Perhaps the farmer says they're happy to do things differently. However, when you go back on subsequent visits, you don't really see any evidence that the what you discussed is being, the plans are being put into place. So there's no changes that you're seeing there.

So that might suggest that perhaps engagement wasn't so great. Perhaps the farmer challenges the protocol that you've handed over what you've run through, and they actually say, well, it's not going to work on this farm. The good thing there, at least you're getting some feedback, and perhaps that gives you the opportunity to discuss in more detail what else could be done.

However, that would probably suggest not engaged in the current plan. Or maybe the farmer challenges the protocol, and yet they suggest alternative ways to achieve the same outcomes. So that's great, you've got some active dialogue there, you know what the the mutual outcome is that you're trying to achieve, and both of you are coming with different ideas to see how you can get there.

So what might this mean to you in terms of how engagement looks like on the farm? Things like job satisfaction. If you've gone and found out a lot about the best ways to approach lameness, but you get poor uptake of your advice, that can feel really frustrating.

You've taken a lot of time, effort and passion, putting things, putting into writing reports, etc. And yet you don't see that translated into changes on farm. That can feel really frustrating.

It can obviously have an impact on animal health and welfare because you're not seeing the improvements to disease control or health management as you'd expect or hope for. And sometimes it can feel really frustrating if perhaps your colleagues are able to come in, and they seem to have better success on some farms than yourself. And you sort of think, well, why could that be?

So, Let's have a little bit of a closer look at engagement, and let's consider, is it actually possible to influence someone else's level of engagement? So a really useful way to understand engagement in, in humans, has been devised and put forward by a neuroscientist called Doctor David Rock as we can see in the bottom left corner of the slide. And he's developed something called the Scarf model.

And this helps to explain the conditions that influence a sense of engagement by considering and understanding how people tend to think and feel about themselves and the people that they interact with. So in different social situations. You can have stimulation of a reward feeling, a reward response, and we can see that with the on the right hand side here, smiley face, or situation might be perceived as a threat.

So we'll have a threat response seen on the left. And this is a subconscious process. So if a situation does feel threatening, then the brain wants to avoid those situations.

We see a release of glucocorticoids and high levels of circulating cortisol, and that translates into feelings of anxiety, stress, and unhappiness. Example, perhaps someone is asked to perform a skill that they're weak in. It could be foot trimming, and probably that's subconsciously, certainly where I felt quite weak when I was in practise.

This could make them feel threatened, as they know they're poorly skilled in that area. However, if something is perceived as a reward. The brain wants us to experience more of these situations, and we see a release of the feel good hormone dopamine.

Which gives positive emotions such as curiosity, pleasure, and creativity. Example, for a farm worker, this could be learning how to make sure the calves are getting enough colostrum in the 1st 6 or so hours after birth. Seeing that improvement in calf health and receiving positive feedback from the vet is likely to trigger reward response.

So then let's look in more detail at the scarf model itself. So we've got 5 elements here that explain how human behaviour is driven by those perceived social concerns or triggers. So first off, we've got status.

And this can relate to where you feel you fit within a team or a group and how that influences your sense of worth. Certainty Considers how well you feel you can predict future events. And that could be maybe about job security, progression within a role.

And then autonomy. How much control you feel you have about making choices in your life? Do you have the opportunity to choose what you do and when you do it?

Relatedness, do you have a sense of trust or distrust of the people you work or interact with? Do they have similar values, opinions, and outlook to you? And then fairness, how reasonable do you feel the decisions made about you have been?

Do you feel you're working in a just and fair environment? OK, so, so that's sort of a general overview of of engagement and probably that would apply to, to sort of workplaces. So again, you're probably thinking, how will that relate to, to farmers and the farms I work with.

So let's see about relating that model to to farmers. OK, so what's the structure on the farm? Maybe there's different generations working together.

How does that all fit together? How do people feel that they sit within that team? Maybe you've got part-time staff, you've maybe got staff shortages.

Perhaps there are other advisors involved in herd management. And are you aware of that team, of the team dynamics? And where would you sit within that team?

And then probably many farms are facing a lot of uncertainty at the moment. How could you help with that? Perhaps you could help guide farmers through some of the new government initiatives such as the the new DA pathway.

Perhaps you could facilitate better understanding of the funds that could be gained through that pathway. Looking at choice, how much input do you ask for before making changes in management practises or writing reports to ensure the farmer has some sense of control and choice. Trust, how trusting do you feel your farmers are?

Are they quite open about sharing concerns or ideas with you? And then fairness. If there's several people working on the farm, is the best person for the job being asked to do something, or maybe they need to be upskilled.

So it's possible to apply these principles of engagement, bearing in mind we're all humans working together, it's quite useful to have that sort of background knowledge. OK. So we considered what the end goal might be, which is to have effective and engaging conversations with our farmers to improve herd health and management practises.

But how can we go about achieving that goal? Of course, it's important to have the skill and knowledge to understand the cow. Learning what she's telling us using our eyes, ears, hands.

And to achieve this, our education began at vet school. We invested, and then we invest time to attend CPD. To keep abreast of the latest knowledge and evidence from experts and peers.

But how much time was spent at vet school? Learning about the people who care for the cow. How much time and focus do we spend on improving our skills to communicate with our farmers?

And by developing a better understanding of human behaviour and learning how communication style and approach can influence this, we can work as well with humans as we do with cows. So, what is communication? OK, so communication is the exchange of information, thoughts and intentions.

You humans have the unique ability to communicate verbally. And of course this can be done in the form of spoken and written words. Verbal communication allows us to exchange ideas and information about complex subjects such as philosophy, mathematics, and veterinary science.

It also allows us to check others' understanding of what we've said or written. It allows us to explore what others think of the advice we've given. Or the herd health plans we're working on.

And a fun fact, did you know that humans currently use around 7000 different languages across the world? Let's think about the information that vets typically need to communicate verbally. So we might have technically detailed plans or protocols to discuss.

We might have mastitis control plans to talk about colostrum management plans. We might need to discuss or explainer practical skills. That need to be done on farms, so things like milk sampling, injection technique.

We might have SOPs, standard operating procedures that need to be explained in terms of who does what and when. So our first communication challenge is to be able to communicate technical terms and complex processes. So let's start by what, considering what you're saying.

Most of us learn to talk in a reasonably comprehensive way, from 12 to 18 months of age. Throughout school, our teachers help us to develop our language and by the time we qualify as vets, we know all sorts of complicated terms and acronyms. Speaking to other vets feels comfortable, and it feels good to hold conversations using the vocabulary we spent 5 or 6 years developing.

If we're not speaking to other vets though, using technical terms or complex words could mean that the other person doesn't understand what it is we're saying. This kind of thing caught me out when I recently returned to the world of academia for my masters. I hadn't a clue what one of my supervisors was talking about when she asked me to start writing up my project by explaining it in epistemological terms.

It also took me a long time to be able to say that. Pronounce it. And even after discovered that epistemology is the nature of knowledge.

I struggled to really understand how I could possibly write about it in my project design. And it, to be honest, it kind of made me feel out of my depth. So when you're speaking about technical and complex details.

It's always worth making sure that the language is as clear and easy to understand as possible. So discussing calf pneumonia, for example. You might mention which pathogens you want to test for.

You suspect it might be Manheimia hemolytica causing the infection. It's worth remembering that farmers can find some vets hard to relate to if they use too much technical language. And that can create a barrier with farmers feeling that the vet gives an impression of being aloof and someone who speaks on a different level.

For a round table discussion between vets and farmers on communication that I was involved in, one of the farmers related his experience. So he told us, this vet was incredibly knowledgeable. Every time he'd come on the farm, he'd drill off every Latin name you could imagine for what was going on.

You can imagine he didn't last very long. It was all well and good, but he wasn't telling us what to do. He was just showing how much he knew.

So quite a heartfelt comment from that farmer. This isn't always the case, of course, and with some farmers it might feel more appropriate to use more technical language. But generally, it's a good idea to use clear and simple language when discussing protocols, disease management, technical er complex issues.

Another potential issue with what you're saying could be that you thought you explained or said something, however, that isn't what the other person has heard or understood, i.e., there's a mis misunderstanding going on.

And that's what we're gonna look at next. You may remember from the first few slides, I didn't actually list art classes being in my background. But for the purposes of illustrating how messages are sent and received, I'd like to share my stickman creation with you.

So to, to better appreciate how misunderstandings can occur, we'll look at the process of verbal communication between two people. So the sender wants to share a message. And this could be saying what they think would be the best way to control calf sco on the farm, calf sco on the farm.

So they encode what it is they want to say. And they speak the words that they feel will explain this. The receiver hears those spoken words.

They process the words and they interpret them, and this is called decoding. And then they have their own understanding of the message that was transmitted. The sender can get a sense of whether the message was received in the way it was intended.

When the receiver responds verbally. Or they make facial or body movements or gestures that would suggest either understanding, you might get a head nod or perhaps misunderstanding or surprise, you might get raised eyebrows or a head shake or a shrug. And sometimes it can be quite funny when a misunderstanding happens.

And certainly if you're observing this, rather than being part of the misunderstanding, that could be the case. And a great example of misunderstandings being quite amusing would be the two Ronnie sketch, the 4 candles, or is it the fork handles, of course. I might be showing my age there.

Sometimes you might think you've spoken or written something with one single clear meaning. And we've got another example here in the middle of the screen, only to realise there was actually an alternative interpretation. So when asked to show you're working out, you could argue that the person who's responded to that question, has certainly satisfied, from their point of view, the objective.

But on a serious note, misunderstandings can actually lead to frustration and disengagement. So it's always worth checking each other's understanding of something you've discussed, especially if you're expecting someone to make changes as a result of the conversation. So to sum up, what is the importance of what you say?

Effective communication occurs when information is passed from one person's brain to another person's brain with minimum interference. To help us achieve this, let's always think about these 4 key points. Using language that everyone can understand and avoiding technical jargon or technical terms.

Keep to the point and strive to use as little as possible and as much as necessary information. And I recently came across a wonderful expression. Don't tell someone how to build a clock if all they asked for was the time.

Where possible and feasible, try to include images. Perhaps you've got a pen and paper to hand or the farm office has got a white board, and you might want to, dabble in the creation of a few stick men to illustrate a point. And the best way to check understanding is to ask the person to explain back to you what you've said, asked, or agreed to.

So let's now consider our communication approach or how we say things. I'm back to thinking about the general approach to animal health and welfare on farms. As farm vets, I would say we're typically brilliant and really keen investigators, .

Explorers, intelligent problem solvers, really love to have a challenge. We like to get more information, knowledge and expertise to truly become experts in our field. And most vets.

Love, er, as I say, wants to do the best job to overcome issues that are presented. Many of us may love to write detailed reports designed to offer solutions for disease control and improved welfare. But is this a useful approach to take if we want to have effective communication or conversations?

And in the next communication challenge that we're gonna look at is how to have conversations about change. Certainly, when we look at sort of external initiatives, a very topical subject is the use of antimicrobials, of course. And I just wanted to point out some of the statements that were included in a recently published paper on the topic of antimicrobial use in dairy herds.

So in this paper, in the first, on the first page, the authors have stated that the various paths to achieving the desired changes in antimicrobial use illustrate the need to bridge methodological research approaches of veterinary science and social sciences for a better understanding of our potential to change antimicrobial use within the dairy farm animal sector. They go on to say overall farmers and veterinarians must communicate better, to understand each other's perspectives and establish common goals within the collaboration if they are to work efficiently to reduce antimicrobial use. So that's our challenge.

Again, looking at research and and papers, articles that have been published over the last few years. It highlights the fact that the way we approach conversations about farm management changes can influence outcomes. And the current findings from academia suggest that doctors and vets would benefit from taking a more collaborative approach in their interactions.

When communication between doctors and their patients and vets and their clients has been studied, it seems that the style of verbal communication tends to be quite paternalistic or directive. A little bit along the lines of the paper we just looked at perhaps. So this means that decisions on how to approach disease control or medical interventions usually come from the doctor or vet, with little or no input from the patient or client.

And when considered in the context of behaviour change, it seems that this approach is not always helpful. People are often, people who are aware that changes need to happen, so it could be being overweight, increases the risk of cancer and heart disease, or it could be that high levels of herd lameness mean welfare conditions are compromised. Those people often have already thought about making changes.

And vets and doctors naturally want to solve problems and provide solutions as we've already spoken about, which means that we tend to adopt this paternalistic approach in our conversations, however, and it's our natural human tendency to want to set things right. However, what this results in is what's known in motivational interviewing, which we'll talk about in a moment. As we we naturally come into something called the writing reflex.

So it's a communication style, motivational interviewing is that encourages a more cooperative approach to discuss thing to discuss change. So the writing reflex is driven by a well-intentioned desire to help. So it's not like we're setting out to be unhelpful, but without involving the farmer, when we make decisions about the best way to approach tackling disease or health protocols, we risk not understanding what the farmer has already been considering.

And here's a quote from a well-known dairy farmer, again, who was involved in the roundtable discussion, which really sort of resonated with me when she said there has to be a lot of understanding, and she works really well with her vet, I know, about what could work on our farm and what the vet's trying to suggest that I do. So this just really sort of highlights what we, what we've mentioned there. Mhm So motivational interviewing, some of you may have come across it.

It's been studied in multiple disciplines such as dentistry, addiction, therapy, medicine, and farm vet practise. So, adopting an an MI approach to conversations moves us away from telling someone what's the best way to achieve change on the farm, reducing loans, for example. And it moves us towards a more collaborative approach, where there's mutual recognition of an issue on the farm.

And then planning together to work out realistic and achievable ways to address the issue. The basis for conversations when using an MI approach are around partnership. And we're recognising that each of us are an expert in our own right, so the vet expert in veterinary medicine, the farmer, an expert in in his farm and what could possibly be done on the farm.

The approach promotes the intrinsic motivation of the farmer, so his own desire to, or her own desire to change. And if we remember back to the scarf engagement model, that sense of being in control of your own situation tends to favour that reward stimulus and the release of dopamine. So you're more inclined to get involved and do more of those sort of actions.

It facilitates the resolution of ambivalence by strengthening the individual's own motivation for change. Now, to become skilled in motivational interviewing, of course takes time and practise. And some of you might have been introduced to MI by Doctor Alison Doctor Alison Bard, who used to be at the University of Bristol, now at the University of Aberystwyth, and she's been researching the application of MI in farm practise for nearly 10 years.

And Alison recently published a paper that highlighted the benefits to vets who participated in brief MI training, who were able to enhance their communication skills. And the outcomes identified were that farmers contributed more to conversations about herd health. And discuss more changes to achieve improved health.

When the vets had been trained in MI. So the good news is that you don't necessarily have to become a fully fledged motivational interviewer. Learning about and practising the core skills in the brief MI training can indeed make a difference.

And that's what we're gonna look at next. To give you a definition, if you like of motivational interviewing. It's an empathic person-centered counselling approach that prepares people for change by helping them to resolve ambivalence, enhance their own motivation for change, and it gives them the confidence that they can make the changes.

And then at the bottom of the picture, we'll see a relation to oars, British rowing, any rowers out there, fantastic organisation. And AS is the acronym for the core skills that motivational interviewers use in their conversations. And these are open questions.

Affirmations, reflections, and summaries. To give you a little bit of a an idea of what we mean by by these. We'll look at open open questions in the next couple of slides, but affirmations, these are statements that recognise the strengths and acknowledge the behaviours that lead in the direction of positive change.

So affirmations build confidence in the other person's ability to change, to make those changes. So you reflect, you, you're saying back to that person, you are able to change based on behaviours that have been noted in the past. Now to be effective affirmations must be genuine.

So if you're giving simple affirmations, it could be that you're saying that's a good suggestion. Or you could be specific and so you worked hard to set up the cuddle box, and we've seen those improvements. Reflections, and this can be rephrasing what you've heard, said to you, reflect those that same information back to the farmer.

So this is important to you because it makes you feel frustrated to spend more time treating the sick animals. So it's not a question, it's reflecting back what's been said to establish that mutual understanding of what you're talking about and what the situation is. So then looking at summaries.

It could be that you are pulling together information during the entire conversation or at points throughout the conversation to again reflect back and make sure, check understanding at that stage, you're both on the same page. So you could be saying, let me see if I understand so far. Oh, here is what I've heard.

Oh, tell me if I've missed anything. So, I'll be honest, practising these skills is definitely practise makes improvements. It's a technique that's interesting and novel, to become advanced in.

As I say, it's outside the scope of this webinar, but it really does make a difference. But we'll now focus on open questions a little bit more. And open questions are great because they invite others to tell their story.

In their own words, without leading them in a specific direction. And when you're working collaboratively, it's great to ask questions to find out information, and the best types of questions to ask are indeed open questions. This should be used often in conversations, but not exclusively.

And of course, open questions are in contrast to closed questions that generally receive a yes or no response. So, open questions. What we usually look at is opening with the words what, when, where, or how.

Now you may may be thinking that why is also an open question and indeed why may encourage . An open response. However, sometimes and in certain context, it can almost be a little bit, feel a little bit accusatory, and you might get a defensive response, hence the reason I've put that into brackets.

So, Let's have a look at 4 examples of questions. Just gonna pause a little bit on each one, and see what you think in terms of whether it's an open or a closed question. So what has changed in your life since you started exercising?

Have you ever thought about your communication skills? And do you think you'll ever be able to change? What has changed in your routine since your stockman left?

So just have a little think, maybe scribble down what you think is an open question and what you think is a closed question. OK, so you've asked some great open questions. You've had some fantastic responses, a lot of dialogue coming back potentially.

And while you're listening, it's really important to try and avoid thinking of the response you're gonna give to what's been said to you. Because this really limits your ability to truly understand what has been said. And what's what someone's trying to tell you.

And this is where, again, you've probably heard of the term active listening comes in. And this is where you listen beyond the words that have been spoken. You're listening to truly understand the message that's being communicated.

So listen to the responses and use the information to understand rather than to reply. And bear in mind a good speaker is a good listener. However, of course, when you're on farm, there can be a lot of distractions.

So it's useful to recognise that you might get distracted and miss something important. So if you feel there is something that you need to spend more time and focus on, perhaps come back to that and once you're away from the distractions. So, when we look at communication, you might have noticed we had a verbal communication on the left, written and spoken elements there.

We've also got two other elements that comprise overall communication. Certainly in the in the world of research, it's helpful sort of clump into three sort of sections. When we speak, the tone, pitch, and voice volume of our voice can convey our feelings and our mood, and that can be referred to as paraverbal communication.

For example, someone who's feeling angry will often speak in a loud voice. Someone who's feeling sad tends to speak more quietly. And if you're upset, you might notice an elevation in the pitch of the voice.

So being able to detect someone's emotional state through their paraverbal communication can help us understand how they're feeling and some of the behaviours they might be showing. And then on the right-hand side, we've got some representation of elements of nonverbal communication, often referred to as body language. And this offers us a fantastic opportunity to interact with others and have more effective conversations than we might through using verbal communication alone.

If spoken and written language gives us the chance to exchange complex information and thoughts. Then it's our body language or nonverbal communication that allows us to develop a sense of trust, rapport and empathy with the people that we interact with. And how someone makes you feel will determine whether you're inclined to listen to their words.

Share your thoughts and feelings with them and decide to have open and open and honest interactions or not. Nonverbal communication covers quite a wide range of aspects, including gestures and interpersonal distance as represented on this slide. And if you think about any any time you've been in a situation where someone you might not know that well stands or sits just a little bit too close for comfort, remember how that made you feel?

Probably pretty uncomfortable, I'm, I'm guessing. So it's really important to, to us. We talk about someone invading our personal space and our natural inclination is to step back and restore our sense of comfort if that happens.

Conversely, if we're trying to speak to someone, but they seem to be too far away, even if they can hear us, it can sometimes feel like they're maybe not as engaged in the conversation as we'd like them to be. Let's look a little bit more closely at the many ways we communicate nonverbally. So we've got several pictures here.

We start on the bottom right-hand corner, the lovely Daniel Craig. Our use of eye contact or gaze is an important aspect of nonverbal communication. A person's eyes are said to be the window to their soul.

Generally in Western cultures, making eye contact during conversations indicates a positive level of engagement and interest. If someone avoids making eye contact and averts their gaze whilst you're speaking to them, it could be a sign that there of a lack of involvement in what you're talking about. It could also suggest maybe deception or guilt, but we've got to remember that as with all things to do with body language, it's very context dependent.

And so yeah, so it's really important to bear that in mind. As you get to know someone better, you can see, you can build up sort of a catalogue of what their natural responses might be. And that helps you to, to work out what their behaviours might mean more meaningfully rather than if you meet someone for the first time.

It's very difficult to interpret the body language that you observe. Moving to the top right-hand corner of the screen, we'll look at touch and bodily contact, which is the most primitive form of social communication amongst humans and primates. And our use of touch is highly dependent on societal norms and the relationship with the other person.

In a study that looked at how people communicated, touching was rare for people in the UK, France and the Netherlands, compared to the level of touching among Italians and Greeks. So it is very culture specific, what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. However, a hand placed on the shoulder or upper arm of someone who's clearly feeling distressed, maybe they've had bad news about their TB test.

That can really convey your wish to try and soothe and comfort the other person in this difficult situation, so it can be a really powerful means of communication. We go to the middle photograph here, and body posture can signal confidence. It can signal power.

Studies demonstrated that adopting confident postural positions can also make you feel more confident and powerful. And the lady that we see in the forefront of this image is, Amy Cuddy, who's a big researcher in in body language, social psychologist, and she found that you can make yourself feel more powerful by adopting a power pose or postural feedback as she's showing here, the Wonder Woman pose. This might be helpful if you're thinking about preparing for stressful situations like job interviews or speaking to people that we don't usually feel confident around.

Her study also found that cortisol levels were reduced, which could help explain the reduced feelings of anxiety after you've adopted this pose. Now, it's worth saying you don't have to use the pose when you're actually having the interactions. The intention is to adopt the pose, get those positive feelings, and then go into the situations.

And then we move on to the left hand side of the screen at the bottom. Uniforms and company branded clothing can show others that we belong to organisations or professions. And if you've watched the popular series Squid Game, you'll remember that people wearing red boiler suits tend not to be friendly.

Also our things like our choice of clothing, hairstyle, vehicle, and the jewellery we wear, they all transmit silent messages about our personalities and our values. And then the top left-hand corner, professions such as doctors and vets are often recognisable by the clothing that we wear. White coat, potentially, stethoscope around the neck or in a pocket, and as well as defining and reinforcing their role to our patients and clients, it's also been recognised that professionals choose to present themselves in as a subconscious way of reinforcing their role to others.

So it gives you that sense of professionalism yourself, but you're also transmitting messages to others. And of course, we have got the most obvious form of nonverbal communication in plain sight, which is facial expressions. Research has shown that our 7 universally recognised emotions, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, and contempt.

And work done in the 70s confirmed that rather than being something we learned over time, these facial expressions are actually recognised across the world and across different cultures. So they, and they've also been demonstrated in congenitally blind individuals. So we are innately wired up to recognise these facial expressions, to recognise the emotions that that person's experiencing.

OK, so why do we communicate nonverbally? So the The more primitive area of the brain, the human brain called the limbic system, reacts instinctively to the world around us. And this was extremely important when our ancestors were faced with danger, such as hungry lions looking for a tasty meal.

And having a system that responds without the need to process and rationalise our response was vital back then. Now, obviously, the limbic system is still within our brains, so we carry that forward into modern times. Emotions are generated from activity in the limbic system.

They provide a rapid information processing system, allowing the body to adapt in response to perceived threats to our welfare. And again, we go back to that scarf model. We, if we perceive situations or things that trigger us to perceive things as rewards or threats, that is linked to the Olymbic system getting involved and becoming active.

And of course this leads to the well-known per perceived attack responses freeze, flight and fight. The function of emotion is to initiate changes that prepare us to respond to the events or conditions that triggered them. Emotions and emotional responses occur rapidly and without conscious input.

So they're actually quite difficult to hide. The facial expressions reflect these emotions. So when we're angry, our gaze narrows to focus on the perceived threat.

Fear widens our field of vision, so we can better detect where the threat's coming from and how to escape it. And the neocortex, the outer layer of the brain, is responsible for thinking and reasoning. Speech Which is obviously processed, we think about what we say, that's processed in the neocortex, so therefore it's mostly conscious and it's mostly intentional.

But when we look at nonverbals, they're mainly unconscious and unintentional. And as a result, we're more aware of the things we say than the behaviours we display. So how can nonverbal communication influence the effective communication on the farm?

Well, let's consider that each person in the conversation will be sending silent messages to each other. In fact, studies suggest that between 65 and 95% of communication takes place nonverbally. When you're interacting with someone, you'll be listening to their words, but also subconsciously picking up on their signals of the body language.

Have you ever been told yes? Something will get done, only to have a niggling sensation that you don't believe it will. Or maybe someone says they understand something, but you don't feel convinced that they do.

And probably that niggle or uncertainty lies with your subconscious detection of their non-verbal messages. An eye contact might be avoided, you notice a frown, those could be behaviours that you observe. And where we see differences between what's verbally communicated and what's transmitted silently, this is called incongruence.

This happens, it this is something that criminal investigators use when questioning suspects, of course. In our situation, or in your situation going on to farm, it's not likely that you're looking for signs of deception. But if you detect that the person isn't sure or happy about something, you've got the opportunity then to check verbally why that might be, or ask them to explain er or they may want you to explain something a little bit more in depth.

So why do you need to improve your nonverbal communication? Well, nonverbal behaviours or non-verbals, often show how someone is feeling. So it could be obviously on the, the lady on the left is extremely happy, .

And it shows you their attitude to something, so whether they like or dislike something. You'll be better able to read others' emotional states and moods by observing their nonverbal behaviours. And then it's easier to understand their other behaviours.

Your ability to detect mixed messages, that's incongruence that we spoke about, improves, such as the occasions when someone says they'll do something, but on your next visit, they've not done what they said they were going to do. Understanding others' emotions and seeing things from their perspective allows you to be more empathic in your communication, which guilt builds rapport and trust. And ultimately you're in a better position to motivate and influence others to make changes.

Let's go back to our discussions about antimicrobial use and management practises. And those obviously will involve farmer change, behaviour change. That can evoke feelings that can be picked up by their nonverbals, and that can help you gauge their level of engagement.

When discussing change as part of your advisory consultation, it's useful to observe the nonverbal responses. Perhaps you are getting nonverbal feedback, such as the gentleman on the right hand side. We've got eye blocking, so it's almost so painful, the discussion, or the idea of the discussion that we physically block out by covering our eyes, the, the sort of the words or the idea of having to engage in something.

So the next slide has an image of, an image taken from, 01 of the consultations that was analysed for part of my master's degree. And here we've got a still, with the vet on the left and the farmers on the right. Let's consider the nonverbals displayed by the farmer during this particular interaction, so.

You can see there's a loss of eye contact. And it usually indicates that something negative has been heard and doesn't sit well with the listener. If we also look at the way the farmer is sitting, you can see he's assumed what we call a closed posture.

So his legs are crossed and his shoulders are slightly hunched. Now, as we said before, no single behaviour should be considered in isolation to conclude how someone's feeling. However, here we see several behaviours or nonverbals that would suggest the farmers feeling negative about whatever it is that's being discussed.

And in this case, it would be useful to explore his feelings using open questions, trying to consider why he might be feeling the way he is. Interestingly enough, When researchers have looked at doctors working with their patients, they found that doctors who could more accurately decode their patient's emotional response to an advised treatment regime. Recognise discomfort, and that provided them with the opportunity to clarify any problems and reduce, therefore, the chances of noncompliance.

So if we think about again, one of our earlier objectives, which was better uptake of advice, being able to see how what we're talking about impacts the other person, gives us an opportunity to sort of make sure they're happy or comfortable with what we're proposing. So sometimes you can sense that someone is not on board with the plans or discussion that you're having. And the nonverbal cues convey feelings of comfort or discomfort.

Using your observation skills, you can pick up on these cues. And at that time, it's worth checking the other's feelings and concerns so that you can discuss and address the issues. As a really useful statement by Peter Drucker, who was a management consultant.

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said, because you don't address things that are being thought about and felt about, it's very unlikely you're going to be able to achieve effective communication. It may be that through questioning you come up with responses. I'm worried about using less antibiotics.

I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm frustrated that I'm being advised to change my practises, and these could be, could all be responses that you have if you've detected that there's something that someone's holding back, they're feeling emotionally discomfort about the situation. So if we look at some research that's been done in small animal practise, companion practise, looking at how we use our own body language with clients or farmers, this can really have an impact on how others feel in terms of comfort and discomfort.

And I think it's probably not too, difficult to imagine that the poor lady on the top, in the top left, sorry, on the right hand side of the picture on the left. Doesn't look too comfortable. We can see that the vet is standing quite close to the client, there's a height difference.

The posture is quite, confident or dominant, and obviously there's some direct eye contact going on there. Conversely, on the bottom right-hand picture, there's quite an increased distance between both parties here. But probably the biggest barrier to effective communication that's going on, we can see that the vet is a back turned to the client.

The vet's also using a computer screen, which is excluding the client perhaps from feeling engaged in the discussion, so we've got no eye contact at all. OK, so, as I said before, nonverbal communication has been studied extensively in medicine, healthcare situations, in a companion animal, but we're only just starting to look at nonverbal communication in farm, practise and on-farm context. From the study that we've recently completed, that will be coming out soon, we did observe actually how there were some differences between how vets use their own body posture and orientation when communicating with the farmers.

And also speaking to some vets subsequently, it's interesting to hear that some vets feel that by using, for example, a scanner screen strapped to the body rather than goggles, it gives them the chance to have better eye contact. And they feel they can have more effective communication, and they have a more of a sort of sense of engagement during the process of fertility examination. It's just one, observation that's come out of the, the research, but as I say, it has been interesting to see how vets, sort of innately use their own body positioning to maybe get a little bit more interaction with the farmers.

So that builds, brings us to the final segment, that we're gonna look at, which is adopting a growth mindset. You'll remember at the beginning, we talked about how people can sometimes assume that you're either a good communicator or you're not. It's certainly nothing that you can get better at.

And I've come across that quite a lot. Now, I would suggest probably all of us have a family member, friends, colleagues, doctors, car mechanics, who knows, whoever it is, and we recognise that they are excellent communicators. You can easily understand what it is they're saying, their intentions and their attitudes.

Is it possible though to become a better communicator if you currently feel you're not as good as you'd like to be? Well, the good news is that this lady on the right hand side of the screen, psychologist Carol Dweck, she turned, she coined the term growth mindset. And what she's demonstrated through her research and work is that it's possible to develop ability and intelligence by changing your belief that it's possible.

So you see again the power of the mind. Her work examines the conception er conceptions people use to structure their self and guide their behaviour. It's another example of you we've said that, yeah, how powerful our minds are.

And having or adopting a growth mindset means you are prepared to put in extra time and effort to become more skilled in something. And at the same time, you recognise that when you believe you can get better at something, get better at something, something that's usually quite hard, you understand that putting in the effort and making mistakes actually makes you stronger and you can grow, which in turn motivates you to spend additional time and effort to get even better. So I really like Carol Dweck's concept of having or adopting a growth mindset, and not Being put off by the fact you know there are good communicators around you, you can also become better at communication.

So we said we were going to finish with 3 top tips from a verbal skills and a non-verbal skills opportunity to start practising. So what three verbal skills am I suggesting you go out and start practising? So of course, number one is asking more open questions.

When you're having discussions about change, tell me more. One of the great questions, tell me more. And it's amazing how much information you are likely to, to gather by asking the question and then remaining silent and listening.

Remember to use your active listening skills, listen to understand, not to reply. I remember you can practise this with friends and family before taking that out onto farm. 2, try to simplify your language and avoid using technical terms wherever possible.

And number 3, does that make sense? What do you think about what we've discussed? Three top nonverbal behaviours to start practising, using yourself and observing in others.

Use of eye contact or gaze. So trying to make more eye contact during conversations can increase that sense of involvement, equally observe others use of gaze or eye contact. Number 2, observing facial expressions to help you gauge how the other person might feel about what you're discussing.

Think about those 7 universal facial expressions. Having a better understanding of how someone is feeling, remember, gives us the opportunity to appreciate how they're thinking or feeling about a situation and why they're behaving a certain way. And that could link into asking your open questions.

And then number 3. We've already said you're bound to have come across times when you felt there was definitely a mismatch between what's being said and what's being done. So looking for that congruence, is there agreement between what's being said verbally and the body language on display?

So in summary, farm vets need to talk, need to communicate technical information and talk about change. By using simple language and checking in understanding to avoid miscommunication. We improve our effective communication.

By collaborating, we can facilitate behaviour change. Body language helps us to recognise others' emotions and our ability to be more empathetic, empathetic or empathic even. And then developing our skills does require effort, but through adopting that growth mindset, we can build our communication skills and become better at having effective communication.

So thank you for your attention. If you'd like further information, feel free to contact me on these forums. Thank you.