Inspiring Behaviour Change

IBC Foundations

The essentials of vegan outreach coaching, condensed to what you can actually hold in your head on the street. Three principles, nine questions, and three moves for handling objections.

Foundational course 3 principles 9 questions 3 moves

Key principles

Everything else in this handout rests on these three. Get the attitude right and the questions do the rest of the work.

Attitude

Give people the benefit of the doubt

You are speaking to a pre-vegan rather than an animal abuser. Most of us were not vegan our whole lives either.

Contempt is a toxic emotion in a conversation. People feel it even when you never say it, and it ends the conversation before it starts.

Approach

Be the best teacher

Think of the best teacher you ever had. They almost certainly did not win you over with facts and figures.

Actively listen. No privately planning your reply, no interrupting, no assuming you know what they will say.
Make people feel seen and heard.
Be friendly and kind.
Be supportive and empowering.

The whole method

People believe what they say, not what they hear

This is self-identification theory, and it is the reason we coach instead of lecture. A conclusion someone reaches in their own words is one they own.

So your job is to invite them to envision success: to picture themselves doing it, and say out loud how they would make it work.

The difference in practice

You say it

"What's happening to animals is messed up, it happens because you pay for it. You could help by going vegan, and it's easy."

They say it

"What's happening to these animals goes against my values, and it happens because we pay for it. I could help by going vegan, and although I'm worried about X, the steps I'd take to overcome X are…"

9 powerful questions

Nine questions across three objectives. They move a person from seeing what happens, to owning why it happens, to naming what they will do about it.

Clarity = Awareness + Accountability + Action

Awareness

Questions 1 to 4

Have you seen this type of footage before? Where?
How do you feel when you see this? What specifically makes you feel ______?
What is it about animals being treated this way that bothers you?
How do you think the animals feel?

Accountability

Questions 5 to 6

Given that most people are against this, what do you think causes this to happen?
Do we have to do this to animals?

Action

Questions 7 to 9

Given that, what do you think we can do as individuals to stop this?
Would that be too difficult for you?
What would be the most difficult thing?

Top tip

Question 9 is your bridge. Whatever they name as the most difficult thing is the objection you will work on next, and because they raised it themselves, it is almost always a genuine one.

Objection handling

Three moves. Empathise so they stay open, get them to solve their own problem out loud, then close with something concrete.

Empathise Quickly relate and establish a commonality, because people like people like them. Keep it short and skip the long story-telling.
Yeah, that makes sense, a lot of people worry about that too.

I get it, I felt a similar way before I was vegan. Let me ask you…
How will you do it? (as a vegan) Draw the answer out of them instead of handing it over. Two ways in:
Option 1 · They have solved this before

Identify a time, past or present, where they solved a similar problem, then invite them to apply that to a vegan future.

Option 2 · The magic wand

Put them in a hypothetical future where they are already vegan, and let them solve the problem from there.

If I waved a magic wand and poof, you became vegan, how would you…?
Closing Now you add your expertise, and you ask for the commitment.
- Fill in the gaps with your own expert advice and recommendations.
- Hand out a closing card.
- End with a call to action. Always ask for it.
Will you do it?

Following our conversation, what will you do differently?

Remember

You are handling genuine concerns rather than winning arguments. If someone raises a hypothetical they do not really believe, leave it alone and bring them back to "what would be the most difficult thing for you?"

Cheat sheet

The whole course on one screen. Screenshot this one.