133 – My Secrets to Building Buy In & Reducing Resistance to Change

October 24, 2024

Episode #133: My Secrets to Building Buy In & Reducing Resistance to Change 

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast, Tobi Johnson delves into her secrets to building buy in and reducing resistance to change within nonprofit organizations. Drawing on her extensive 25-year background in the nonprofit sector, Tobi delivers actionable insights and techniques for leaders of volunteers and nonprofit professionals facing implementation challenges.  

The episode covers the significance of involving stakeholders in decision-making, the power of maintaining strong leadership relationships, and the necessity of a written plan as the ‘language of leadership.’ Tobi shares practical stories and examples, explores the role of safety protocols, metrics, and process simplification, and offers strategies to foster a culture of continuous improvement! 

Buy In – Episode Highlights

• [01:16] – Building Buy-In and Reducing Resistance to Change 
• [02:30] – Personal Experiences and Lessons Learned 
• [04:17] – The Challenge of Change 
• [04:58] – Strategies for Gaining Support 
• [08:56] – Evaluating Leadership and Coworker Support 
• [18:17] – Enlisting People in Your Vision 
• [18:46] – Engaging Leadership for Support 
• [20:17] – Asking the Right Questions 
• [21:34] – Active Listening Techniques 
• [23:04] – Secrets to Building Buy-In 
• [24:17] – Clarifying Goals for Success 
• [30:21] – Using Metrics to Build Buy-In 
• [31:25] – Making Change Easy for Co-Workers 
• [33:18] – Championing Early Adopters 
• [34:12] – The Core of Leadership 

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Membership Community  
• VisionWeek 2025  
• Volunteer Management Progress Report  
• Volunteer Nation Episode #130: How to Build a Volunteer Plan for 2025
• Volunteer Nation Episode #22: My Fave 6 Nonprofit Leadership and Management Wins 

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #133 Transcript: My Secrets to Building Buy In & Reducing Resistance to Change 

Tobi: Well, welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and I am looking outside at beautiful fall colors. I am up in the Pacific Northwest again and visiting family and checking out our house. and looking at the leaves change. There are so many beautiful leaves. We often think of the northwest as just evergreen trees, but we actually have a lot of beautiful deciduous maples and just gorgeous trees changing color right now. 

It’s just a beautiful time of year. Unfortunately, it’s a little bit gray, which is normal for this time of year. So, and you know, the land does need So, uh, we are grateful for that. Um, but I just wanted to say hi to everybody. And today I wanted to talk about building buy in. In fact, I’m going to share with you my secrets to building buy in and reducing resistance to change. 

This is such a top skill for, uh, leaders of volunteers and folks working in nonprofits, whatever your job title, we are here often to influence people to change. I mean, the whole bottom line of the business of nonprofits is change, right? We’re trying to help transform communities. in partnership with our volunteers and our community members and those who are receiving our services, uh, or our patrons or customers or clients. 

And we’re just trying to make the world a better place. And so that requires change, right? It requires a change in behavior. It requires change in sometimes our own approaches to what we do. And it is not an easy thing often to pull off. So, I wanted to share some of my tips from years working in nonprofits. 

You know, I worked in nonprofits for about 25 years before I started my consulting practice. And I was called upon from the very beginning of my career to start to bring about change. And, you know, my very first job. In the social sector, I was a regional outreach coordinator. So, I was going around a six-state region meeting with community partners and meeting with staff of the organizations at the local sites where we delivered services. 

And basically, trying to talk people into coming to agreement on things and, um, collaborating. I was the broker for collaboration a lot of the times. And so, it was an interesting job to kick off my career with because I was straight out of graduate school. I really didn’t know what I was doing. You know, I had to fake it until I made it. 

I have a degree in art history, theory and criticism. So, I had a liberal arts degree, which, you know, made me a great critical thinker, but it didn’t prepare me much for the world of social work. And so, I had to learn, you know, how to hit the ground running. And I learned a lot through the years. By making a lot of mistakes as well, I don’t say I did it perfectly, or even if I do it perfectly now. 

I don’t think any of us do, we’re human. But there are some things that I did learn along the way based on what worked, what didn’t work, and I thought today I’d share those things because It is not easy to influence others and sometimes folks resist what they may even know in their heart of hearts is best for the organization, the community, the volunteers, each other. 

But you know, I always like to say people love change. If you ask people, hey, what do you think about change? Oh, I love change. But then when it, you know, rubber hits the road and people must change their own behavior, people like change, but they don’t like change. To be changed, you know, the minute it impacts our daily lives, then we get a little grumpy because you know, we feathered our nest. 

It’s pretty comfortable and warm and fuzzy. And so, it’s hard for people to make change happen. And it’s hard to give up our comfort. zones. I think for everybody it is. So, let’s figure out how we can do this. I want to ask you a couple questions just as we kick off a thought experiment. The first one is, have you ever spent a ton of time on a project that you designed, researched, set up, you were convinced it was going to work only to have everyone shoot it down? 

Or worse, passively or aggressively resist it. How did that feel? It was probably rough, right? You put a lot of work into it. You don’t understand why people, you built it, why are they not coming? Why, why don’t people get on the bus, right? Let me ask you a second question. Think about this. Have you ever had someone make a unilateral decision that you thought you should have a say in but weren’t asked. 

You know what? Now the shoe’s on the other foot, right? We’re looking at the other perspective here. How did that make you feel? You know, how likely are you to support or were you to support that thing, that change, that someone was, you know, recommending that you take on or requiring you to take on, right? 

I think on both sides of the coin, the person who is creating the change or the impetus for change, the catalyst for change, and the person who is receiving that requirement or marching orders or just polite ask or nudging or nagging or whatever it is, there’s two sides to that coin. So, we must work to bring those two sides together because both of those perspectives are valid. 

They involve people’s emotions. And when people have an emotion of frustration or anger, then it’s hard for them to get past that. You know, we’re not all really dialed into our emotions and sometimes our emotions are subconsciously directed to our behavior. So, when these opportunities for change come around, around, we must have an emotional environment that’s healthy. 

Doesn’t mean we don’t disagree, but that we have a healthy, respectful environment where people feel positive and hopeful about change. So, it is a communications skill set. And I want to lay out some different kinds of ways to do this. And you know, my number one secret to building buy in is really, it’s just a bottom line. 

It’s not even a secret. It’s a philosophy that I have developed over the years. And that philosophy is getting people involved in making decisions. in something that’s going to impact them. But not only that, make their input count. So, it’s not just asking people in name only, Oh, thanks for your feedback. 

We’ll take it into consideration. Now, not always people will give you feedback and not always can you. Incorporate it. It’s, it’s, it’s not always, there’s lots of reasons why you can’t. But when you’re creating an initiative for volunteer services, for example, there are so many people impacted by the policies that you create or the programs that you develop that it makes sense, whether it’s coworkers, volunteers, leadership, et cetera, to get their input and make sure that that input is well considered and that it counts. 

Okay, so let’s get into this in more detail because I’ve got some other tips for you and some secrets about around building buy in. But a couple of things, one, if you want to hear more stories about my leadership foes and foibles, just check out Volunteer Nation episode 22, my favorite six nonprofit leadership and management wins. 

If you like to hear what happened in my life as a leader that might make me do the things I do and think the things I think, uh, go ahead and check that out. I’m linking to that in the show notes. Before we start talking about tips, I want to talk about how well we are doing enlisting the support of other people. 

And in our most recent volunteer management progress report, nearly half of our respondents, about 44 percent of them, Have the ear of leadership already. Okay, so 43 or 44 percent of you report directly to the organization’s chief executive or a program or department head. Another 12 percent report to someone inside the volunteer services department. 

So, I want to let’s kind of call out something that seems obvious, but I want to make sure we, we understand this, that many of you already have the ear of leadership. So, are you taking the most advantage of that? And are you making sure that that relationship is solid and that when you make recommendations that they are picked up on? 

Right? So that, that relationship needs to be minded well. And so, you’ve got to think to yourself first out of the bat, how well am I doing enlisting the support of the person I report to? Right? That’s where you start with everything. The second thing to kind of note as we think about this idea of influence and buy in is many of you have a dotted line relationship with coworkers. 

You know, they, where they must carry out tasks that support your success. But you don’t have direct supervisory responsibility for their work. They’re not necessarily accountable to you directly. And so, it makes the world difficult in terms of influence. So, I wanted to call that out because you really are living as middle managers. 

Many of you are middle managers. You’re in between volunteers and people at a director level. That you, you have the ear of leadership, but you also, and I know there’s, we have some leadership. folks listening as well, well then you have the ear of your board, but then you have other people on the other end that you need to influence as well. 

And you have many dotted line relationships as well. So, this is, regardless of your job title, these two relationships, uou have both the ear of leadership or the ear of an influential group, most of you, and you have dotted line relationships to people that you don’t really have power over, not that you really want power over people, but they’re not accountable to you. 

So, you’re making strong recommendations for things to change or for people to comply with certain policies. And they’re kind of telling you, well, maybe I will, and maybe I won’t, you know, and sometimes they won’t even tell you they’ll just passively not do it. And so, we must figure out how we can become more influential because it’s important to our missions. 

Because if people are not rowing together, your organization is not moving forward. You might be rowing in a circle, right? So, how good are we at enlisting the support? In our volunteer management progress report, we asked, next for folks, our last, our most recent one, we are about to release at the end of October, early November, our next, our 2025 survey. 

So, stay tuned. I’ll talk about that in an upcoming podcast episode. We’re going to look at recruitment this year and it’s our 10th anniversary, which is very exciting for our survey. So that’s pretty exciting. But back to this discussion, in this year’s report. In the survey, we asked, how would you rate your leadership team for the level of support you receive for volunteer initiatives? 

And our result, we asked people to give people a star rating from 1 to 5 stars. And our average was 3. 7 stars. Now, if you’re like me and you go on the internet looking for hotel rooms, movies to watch on TV or shows to watch on TV, or you’re looking for a restaurant to go check out and you look there and you see a 3. 

7-star rating, are you going to go to that restaurant for dinner tonight? Probably not. So, a 3. 7 out of 5 stars is kind of lukewarm, I would say. So, it really indicates that we have work to do in terms of getting leadership support in volunteer engagement. Now, of course, this is a generalization. Some of you may have, you know, stellar support, some of you may have bad support, but an average of 3. 

7 stars. The other thing we asked was how would you rate the level of buy in from coworkers? You know, this is sort of what, you know, how are we assessing this dotted line relationship for involving volunteers in their own departments or programs? So how much buy in do we have from coworkers around engaging and involving volunteers? 

And our resulting rating, star rating, was an average of 3. 5 stars. So, it was a little bit lower than how we would rate our leaders. So, this really indicates that we have work to do in terms of supporting, uh, really influencing and gaining the buy in and support from our coworkers, those people that we have dotted line relationships with. 

And what I mean by a dotted line relationship, you know in an org chart there’s usually like solid lines between, you know, who reports to who, sort of a hierarchical lines. Sometimes they’ll put in an org chart a dotted line. Indicating that there’s a relationship and there is, there’s one person is asking another person to do something or assigning work in some way. 

But it’s, there’s not a direct relationship of this person is assessing is their supervisor, is their official supervisor. So that’s all I mean by a dotted line relationship. But back to this rating scale, I mean how, how many of you are eager to visit a restaurant or stay at a hotel with a 3.5-star rating? 

Does it excite you? Probably not. So, you know, it’s not a horrible rating, but it’s not great, right? So, we have work to do around influence. And certainly, we can say, well, it’s the responsibility of the follower, not the leader, to be influenced. Well, maybe. But I think the responsibility of influence and leadership is more on the leader. 

It’s like the culture of the organization. I like to say the culture of the organization is not the responsibility of the volunteer, it’s the responsibility of leadership to set the stage for a positive culture for the organization. That’s where the responsibility lies. So how can you as a You know, many of you listening are middle in middle management or in leadership role. 

How can you build support, especially for those of you in middle management roles? How can you build wildly enthusiastic buy in for your next volunteer initiative, policy change, or, you know, processes that you’re going to newly bring about or you’re going to reinforce to people that it’s not being followed. 

How do we do this? So, I’m going to offer up eight ways today that are the ways that I have built buy in and reduced resistance to change when I was going out in nonprofits and doing my work in the variety of roles that I worked in over 25 years. I was always trying to get somebody to do something that I needed them to do so that if they didn’t do it, we wouldn’t be successful because I couldn’t do everything just alone by myself. 

There are very few things in our organizations that are successful only because one person puts their shoulder to the wheel. It’s almost always a collective effort. And we need people, you know, rowing together as one being almost, you know, rowing together in synchronicity or synchronously, maybe that’s a better word. 

But let’s talk about these seven ways to build buy in. Okay, the first one is to cast a vision. And it’s very difficult. for people to follow you if they don’t know where you’re going. And when you’re casting that vision, we often focus a lot on the details of the change, the policy, the behavior, the process, the paperwork, or whatever we want people to do. 

But we haven’t taken the time to explain the transformation. or the result that we’re all looking for that we’re all moving towards. So we can’t, it’s hard to get people rowing in the right direction if they don’t even know the direction, they’re supposed to row in. So, we need to cast a vision and that vision needs to be enthusiastic. 

Enthusiasm is really underrated, I think. There is so much that your energy can do. Your energy is everything. And when you’re enthusiastic about something, people naturally want to follow you. People are down on what they’re not up on. And so, if you are hiding your dreams away, you’re like, I call this hiding your dreams away. 

Like you have some, someplace you want to go to, but you’re only sharing the process. You’re not sharing what the pot of gold is. You need not do that. People want to be, first, they’re down on what they’re not up on. So, you do need to educate people about the big why. And they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. 

I mean, who doesn’t want to be a superhero in their own story? We all want to be proud of ourselves. And so, the first step to getting buy in is to enlist people in the vision, to get people to agree that your vision is a good one. And then people are like, Ooh, that’s compelling. I think I might want to help. 

Right. The second thing to do to build buy in is to get your leadership on board. And many of you have a direct line to leadership, as I spoke about before. So, you want to engage with your leaders and consult with them about the needs of volunteers. and their own role in supporting and championing not only volunteerism, but whatever your initiative process, project, et cetera is. 

And one of the best ways to do that is to speak the language of leadership. So, to speak the language of leadership is to get your plan in writing. And of course, if you want to learn more about that, check out Volunteer Nation episode 130, how to build a volunteer plan for 2025. I just recorded that a few episodes ago, so that’s recent. 

You should be able to find it in your stream pretty easily. But you’ve got to have a plan in writing. That is the language of leadership is a plan in writing. Because they must be accountable, and they must describe what you’re doing often to other people, and they need to review what you’re doing. 

 So, the language of leadership is not a verbal conversation. It is a plan in writing. And having been at a director level myself in organizations, I know that I appreciate it. When I look at a plan, I can see everyone’s thinking, I can see that they’ve been thorough, I can see their implementation, I can see that it makes sense, and I can give them the go ahead easily if I feel like it’s organized and on point. 

So, you want to make sure you have a plan in place. The third way to get buy in is to ask the right questions. Ask questions versus telling. So engaging coworkers by asking specific thought-provoking questions about how volunteers can help meet the organization’s mission more effectively. So, you just start getting into conversations with people even before you have a need to make an ask, but also asking them, you know, hey, I want to tackle this challenge. 

What do you recommend before you come up with your final polished perfect plan? Because you can, once you start enlisting people in collaborative solutions and you have a collective entrepreneurial approach that you’re working together towards a goal or to tackle a project, you start to dissolve that us versus them, and you start moving around and sitting on the same side of the table shoulder to shoulder trying to solve for that problem. 

Of course, you’ve got to make sure that they agree that the problem you’re raising is a problem at all. So sometimes you need to start to kick that conversation off with some proof about why you think this is a problem. Sometimes it’s data, often it’s data or something people are complaining about. 

Another thing, way to get buy in and reduce resistance is to engage when after you ask that question to engage in active listening. So, you can foster better relationships with those you want to influence by meeting in person. If you can, it’s not always possible, but if you can, having open ended conversations, actively listening to their thoughts and concerns about volunteer engagement, and active listening looks like this. 

You’re leaning in, physically leaning in, you’re putting away any distractions, phones, computer, et cetera. You’re repeating back what you think you heard of that person’s perspective. And when you’re doing this with multiple people, maybe you’re writing up a short summary report and you’re circulating it to that group and saying, hey, is there anything I missed? 

Or do you want to add any last comments? Thoughts. You can even put it up as a Google Doc and share it with everybody. So, there’s a feedback loop there and then people can see what other people said as well. So, and you don’t have to assign, you know, to say this person said this, this person said this. You can just be, I’m going to be going around meeting with different department heads where volunteers are placed. 

I have some questions to ask. I’m also going to put it, put together a report at the end. We’re trying to tackle this problem and then I’ll, I’ll shoot it out to you, and you can give me any last-minute feedback. So that’s a way to really engage in true active listening. So, I’ve got four more ways to build buy in and reduce resistance to change. I’m going to share those secrets right after the break. So don’t go anywhere. I will be right back.  

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Okay, everybody. I’m here with my secrets to building buy in and reducing resistance to change. I’m excited to share four more of my secrets. Let’s just get right to it. And the fifth is to clarify your goals. So, When casting a vision is really about the big picture, you know, what’s the big why, why are we doing this, but clarifying goals is really breaking it down to a more granular level where we’re clearly defining what behavior changes or results you’re looking for and what success looks like in precise terms. 

This helps everyone understand the aims and desired outcomes of whatever change you’re proposing. You know, when you set your goals, they don’t have to be boring. In fact, they shouldn’t be. If you want to spark broad internal and external support, sometimes you need to develop what we call big goals. I like to call; I’ve created these big goals. 

They’re brave, insightful, and galvanizing. So, part of it is being clear about the behavior change. We were on a volunteer pro, uh, member huddle this morning. And one of the things we were talking about is working on this challenge of helping support our coworkers and those who lead volunteers and how do we do this effectively. 

And we talked, I kicked it off with, do we know what success looks like? So, I said, you know, are you specific about this? For example, here’s a success factor, simple. It’s a yes or no question. Is each volunteer welcomed or does somebody check in with them? Does the staff check in with them? 

At each shift, do they have at least one touch point with the staff person at each shift? That’s a simple yes or no question, right? So, we’re being very specific about what success looks like, that our volunteers are welcome, that our volunteers feel like people are seeing that they are there, right? 

That’s a specific. When we get back to these goals, the big goals, when you’re sharing goals, this is where that enthusiasm comes back in. You are sharing big goals like brave, insightfulness, and galvanizing. Brave goals are those that take calculated risks that can open to possibilities versus keeping it safe and doing what you’ve always done. 

Also taking a stand for what’s right and fair. So sometimes the success factor is, hey, we’re doing this. And we, we’re taking this brave step towards this thing, this specific change. And people like bravery if it’s done for the right thing, right? The I in Big Goals is insightful based on a true analysis of your current situation and best practices to solve the challenges you face. 

Based on pet projects and personal opinions, this often offers a new and better way of thinking. So, this is another, when you’re describing big goals or an aspect of success and you’re clarifying what success looks like, insightful goals are often based on data. Like, hey, we’ve seen an uptick in volunteer turnover. 

We’ve seen a reduction in average volunteer hours per month. Those kinds of things you’re bringing to them, and so we want to change that, and we believe this behavior change is going to bring about a positive uptick in this metric. Right? So that’s an insightful goal. Galvanizing as part of the big goals, the G in big, inspires others in a way that provokes action or effort. 

 When you speak of the goal, people’s eyes light up and they at once want to help. And so, part of the behavior change is if you’re trying to influence someone to change in a certain way, you will want to be able to explain it in a way that is galvanizing, that they feel compelled to help. So, you’ve got to think about how you frame it. 

During our huddle this morning, I was talking about background checks and how we often mess up. Message to volunteers about background checks, and I said, you know, you can either say this background, you can communicate this way. These background checks are required. We need you to do it, otherwise you can’t volunteer with us. 

Now, that’s just in a nutshell, right? You get the message. That’s not exactly how people are communicating. The alternative is to enlist and talk about background checks in terms of the mission, and to say things like, hey, we know that you. And we also believe that all our children that we serve in our community deserve to be safe and deserve to feel safe. 

And we do that. One of the ways we make sure that our children are safe in our organization is we make sure that everybody does a background check. And we know you agree that that’s an important thing. And so please join us. In ensuring our kids are safe by completing your background check as a volunteer applicant. 

So, you see how we’re changing slightly the way we’re changing this behavior change. We’re describing this big goal of making sure that everyone successfully completes a background check as it’s galvanizing because it’s related to the mission and the mission is that we’re keeping kids safe. So, you see how that works? 

It’s a galvanizing way of describing a goal or behavior change. So, think about the ways that you are describing the types of change that you’re hoping people will buy into. and not resist. And when it’s inspirational and it’s mission focused, people are much more likely to lean in. So, it really does matter how you describe something as a leader to influence others. 

So, words matter. All right, let’s look at number six of our ways to, uh, build buy in and reduce resistance to change. Use metrics. Now I’ve just talked about this a little bit earlier, track and speak to process metrics. So, metrics that show the process of what’s happening. So, webpage visits, application submissions, orientation, attendance, active volunteer conversions, anything that’s in the process. 

You can also use impact metrics like what’s transformed because of volunteer’s work. So, you can use either process metrics or impact metrics to really describe what’s happening and why the impetus for change is so important. And what will happen if you don’t change, you know, maybe there’s a trajectory that’s going downward and, you know, you don’t want that trajectory to continue. 

So, your metrics help you build buy in by showing proof as to why this problem is a problem in the first place. Yeah, it’s not the only way. I don’t use numbers as the only way to change hearts and minds, but sometimes they’re helpful. The seventh way or my seventh secret to building buy in and reducing resistance is to make things as easy as possible for your coworkers to do the right thing. 

Again, today we were doing our member huddle and we were taking on this topic. How do we better equip and support those who lead volunteers? What does success look like was one of our questions. But the other questions to make it easy for people are how will we know when they are successful? So what objective ways can we know that our coworkers are successful? 

So, is it surveys, for example? Is it complaint forms? What is it? You know, is it observation? And how can we foster a culture of continuous improvement? So, we were talking in this call about can we gather data and then have quarterly huddles where we share the data and then we talk about as a group of people who lead volunteers throughout our organization, we just have quarterly meetings and say, all right, here’s a trend we’re seeing. How can we solve this? How can we make this better? So, you’re making it easy for people to have input, but also to help work with you. Also making things as easy as possible is having the simplest as, as you can possibly design processes. 

Creating a complex process is easy. Creating a simple process is very difficult, and so you have to do the difficult work of asking people, and it, these quarterly sessions are a really good time to do that, where you say, what processes are getting in your way, or is there anything that’s getting you stuck that we can try to smooth out? 

So, people appreciate that, they appreciate that you’ve done the work, and you understand that you don’t, you’re not here to make their, their life more onerous. And then my final secret to building buy in and reducing resistance to change is really championing those who are getting traction. So, any time that anyone is effectively involving volunteers or has bought in and is involved, implementing what you’ve requested. 

You want to publicly acknowledge your efforts, also privately as well, privately and publicly, and champion and showcase those folks are doing the right thing and really supporting you. You know, positive reinforcement can go a long way, and you want to start it early. You don’t wait till the end of your project. 

You start early so people can see and want to do like. others. Right? So, it’s an influence where you start to show that there is critical mass that’s building for your initiative. This may seem like a lot of work. You may be thinking, wow, I don’t have time to do all this. I have got to tell you leadership, the real job of leadership requires your attention. 

It’s the core part of your job as a person who is working with volunteers. If you’re at executive level or you’re in volunteer services, it’s not a nice to have. Leadership is a core part of your job. So, your job is to figure out how to do leadership in a way that works. works within your organization. 

And I think by implementing some of these secrets that I’ve shared, that I’ve learned over years and years of work in the field, you can build influence and help your coworkers see the value of volunteers more readily and ultimately generate enthusiastic buy in for your volunteer initiatives. It will save you time if you have people on board early for a new initiative rather than later. 

Take care. Bye. Because working against and trying to swim upstream is very difficult. But if you can get everybody floating in the right direction, rowing in the right direction, then it feels good to everybody, and you get to the other side faster. And so that is a core part of leadership. This isn’t an add on. 

This is almost the central part of what you do. So, it makes sense to try to figure out how to do this better. I hope today has really helped you. It’s not an easy task. I’m not saying it is, but the more you do it, the easier it does get. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I hope you’ll join us next week, same time, same place, here on the Volunteer Nation. Have a fantastic rest of your week, everybody.