Why Motivational Interviewing is the Tool You've Been Missing
Here at BR, we’re evangelists of Motivational Interviewing (MI). We offer many topics around MI and weave it into the fabric of so many of our workshops and webinars. If you’re not familiar, get ready to be dazzled.
MI, developed by Miller and Rollnick, is a method of communication that centers around helping others (or yourself) effectively engage in change. The change can be in any area you can imagine. If you’re trying to quit smoking, buy a house, deal with relationship issues, or provide counseling, MI can be endlessly helpful.
There’s a lot to cover with this concept and we’re going to be using the model to help you address some very real issues in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime if you want to dive a little deeper into the model, MINT is a great resource.
It’s evidence-based
The best things in life are backed by science, and you can’t convince me otherwise. So to know that MI is evidence-based, we know that science has shown that it works. If you don’t believe me, there are plenty of resources to check out. Pretty good start!
It’s collaborative
If you like lecturing others and demonstrating how smart you are, MI isn’t for you. To effectively use MI, you’re partnering with someone else. You may be an expert on helping people change, but the people are the experts on their own minds, hearts and lives. Asking questions and being curious are so important to MI. Let people be their own experts!
It’s empowering
We all should be trying to work our way out of a job when it comes to helping others change. The goal should be to empower someone to make a change for themselves, showing them that they have the strength within them. MI does that by helping people understand their own meaning, their own importance, and their own capacity for change. Very powerful tools for lasting change!
It’s concrete and extremely agile
No vague guidelines here, MI gives you concrete strategies like OARS (we’ll get into that later) to follow, thus making it something people of any training background can use. It works in any discipline with any training background. Whether you’re a therapist, project manager, supervisor, or any other position you can imagine, MI is a tool you can start using today to move your work forward.
It’s all common sense
Finally and importantly, MI is intuitive. As you learn more about it, you’ll think some of it sounds obvious. And maybe you’ll find that you already use pieces of it. But what makes it so great is combining those intuitive pieces into something that takes a lot of practice to get great at. We may be good at aspects of MI quite naturally, but there’s a lot to learn. The more you practice, the more rewarding MI is.
Hopefully you’re enticed by the possibilities of MI. We’re going to talk about it more in this space, but if you want to learn more you can reach out to us! We can talk about MI all day…
Ryan