MI Online: Motivation and Communication skills

Resisting the righting reflex or the urge to solve other people’s problems. If you do have to “give” information, use the EPPE (Elicit – Provide with Permission – Elicit) method.  

 Understand an individual’s motivation by eliciting change talk (ECT) or asking open questions that get the individual to tell you the reasons (or benefits) to make a change (instead of you telling them).  

 Practice mirroring back what you are hearing using both simple and complex reflections.  Use a stem and make a guess about their meaning. 

 Use various strategies that help to empower others. Share your agenda, agree to a length of time, clarify roles and acknowledge their expertise about their own life, provide affirmations, and use autonomy language to emphasize that any decision is theirs to make. 

 There is a process to follow when building motivation. Motivational conversations should start with engagement and understanding the other’s perspective, agreeing on the focus or topic of the conversation, building motivation and then planning. Often phases get skipped as people rush to planning.  

What are the gems that you will take with your from this traiing? What are you most proud of? What did you learn?

 "The biggest impact I've seen with learning MI is being comfortable with silence. Previously I've always thought that silence was uncomfortable and awkward because I wasn't sure what the other person was thinking. Now I view silence as an important tool to gauge where others are if they're reflecting or confused about my statements. I also experienced that a bit of silence will tend to prompt the other person to add more to the conversation that I may have missed if I didn't resist my urge to continue speaking. "

 " The biggest thing I learned from MI was that I shouldn't be the one doing all the work in the conversation. I have always had the habit of jumping straight into offering someone advice and then getting annoyed when they don't listen. When you use MI you can guide the person into making a decision. And when they come up with that decision on their own, they are much more likely to follow through with it."

  "Through the MI exercises, I came to really understand how the desire to change can only come from within the person. The only way that I can truly help is to guide a person by better eliciting his/her own motivation to change. It is a good tool to have because everyone at some point will need to find motivation to do something, so it is cool that I can be someone to help! "