Motivational Interviewing (MI): Essential Strategies and Interventions to Motivate Clients Towards Change

Presented by Paul Burke, M.A., RSW, CACII

Monday, October 21, 2019 – Tuesday, October 22, 2019  |  Edmonton, ab

Date & Location

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is an approach to communication that tends to help clients construct their own argument(s) in support of a pre-determined change. Fidelity to this way of focusing a conversation serves to enhance the client’s desires for the identified change, and to assist them in articulating their own reasons and needs related to the targeted change. The skillful use of MI with clients leads to activation and strengthening of readiness, willingness and ability to engage with a strategic change plan – of their own making.

This 2-day workshop provides a thorough foundation upon which more advanced concepts and skills are presented and practiced. A balance of theory and practice opportunities will facilitate your understanding of and skill enhancement in:

1. Why people decide to pursue change (and why they don’t)
2. Four processes that helpers can facilitate to evoke and strengthen client awareness of their desire, ability, reason, and need to pursue specified change(s)
3. Five core skills that facilitate work within the four processes of an MI conversation
4. Elements of “interviewing style” that can influence client speech in favour of change (or toward “locking in” to a no-change stance)
5. How to work with various elements of client speech in order to bolster client readiness, willingness, and desire to pursue a planned change process

Change from within a variety of mental health, substance use treatment, and chronic disease management contexts will be the primary focus of case discussions and applied practice sessions in this first instalment of our MI training series. Emphasis will be placed on the use of MI for enhanced treatment compliance and treatment engagement and on evoking desire and readiness for health oriented behaviour changes.

Who Should Attend

Clinical Professionals: All mental health professionals including, but not limited to Clinical Counsellors, Psychologists, Psychotherapists, Social Workers, Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Hospice and Palliative Care Workers, School Counsellors, Youth Workers, Mental Health Workers, Addiction Specialists, Marital & Family Therapists, Speech Language Pathologists, Vocational Rehabilitation Consultants and all professionals looking to enhance their therapeutic skills.

Agenda

DAY ONE

Introductions of Participants and Conceptual Foundations

• Conceptual structure of MI
  
• Processes in an MI conversation
• “Spirit” modalities to set an “MI environment”
• Theoretical Concepts Underlying MI (Change vs Compliance)
• MI as a “conversational style” vs “clinical technique” (Conversational styles that promote client arguments for and against change)
• Key concepts regarding motivation and persuasion

Transtheoretical Model of Change 

• In relation to stages of motivation and “motivational enhancement”
• Ambivalence as a “normal” behaviour in the context of change
• In context of motivational readiness, willingness and ability and implications for MI conversations

Reflective Listening as a Core Skill in MI work (Focus: The Engaging Process)

• Who engages with whom?
• Self-Perception Theory
• Purpose(s) of Reflective Listening in
• Simple and Complex Reflections
• Reflective Listening Exercise (Question/Simple/Complex)

The Purpose and Definition of MI 

• Differences between MI and “therapy”
• Motivational Enhancement vs “Therapy”
• Motivation, Engagement, and “Buy In”
• How “persuasion” impacts motivation
• Why Helpers Opt To Persuade

Review and Illustration of Key Elements Covered Today (Video Review Exercise)

Elicit Insights Re: What Gets in My Way of Doing MI? What It Seem Hard? How is MI so Simple – But Not Easy?

DAY TWO

Common “Traps” Which Thwart MI Competency (and why they emerge)

• Review and Examples of 8 Common Traps and How to Minimize “Habits” That Get In The Way of Practicing MI

“Spirit” (Establishing An Environment Conducive To MI), processes  and principles of MI conversations

• Partnership, acceptance, compassion and evoking behaviours as “global” elements of MI practice (notes on how these are measured)
• 4 Processes: First things first; Last Things Last
• How MI serves the needs of marginalized groups who have negative experience histories with professional helpers

Directionality in MI 

• “Guiding” vs “Steering” (Nudging vs. “pushing”)
• Equipoise as a helping practice
• Agenda Setting/Mapping/Focusing

Client “Push Back” (aka “resistance”) in the Context of an MI Conversation (Cause – effect)

• MI perspective on “Client Resistance”
• Resistance Under the Behavioural Control of the Helper

Affirmation as An MI Skill

• What to affirm/why/how to compose and deliver and affirmation (vs “Compliment”or “praise”)

Change Talk 

• MI as an approach to eliciting Change Talk
• Explaining Change Talk and Sustain Talk (in context of “evoking process)
• Research on How/Why/When Change Talk Occurs
• Notes on “target behaviours”

Recognition of Change Talk Exercise

• Hearing “Change Talk” Hidden in Typical Client Conversation (amongst Sustain Talk)

Notes on Helper Responses To Change Talk

• Using E.A.R.(S). responses

Group Exercise (Listening For and Responding To Change Talk

• Fishbowl role play (Starting With Engaging – Then Using EARS) (Including demonstration and examples with “Collecting Summaries”)

The Evoking Process

• Development and Use of Evocative Questioning for Purpose of Evoking (D.A.R.N.) Change Talk

Practice Session using O.A.R.S. for Engaging and Evocation

• Fish Bowl role play session (Instructor as Client) to allow all participants to experiment with and practice key skills from this workshop

Wrap-Up and Evaluations

Learning Objectives

1. Form a variety of useful and strategic reflections to facilitate the engaging, focusing and evoking processes central to an MI conversation
2. Identify client use of “change talk” and/or “sustain talk” in real-time
3. Design strategic questions that will evoke desire, ability, reason, or need language related to the targeted change
4. Differentiate between client language that leads to intention for change or to intention to maintain status-quo (no change)
5. Respond effectively to client use of “change talk” prior to moving toward goal setting

Your Presenter

Paul Burke, M.A., RSW, CACII

Paul is a registered social worker with extensive clinical and training experience in the application of M.I. to addictions and mental health counselling, concurrent disorders, social work practice, psychological disorders, health-care and to a large variety of mandated and “resistant” populations. Paul is a certified trainer with the international “MINT” organization (Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers). He is also a member of a special interest working group within MINT devoted to furthering the use of Motivational Interviewing with survivors of intimate partner violence. For the past sixteen years Paul has specialized exclusively in the delivery of M.I. training for a wide variety of helping professionals across Canada. To date, he has facilitated high-caliber training for more than 8,000 learners of the MI approach, including for psychologists, physicians, mental health and addictions counsellors, nurses, rehab practitioners, and others who specialize in direct-client care. Literally, Paul has trained “coast-to-coast-to coast” in Canada and is highly regarded for his excellent skills and entertaining approach to adult education. Paul has been selected three times by the international MINT organization to act as a trainer for their international training-for-trainers program in Canada, England and in the United States.

In the 22 years preceding his move to full-time MI instruction, Paul had a 22 year career in the field of mental health and addictions. In that capacity, he provided treatment and program design services for a variety of clients experiencing addictions and concurrent disorders. He was clinical supervisor in a long-term in-patient adolescent treatment program in Alberta and was counselling supervisor in a major adult in-patient rehabilitation program for several years. Paul was also a trainer and training coordinator in the addictions field prior to before leaving government in 2002 to form his own private training and consulting practice.

Paul well known for his passion for MI and for teaching. His creative and entertaining approaches to teaching have earned him an excellent reputation as an “outside-the-box thinker” when it comes to finding ways to help people adopt the helping paradigm that drives the MI approach to activating or enhancing motivation.

Registration & Fees