On March 29th, assessment and project staff from the YMCA, along with members of the Orientation and Advisory Committee, participated in a full-day motivational interviewing workshop facilitated by The Monarch System.
Assessors explored and the applied techniques of motivational interviewing and learned how to transition conversation and build client motivation in ways that ensure a strengthened and real commitment to changed behaviours. This MI process includes different ways to use such elements as presence, competence views, compelling questions, reflective listening, change talk, and tagging values onto desired behaviour changes, all in service of the clients’ settlement plans.
DEFINITION
Motivational Interviewing
Motivational Interviewing (MI) can be described as a process of “arranging conversations such that people talk themselves into change based on their own values and interests” (Miller & Rollick, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, 2012, p.4). Practitioners have found that MI engages clients to collaborate fully and meaningfully in partnership with those supporting them.