Inspire Change with Motivational Interviewing_Final

>> Hey, I have a question for you. When you work with clients, do you tend to jump right into setting goals and making plans? Or do you spend time deeply exploring why they want to change and what stands in their way? If you have that tendency to launch straight into action mode with your clients, then pay extra attention to this lecture. I'm going to share with you an exciting approach to coaching called motivational interviewing. Have you ever heard of it? It's a practical method for helping your clients make a meaningful shift in the early stages of change so that they'll have a better chance of being successful at sustaining progress and achieving their goals. Here's a little bit of background. Motivational interviewing is a goal-oriented communication style that focuses on the language of change. It was developed by William Miller and Stephen Rollnick in the 1990s as a method for counseling, but has since become widely applied to coaching and various healthcare professions. The overall goal is to increase a client's intrinsic drive for creating change. This is done by awakening and strengthening their personal interest in the new behavior while, simultaneously, growing their disinterest in maintaining the status quo. In other words, you're helping them get in touch with why they really want to change while also getting in touch with just how unbearable their current situation is so that they can gain intrinsic motivation to do whatever it takes to get what they want. To be most effective, this should be done in a supportive environment of acceptance and compassion so that the client feels safe and comfortable enough to do this vulnerable kind of work. In the context of motivational interviewing, the coach's role is to encourage clients to explore and resolve their ambivalence, guide clients to see how shifting their behavior now will align them with future goals and values, and instill clients with confidence and hope. A major premise of this approach is that generally, your clients already know what they should and shouldn't do, but for a variety of reasons, they don't actually do these things. So you should always assume that your clients are experts on themselves and don't need to be taught what to do. They know what's best. What they need your help with is getting unstuck. Miller and Rollnick have described coaching with motivational interviewing as being like a service dog for a person who's visually impaired. They know where it is that they want to go, they just need help navigating around the obstacles in their path. Can you relate here? How many clients have you had come to you already having a fair amount of knowledge about their health or the issue they face? They know what their problem is but they're struggling with how to make that change. This is the age of Google. Most of our clients are pretty well-informed. They're not stumbling into our offices completely in the dark about their issues. I find this especially true when it comes to weight loss. Most clients who sign up for coaching to lose weight could probably write a book about dieting and healthy foods. They just can't figure out how to successfully navigate the obstacles that come up for them during the weight-loss process. So what do you do with your clients who just can't seem to get their acts together? You already know that lecturing, harshly confronting, and scaring people into change is not effective. Motivational interviewing works well because it provides an empowering way for coaches to talk about change with their clients. By encouraging clients to take full ownership of their goals and behaviors, they become more invested in them. This process focuses on getting clients to really think about their behavior change and weigh it over on their own terms at their own pace instead of feeling led or forced to make a decision for their health. We may think we're already doing this as coaches, but oftentimes, despite our best intension, we're not. Often, we move at our own pace or the pace we think our clients and our sessions should be progressing rather than actually letting them set the tempo, especially when they seem indecisive or unsure. When your clients are ambivalent, do you encourage them to reach a conclusion or do you hang out with them in the space of their uncertainty for as long as they need to be there? If you're the type of coach who sets goals and makes plans right away, you might be rushing your clients into their journeys prematurely by letting them riff off your momentum. This is not sustainable since it's not their momentum. When working with your clients, observe yourself and check in with yourself regularly to assess who is the one setting the pace. It's also easy to fall into the counterproductive habit of providing education instead of eliciting ideas. As coaches, we have so much knowledge about our fields, and we love to share and discuss this information with people because it excites us and we genuinely love to help. There's a place for information sharing in coaching, but when you do this before first eliciting your client's ideas, you're doing them a disservice because you're not teaching them how to tap into their own answers and intuitive body knowledge. This backfires, especially when working with clients who are people-pleasers or generally passive and defer to others because they'll end up "Yessing" you when you make suggestions they may not be totally down with because they want to be seen as a good client. So like I said, motivational interviewing approaches change as a process, and within this process, there are four phases that guide change. These can unfold within a single session but also represents the general flow for the overall progression of your work together. The four phases are engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning. Let's look at what each of these mean. First, engaging with your client. This is where your work with a client begins. Like with any type of coaching, this is the rapport-building phase. You engage your client when you invite him or her into a warm conversation that's designed to understand their feelings about where they're at and where they want to be. In this stage, you want to focus on building rapport by asking high-mileage questions and actively listening to their responses to demonstrate your interest in understanding. The desired outcome of this stage is to create a warm working relationship, and understand what your client is generally hoping to gain by working with you. The next phase in motivational interviewing is focusing. This means inviting your client to guide the work with you by identifying, specifically, what they want to discuss and work on. This is the initial stage of talking about a goal, and you'll want to ask powerful, non-judgmental questions about the "Why" behind their desired outcome. Next is the evoking stage. This is the stage when you work with your clients to identify and work through their ambivalence around the desired behavior change. During this phase, you're assessing their readiness to change, exploring doubts and fears, and getting ready to transition into the planning process. We'll explore how to work with your client's ambivalence in detail later on in this module. Finally, assisting your client in the planning process to prepare for change. You enter the planning phase when your client is clear on their goal, ready for change, and committed to doing what needs to be done. In the planning phase, your role is to support your client by inviting them to set their own goals, assessing any barriers to change, and asking permission to share information. Again, by eliciting your client's own ideas and then asking them if you can provide your own two cents, you're keeping them in the driver's seat. This will help them to feel most in control of their change process. So to recap, motivational interviewing is a conversational process that inspires clients to positively embrace change on their own terms. The four processes involved in moving your clients towards change are engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning. Motivational interviewing works great with health coaching because it encourages clients to develop meaningful, positive relationships with food, exercise, and their bodies. And it teaches them how to think positively about changing their behaviors instead of approaching them with a sense of fear or apprehension. I hope this intro provided a solid overview of the basic concept and design of motivational interviewing, and that you find it useful with your clients. So what do you think about motivational interviewing? Is this a method you're interested in trying out with clients? Are you already using elements of it in your practice? Hop on over to the Facebook group page and let us know. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you soon.