Motivational Interviewing is a guiding style of communication.
When I talk about this in my trainings, I love using a video by Bill Miller, one of the founders of Motivational Interviewing, because it refers to MI in terms of “being a good guide.”
Let’s say you want to hire a guide to show you a new country. You probably don’t want that guide to tell you where you should go, what to do, what sights to see, when to have all your meals…that’s not a good guide. We don’t want someone who is totally directive.
But we also don’t want someone to just aimlessly follow us wherever we go in a new country…that’s not a good guide either.
A good guide does a little of both: knowing when to direct and when to follow and go with the flow.
And so in Motivational Interviewing, we too aim for somewhere in the middle.
We need to do some following: we want to find out what’s important to our clients, what they care about, what they value.
At times we need to do some directing: we offer our expertise, our knowledge, and experience to help support our clients with the change process.
MI Tip of the Week: When thinking about using Motivational Interviewing, think about what it takes to be a good guide! You may need to adjust your style of communication according to the clients needs at that moment- perhaps following more, or directing more. In Motivational Interviewing, we strive toward the middle path!
