Sink your teeth into Motivational Interviewing

I LOVE teaching advanced Motivational Interviewing courses. Helping people sink their teeth into the meat of MI is so satisfying. 

I hear participants share about the energy shift that happens when they are not efforting so much. Clients talk and share more. There is more ease and flow in the therapeutic relationship. 

Learning and fully integrating MI into your practice is a journey. 

And, we know from research studying MI learners, that more training & coaching after a basic training is absolutely essential to integration. 

When I was first training MI for a large federal program, we offered an incredibly rigorous training program.

Here’s how it worked: Helping professionals would apply to attend. They would be flown to a training location where they would receive a 3-day beginner course, meet their MI consultant, and then head home. We had an MI consultant for every 4 people. That’s an INCREDIBLE learning ratio. And over the next 6 months, as an MI consultant, we had WEEKLY 90 min group learning calls, and once a month, an individual coaching call where participants would receive feedback on MI samples they turned in. Like I said, rigorous! Now, most of us don’t have that kind of cush money for training and time, but I wanted to give this example to share about the commitment it takes to becoming fluent in MI. It was rigorous!  

I recently attended a training where many shared the value of being a “lifelong learner.” 

YES. The moment I think “I got it” with a client, the moment my curiosity and humility fades away. I’m committed to helping YOUR MI learning process!

So whether you are ready to invest in an advanced training like Uplevel, or set an intention to deepen your empathy practice this week, the value YOU have of “sharpening the saw” as Steven Covey puts it (strengthening YOUR skills) impacts those you work with in so many ways.