What Do Motivational Interviewing and Weather Patterns Have in Common?

I learned a new weather term last week in Lisbon, Portugal, at the annual MI Trainer forum.

Virga. It means a streak or shaft of precipitation (rain, ice crystals, or snow) that falls from a cloud, but evaporates or sublimates into water vapor before reaching the ground.

When I lived in the Southwest, I saw this often, watching rain starting to fall in the distance, but evaporating before it reached the ground.

So why were a bunch of MI trainers talking about virga?

Because co-founder of Motivational Interviewing, Dr. Bill Miller, was giving a plenary address on MI training & learning research, and he brought in virga as a metaphor for what can happen when we train Motivational Interviewing.

Just training Motivational Interviewing without feedback and coaching yields not-so-awesome results. It’s like a weather system trying to get rain to reach the ground, but not accomplishing the desired results.

And, it creates learners that are less curious about MI (following MI training, participants think they know MI but measure of their skills would indicate otherwise).

So, even with all of our well-intentioned training efforts, Motivational Interviewing training rarely ‘reaches the ground’ (AKA makes it into client sessions) without additional coaching & consultation.

You can check Dr. Bill Miller’s plenary talk for free (and his past talks, too!).

So what can you do about it? If you have received training in MI before, look for feedback & coaching opportunities! This can take the form of:

• Joining or creating a learning community where practice and feedback occur regularly
• Signing up for coaching and feedback with a MI trainer
• Using AI to practice and get feedback

Our online MI Academy courses include a comprehensive Certificate of Advanced Practice in Motivational Interviewing, that includes training, 1:1 coaching and feedback and LOTS of triad practice opportunities.

I also have recently collected some AI MI resources where you can practice with bots and receive feedback, too! I have listed them in a new section in our FREE MI Learning Library. There’s also a section in that Library where you can connect with others to cultivate your own MI learning community! Or join our Facebook group!

Here are some MI AI options that we are aware of (and if you are aware of more, send us an email us with the info!)

• Sky Kershner has developed a FREE MI chat tool, MI Snacks. Text chat with a bot for OARS skills practice and feedback.
• SocialWorky developed a FREE practice tool and has multiple options for text practice with chatbots trained in MI feedback.
• AvanzaEm developed a FREE library of standardized patients to text chat with and give you feedback on your sessions.
• Bill Matulich created an OARS Coach tool. It has a free trial for 14 days, then has an annual cost.
• Zenobits provides a free 10 minutes (then paid minutes) of a verbal session with a standardized patient chatbot. There is a menu of standardized patients to choose from, and you can turn off or on the live coaching feature if you want real-time feedback on your session. When you are done with the practice session, the software takes you through a self-evaluation before providing MITI-coded feedback of your session. There are critical moments of your session highlighted, as well as suggestions for practice (and can invite you to ‘re-do’ a moment with a patient in real time).

Motivational Interviewing Tip of the Week: Just taking training in Motivational Interviewing rarely translates to actually using MI with clients. It takes practice and feedback to gain fluency in MI! Training research on the process of learning MI highlights the need for feedback and coaching. Much like learning a new language, the process of learning MI is one that takes repeated, experiential practice and feedback! Check out our FREE MI Learning Library for more resources to support your learning.