Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing (MI) plays a central role in our approach at Transforming Communication.[1] MI is about helping people change and overcome their natural ambivalence to change.  Change, especially adaptive change, is difficult for individuals and for agencies, so we need a way to strengthen the motivation and commitment to change that lies within people and within agencies. MI is a collaborative conversation style for doing just that – strengthening a person’s and agency’s own motivation and commitment to change.

Transforming Communication infuses the spirit or four key values of MI – Compassion, Collaboration, Acceptance, and Empowerment – into everything it does.  We seek to always bring compassion to our work, work in a collaborative fashion, accept and not judge our clients, and we endeavor to evoke or draw forth the internal goodness and wisdom that lies within our clients to guide their process of change and transformation.

Transforming Communication also follows the fourfold path of MI in its work with individual clients and agencies – Engage, Focus, Evoke, and Plan. We do not have ready-made solutions, but we do have the ability to engage you and your organization around a process of transformation.  We help you more clearly identify and focus your desire for change, draw out the inner resources and strengths necessary for that change to occur, and we walk with you in the planning process of implementing change.

Transforming Communication can also train and coach clients and agencies through a process of achieving competency in MI. Senior-level leaders, mid-level managers, and frontline staff in agencies are all working on issues of adaptive change within themselves and within those they directly work with, so the collaborative skills of MI are a great way of improving the ability of all staff to foster the kind of motivation and commitment to change that will be necessary for transformation to occur.

Achieving competency in MI itself is often an adaptive process of change for someone.  Becoming skilled at MI involves a process of training, feedback, coaching, and engagement in an ongoing community of practice . Samantha Collins is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) and has broad experiencing leading individuals and agencies through this process.

[1] William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick, 2013. Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Guildford Press (3rd. Edition).