Originally written for clinicians supporting clients who are tackling addictive behaviour, the second edition of this book has broadened out to explore how motivational interviewing can be used to support behaviour change in a wider range of situations.
While not written as a book for coaches, there is a lot here that is interesting and valuable around how people do and don’t motivate themselves to change. Motivational interviewing focuses on helping clients to find their own reasons to nudge themselves towards making a change.
Key themes and ideas
- Clients need to be ready, willing and able to change. That means being ready to change now; really wanting to change (seeing the change as important and worthwhile); and believing that he/she will be able to make the change happen. Three key ingredients – timing, desire and confidence
- It is the client who should be voicing the arguments for change, not the coach. The job of the coach is to help the client to recognise the gap between his/her current situation and the desired future, not by pointing it out, but by helping the client to articulate the benefits and costs of both the status quo and the desired future
- Motivational interviewing is based on four general principles:
- Express empathy – described as respectful listening to the client with a desire to understand his/her perspective
- Develop discrepancy – help the client to make clear the discrepancy between the client’s present behaviour and his/her broader goals and values
- Roll with resistance – avoid the temptation to argue for the change, but invite the client instead to identify his/her own solutions
- Support self-efficacy – enhance the client’s confidence that he/she can cope with obstacles and succeed in making the change
- Each of these principles is clearly and helpfully described in a chapter
- Behaviour is the result of the interaction of a situation and our own choices, preferences and values. If the coach can help the client to understand more clearly the values guiding his/her everyday behaviour, the coach may be able to help the client to see behaviour change as a deliberate move towards a more fulfilling life, rather than as a difficult challenge or a loss of some comfortable habits today.
Useful gems
- This is the first time I have seen in writing something I arrived at (very slowly) independently some time ago, i.e. when assessing the costs and benefits of a potential change, a coach needs also to ask the client to articulate the costs and benefits of the status quo as well as the costs and benefits of making the change. It sounds obvious, but it isn’t, and it will often produce new data to discuss
- On page 79 there are some good questions to evoke “change talk” in the client
- The authors use a variation of the “change ruler”. As usual, the coach asks the client to place himself/herself on a continuum from 0 to 10 in terms of his/her readiness to change (where 10 is absolutely ready). If the client plumps for (say) 5, the coach then asks “so why aren’t you a 2?”, thus eliciting all the supporting reasons why the client is already partway to being able to change. I have never thought of doing this and have always gone the other way (“so what would need to happen to make you a 10?”). This really simple switch in focus works brilliantly.
Why I rate this book
- For a technical book, it’s written quite accessibly
- It includes mini case studies and coaching conversations to demonstrate the points the authors are making
- There are some great tips and approaches here that have helped me to guard against making the mistake of taking a position and arguing for it when I’m working with a client who appears to be resisting change.
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Hardcover: 428 pages
Publisher: Guilford Press; 1 edition (23 May 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1572305630
ISBN-13: 978-1572305632
Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.8 cm