Motivating Change in Others

How do you help someone who is struck or ambivalent about making an important change in their life? Do you give them advice? Do you argue or debate them to persuade them make a change? Do you become frustrated when those strategies fail and then accuse them of being foolish? We can respectfully engage others to help them make changes through careful listening and by allowing the other person to identify their own priorities and motivations. The key communication skills addressed in this session are adapted from Motivational Interviewing and involve asking open questions, affirming, reflecting and summarizing in order to help someone move from ambivalence to action.

This training will help you:
• Describe how efforts to persuade or advise others results in resistance to change
• Consider whether your present approaches are facilitating or impeding change in others
• Change the way you engage others though use of questions and reflections to promote engagement leading
to change
• Participate in meaningful discourse that promotes understanding and commitment to change