Encourage Your Brain: Motivational Interviewing

There's a wonderful quote that goes, "It's the rare person who wants to hear what they don't want to hear." And as I think about people who coach or people who are in relationships where they need to influence others, we really need to think about how do you get someone to hear what they don't want to hear. So we know 3 things that don't work. Those 3 things are criticism, logic and consequences. Like, we could criticize somebody and say, "You ought to do it differently," or we can use logic and say, "Think of it this way," or we can share some consequences, negative consequences. But studies show that those things don't work very well when you're trying to get somebody to change their mind. What does work is a process called motivational interviewing. So motivational interviewing has been used successfully in weight loss. It's been used successfully in getting people to change their opinions about sensitive topics, maybe immunizations or racial biases that people might hold. And it's also had a lot of success with college students drinking heavily and reducing their alcohol intake. So how does it work? It really uses a coach approach, and there are 3 steps. So the first step is curiosity. The next is listening, and then the third step is having acknowledgments or affirmations. And so curiosity might sound something like this. So let's use a context here. The context could be something like you've got a messy roommate who doesn't pick up his or her clothes or dishes after dinner or breakfast or any time of day. So step 1 in curiosity might be asking a question like, what are your thoughts about the dinner dishes being left in the den? Right? And you have to ask it in a way that doesn't sound accusatory, doesn't sound judgmental. And then you listen. That's step 2. So really listening to what the person's thinking is and what their meaning is behind whether or not there are dishes or clothes laying on the floor. And then you ask more questions. Go back to step 1, curiosity. And those questions might be, what situations or circumstances might there be where Leaving dirty dishes has some drawbacks for you. And maybe they say, well, and I don't like to have ants in, in the, the den when I leave dishes out too long. Or maybe I don't like that I can't find my favorite shirt if it's been left and kind of kicked underneath the couch. So being able to listen to that, echo something, and again, not in a way like, gotcha, see, yeah, you should have been thinking that way the whole time. But instead, just very curiously listening. And then the third step is acknowledging two things. And the first thing is what the person's desired future is. So it has to be some inkling of, "I would like things to change in this direction." So echoing that. And then secondly, their ability to make that change. So as coaches, you know, you can kind of lean on strengths or somebody's resilient past to be able to affirm their confidence that they can make that change. Uh, one of the questions that we like to use a lot here at the academies is the question of, "What gives you a sense of hope that you can experiment with that, that you can make some changes in that direction?" So that's a 3-step process for motivational interviewing. You want to be able to ask those curious questions, listen, and then make some affirmations about their desired future and their ability to change. The caveat with all of this is you, me, every one of us, is that we have to also be ready to listen and hear what we don't want to hear, potentially ready to change our minds as well. So it may be that there's more openness in both sides as you're having these conversations, and that's a big part of that process. So maybe you can live with dirty shoes left shirts or dishes, whatever, left on the floor. I would draw the line with ants getting into things, obviously. But have fun experimenting with motivational interviewing.