Affirmations

Affirmations are a micro skill within Motivational Interviewing, the more we affirm, call out strengths and empower others, the more autonomy and activation they will have.

Empathy

Accurate Empathy is a micro skill within Motivational Interviewing.  There is a difference between empathy, sympathy and compassion, when we do accurate empathy, we truly are able to step into another’s shoes to see the world from their worldview.  This helps clients feel heard and understood.

Engage

Engage is the first of the 4 process’s of Motivational Interviewing.  During this stage, we aim to use these micro-skills: express empathy, use reflective listening, roll with resistance  to help explore their ambivalence. 

Evocative Questions

Evoking clients thoughts, ideas, feelings about change helps them to stay in control of the change process. Open ended questions can often help clients to dive deep into their own thoughts and feelings.  Evoke is also one of the Motivational Interviewing intentions used on the MICA (Motivational Interviewing Competency Assessment)

Focus

Focus is the second of the 4 process’s of Motivational Interviewing. With the goal to strengthen motive behind change we want to help the client focus on their values, their goals and what they ultimately want.  

Partnering to Problem Solve

Partnering is an intention on the MICA, which IFIOC co-authored.  But how we partner to help our clients problem solve in a way that supports their autonomy is key to success in Motivational Interviewing.  When clients get stuck, sometimes they need us to step in and help light up the path.

Creating a Plan

The third of the 4 process’s of Motivational Interviewing.  This stage is trying to help your client elicit their own plan for change.  Using micro skills like affirmations and highlighting their strengths to increase confidence in change.

Stages of Change

This is not a Motivational Interviewing concept but one we teach at IFIOC to help put the scaffolding in place to understand the change process. These 4 stages of change can help you identify where a person is at mentally with their change process.  See IFIOC MI approach or rainbow sheet for more details.

Strategic Reflective Listening

Strategic reflective listening is key to Motivational Interviewing.  We are not parroting others statements, but strategically shining light by reflecting key things they have said.

Values / Focus Mountain

Trendsetting in the Motivational Interviewing world. IFIOC has been called the Avand Garde of MI, for our use of pro-social values during the Focus stage of Motivational Interviewing. The more we can connect someone to not just their target behavior, but their VALUES behind it, the more motive they will have for change.
IFIOC created the Focus Mountain concept to help explain values and their part of Motivational Interviewing and the behavior change process.

Types of talk (Change, Resistance, Sustain)

Understanding the types of talk is part of learning Motivational Interviewing.  The more you understand the language you hear, the more you know how to move forward in the change process. Please see IFIOC’s MI approach or rainbow sheet for more information.