Strategies for Building Confidence
Motivational Interviewing - FoundationalWe're gonna examine some strategies for helping you to increase a client's confidence in their ability to make a change. So what kind of things would we do if we wanted to increase our clients' confidence and their ability language? One method is something we call characteristics of successful changers. That is a structured exercise that you go through with clients that really forces both of you to look at what are the characteristics of that person that they might bring forward into the change process.
Another way that we might focus on increasing ability language is to simply ask a person what strengths do they have, or what do they know about themselves that makes them think that they might be able to accomplish this change? Simple, open-ended question, evocatively asking the person, listening to what they have to say, and then reflecting the ability language that they offer. Thinking about strengths is contagious. When clients start thinking about one thing they're good at, it causes them to think differently about changes they might make in the future. A third way that we wanna increase ability language is to ask about past successes.
I like in particular to ask clients about challenges they faced, that they didn't know that they could be successful at the time, but they prevailed. Thinking about past successes and accomplishments is a direct tie to the kind of change the person wants to make now.