Imagine your client believes it is important to change, has resolved her ambivalence about it, and now is ready to make the change, but weeks have passed and she still hasn’t followed through. What’s going on here? What’s missing? According to Motivational Interviewing, a crucial step in facilitating change is looking at the client’s confidence in her ability to change. By identifying where exactly the client is lacking confidence, MI provides a framework and tools for addressing what is oftentimes the last obstacle to change.

In this video, expert MI trainer Cathy Cole demonstrates how to help clients explore past successes, and how they can use those to build confidence in the present. She shows how to use affirmations to help clients remember their personal strengths and how to facilitate your clients’ best efforts at following through with their change plans. Watch Cole demonstrate how to respond when clients ask for advice and how to maintain a collaborative partnership with your clients, especially when they are ready to change and it can be especially tempting to tell them what to do.

By watching Cole skillfully engage each of the three clients in this video and listening to her voiceover commentary, you will gain a deep understanding of what MI is, how to use it to build client confidence, and why it is such a powerful and widely used approach to behavior change.

For a comprehensive understanding of Motivational Interviewing, we recommend that you view the complete series, Motivational Interviewing Step by Step. Note that this is the fourth and final video in that series, and while you will learn a lot by watching only this one, you will get a much fuller understanding of the approach by viewing them all. For a complete introduction to the fundamental principles and techniques of MI, we particularly recommend starting with the first video in the series, Core Concepts in Motivational Interviewing.