Motivational Interviewing (MI) plays a central role in our approach to Transforming Corrections.1 MI is all about helping people change and overcoming their natural ambivalence to change. Change, especially adaptive change, is difficult for individuals and for agencies, so we need a way to strengthen the motivation and commitment to change that lies within people and within agencies. MI is a collaborative conversation style for doing just that – strengthening a person’s and agency’s own motivation and commitment to change.
Transforming Corrections infuses the spirit or four key values of MI – Compassion, Collaboration, Acceptance, and Evocation – into everything it does. We seek to always bring compassion to our work, we work in a collaborative fashion, we accept and do not judge our clients, believing they are a source of goodness and wisdom, and we endeavor to evoke or draw forth the internal goodness and wisdom that lies in our clients to guide their process of change and transformation.
Transforming Corrections also follows the fourfold path of MI in its work with individual clients and agencies – Engage, Focus, Evoke and Plan. We do not have ready-made solutions, but we do have the ability to engage you and your organization around a process of transformation. We help you more clearly identify and focus your desire for change, we draw out the inner resources and strengths necessary for that change to occur and we walk with you in the planning process of implementing the change.
Transforming Corrections can also train and coach its clients and agencies through a process of achieving competency in the spirit, principles and skills of MI. Senior-level leaders, mid-level managers, and frontline staff in agencies are all working on issues of adaptive change within themselves and within those they directly work with, so the collaborative skills of MI are a great way of improving the ability of all staff to foster the kind of motivation and commitment to change that will be necessary for transformation to occur.
Achieving competency in MI itself is often an adaptive process of change for someone. Because of this training in MI alone will not help a person to achieve competency. Becoming skilled at MI involves a process of training, coaching, engagement in a community of practice and feedback. In partnership with Justice Systems Assessment and Training J-Sat.com we offer the complete process of training, coaching, community of practice and feedback called “Skill Builders” that is necessary to guide someone to MI competency according to national standards of competency.
To receive a free consultation to explore how Transforming Corrections may assist your organization in working toward competency in Motivational Interviewing, click on this link and schedule a time that will work for you: Schedule a time with Tom O’Connor
[1] William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick, 2013. Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Guildford Press (3rd. Edition).