Motivational Interviewing: How Health Coaches Inspire Clients For Positive Change

In Health Coaching, there are many tools to use to find the root cause of health issues and help lifestyle change. Motivational Interviewing is a coaching set of skills that is client-centered around supporting, behaving, and communicating as a coach that will inspire the client to embark on self-reflection, self-discovery, and exploration of solutions. 

What are the assumptions we’re making when we introduce motivational interviewing as a set of coaching skills? Why would we learn this skill? Well, motivation is essential to change. It’s multidimensional, dynamic, and fluctuating. Social interactions and modifiable influence them. Your style is going to influence your ability to motivate, and the coach’s task is to elicit and enhance motivation. So, when we talk about motivational interviewing, we’re saying that motivation is the key to change and that learning this skill is going to not only enhance your connection with the client but will improve the way the client responds to the program.

We’re saying that the process of self-actualization that prompts goal-directed behavior is about enhancing the self, and as human beings, we are driven by the desire to improve. Motivation is the probability that a person will enter into, continue, and adhere to a specific change strategy. What does this mean? It simply means that if you’re personally motivated to do something, the chances are that you’re going to achieve it.

Motivation can disappear in a moment and teeter between conflicting objectives – so you could feel very strongly about wanting to do something, you start the process and then all of a sudden, you’re no longer interested. Sound familiar? Motivation can oftentimes feel like a rollercoaster of emotions, with uncertainty and doubt creeping in. It is imperative as a health coach, to support the client to help them stay on track.

Motivational skills support positive outcomes and build coach self-awareness, so using them from the point of view of the social science and psychological literature, learning and mastering them, can truly enhance a client achieving whatever they want to achieve and make lasting changes.

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