Health Education & Training Institute

This workshop is about the power of debriefing for creating cohesiveness and safety during a Motivational Interviewing training. One of the great appeals of facilitating a Motivational Interviewing training/learning is its engaging and dynamic nature, like the MI conversation itself. Debriefing is useful in teaching MI by actively engaging the learners by addressing their needs, wants, and desires during an MI training. We will demonstrate how statements, questions, and concerns (and sometimes bad jokes) of the trainees can be used to promote partnership with the trainees. During this workshop, participants will experience a series of different exercises that have been found to be especially useful and effective in communicating the spirit and helping deepen practitioners’ technical skills in the use of Motivational Interviewing. We will try out each of the exercises as a group, and then take a step back and discuss how we imagine they may work with our participants, what insights the exercises provide (let's debrief together), and how the work deepens understanding of the Motivational Interviewing practice. Participants will become familiar with a variety of training tools for creating a more engaged training group which will result in greater sharing among trainees of their own ideas.