stephenrollnick

I am a transport planner, working for a consultancy across a wide variety of transport issues.  I have specialised in Personal Travel Planning, which aims to facilitate behaviour change with individuals from car dependency to more sustainable, healthier modes of transport.  In a typical project, we will recruit a team of people to go door to door in an area and talk to residents about how they travel, and suggest alternatives to the private car.  Our approach very much used to be based on deficiency model of change – people were lacking the knowledge or skills to travel in a different way and by fixing this, we could get them to change their behaviour

We are looking to apply the principles of MI t what we do and have been working with some MI trainers to do this, however, we don’t feel that we can do this effectively without being proficient ourselves.  I am currently putting together a business case so that I can be trained to be proficient in MI, but this is posing a few difficulties.

Could you please tell me what would be the best way to become proficient, given that I do not see clients on a regular basis?  I have attended several one and two day introductions to MI ad feel I have a grasp of the spirit, but I really need practice and coaching to improve.  Would someone be willing to coach me to improve, and how much time would I need with an MI trainer?  I’d really like to do the TNT course, but I’m not proficient yet and it only seems to be run in America (which I know I can’t get work to pay for)

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Charlotte

Hi Charlotte,

Thanks for posting your query. It sounds a fascinating area that you're working in.

The best way to develop proficiency in MI is by doing it. In fact it is difficult to imagine how else you'd learn it. You could have a look at MI campus to see what they offer in terms of coaching and feedback. See: http://www.mi-campus.com/ I know there is development work happening behind the scenes to help support folk like you to be able to develop MI skills even if you're not seeing clients. I'm not clear on where this is at though so you may be best off contacting Jeff Allison and/or Rik Bes (MI-Campus deirector) directly.

Re: the TNT, you'd need to demonstrate proficiency in MI in your application to the TNT so working to build this, and getting structured feeback should help with this process. The TNT is held once every 2 years in the US and once every two years in Europe. The process for hosting TNTs is changing as MINT has now become incorporated so the procedures are tighter, but in the past some extra TNTs have been held in other parts of the world too such as in South Africa.

Things are changing and devloping in the MI world all the time though and as there is an increasd demand for supervision and coaching, news opportunities may well come up. I'd suggest keeping an eye on Steve's website, or if you'd like to be added to the mailing list email mistephenrollnick@gmail.com -we send out updates on developments as and when we hear of them.

Good luck with it!

Nina

Thank you for your reply Nina. 

I have been given agreement (and more importantly budget!) to develop my proficiency in MI.  Another colleague and I are going to really get to grips with the theory then try coaching each other as well as seeking expert help to get better.

Charlotte