Guest Blog – Leila Niknejad, Programmes Facilitator on Motivational Interviewing
This week we hear from Programmes Facilitator Leila who reflects on her experience of refreshing her Motivational Interviewing skills
Last week, I attended Motivational Interviewing (MI) and de-escalating aggression training. For me, this was a chance to refresh my MI skills, as I recognise that I have become complacent and let my skills slip over the years. I have often caught myself asking too many questions or being too eager to give advice, rather than use my MI skills to support and elicit information from the service user. I also recognise that I can find it difficult to keep motivated with resistant service users and this affects my ability to use MI skills. The training gave me a chance to reflect on this and the importance of my role as a facilitator to ensure I have the MI spirit, principles and skills to best support and enable service users to progress through the cycle of change.
Everyone on the training was open and willing to learn and develop their practice. The training gave us an opportunity to talk about our experiences with service users and share ideas with each other to deal with resistance. I always learn a lot from listening to how colleagues deal with situations, it gives me new ideas to take forward. It was also interesting to learn some simple but effective techniques to manage aggression and this is something I will defnitely take into my practice. It highlighted to me that a slight change in wording can make a big difference in de-escalating situations.
For me, it was also helpful and insightful to see the trainers (Ben Watts and Katharine Watson) fantastically model the MI skills during their general facilitation of the training.
I think it is important to continuously refresh our skill set and improve our practice, as well as remind ourselves to strive for excellence, not perfection. I have come away from the training with confidence and an eagerness to put my refreshed and new skills into practice. Roll on this week!
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