Motivational Interviewing Groups:
Moving Together Toward Change
Enhanced Professional Learning

DESCRIPTION

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an empathic, goal-oriented therapeutic approach that elicits change in health, mental health, and addictive behaviors. Originally an alternative to addiction approaches that relied on an expert, authoritarian stance in counseling, MI has evolved into a mainstream, evidence-based, and highly-used method for eliciting change that helps people live better and healthier across a wide variety of settings, clinical problems, and populations.

MI was developed as an individual approach, focusing on dyadic interactions between the person and the counselor. However, adapting MI for use with a group of people requires reconceptualizing its core practices to harness the power of group support, cohesion, and momentum. Group leadership requires skills beyond those in dyadic counseling. Managing “conversational traffic” and facilitating open sharing among people with different experiences, goals, styles, and beliefs are essential skills for group leaders. Effective leaders must be well-prepared to address unexpected situations and maintain therapeutic bonds with individual group members while facilitating a conversation among the whole group.

This six-session experiential training provides information on adapting MI to groups across a variety of formats, and is highly experiential, leading participants through group practice exercises across the four phases of MI groups. This series will incorporate evidence-based practices with the MI modality. Participants will become part of a group, and some will have opportunities to lead the group. Incorporating Motivational Interviewing group skills developed by the trainers, this series guides participants in successful group leadership, refocusing groups away from rehashing problems and toward inspiring positive change.

WHEN

Weekly sessions offered on the same day and start time between May 3 and June 14, 2023. Day and time will depend on your location. Click REGISTER NOW below to view the full schedule for your specific location. 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this training experience, participants will be able to:

• Recognize at least two (2) ways to shift from providing individual counseling in a group setting to facilitating group interactions that promote growth and wellness.
• Explore at least two (2) ways to model a warm, healthy, relaxed, and accepting way of being.
• Identify at least three (3) strategies to foster a positive group climate while deepening cohesion between members.
• Assess at least two (2) key elements of the expanded nature of change talk in MI groups.
• Explain at least two (2) ways to broaden and deepen group conversations for optimal success.
• Compare at least three (3) strategies to transform group conflict into moments of growth.
• Specify at least three (3) guided group activities such as exploring values, drawing from past successes, harnessing personal strengths, and envisioning a better future.
• Build a plan to utilize the three (3) MI strategies of Exploring and Broadening Perspectives, Building Momentum for Change, and Moving into Action.
   

INTENDED AUDIENCE

• Behavioral health, substance use disorders, and recovery service providers located in the Pacific Southwest ATTC region (HHS Region 9)
• Have experience or access to facilitating groups

PARTICIPANT COMMITMENT & EXPECTATIONS

• To be eligible and register for this series, applicants are required to first complete either (1) an Intro to MI live virtual or face-to-face training offered by the PSATTC or (2) the 4-hour, free self-paced, online course Tour of MI: An Interprofessional Road Map for Behavior Change and submit the electronic copy of your certificate of completion from either of these trainings during the registration process
• Attend a 1-hour online Orientation
• Commit to 6-weeks of live online training for 1.5 hours weekly 
• Complete weekly self-study learning activities
• Access to appropriate technology for using videoconferencing platform (internet connection, webcam, laptop/tablet, speakers, and microphone)
• Be prepared and actively engage during scheduled series time

FREE TO PARTICIPATE 

Space is limited to the first 35 registrants who will receive a grant-funded scholarship that covers the entire $350 cost of participation. Due to limited enrollment, if you cannot commit to the full participant requirements, please defer this registration opportunity to others.  

FACILITATORS:

• Kate Speck, PhD, MAC, LADC
• Paul Warren, LMSW
• Amy Shanahan, MS, CADC

QUESTIONS?
Please contact the NFARtec Workwise Staff at [email protected] or by phone at 775-784-6265 or 866-617-2816 (toll-free).