Over on LinkedIn, MINT member Lisa Ardner is challenging the influential Peggy Swarbrick over Motivational Interviewing (MI). Ardner’s essay – “Respectfully Reconsidering: A Rebuttal to the PeerTAC Article on MI and Peer Support” – appears at https://lnkd.in/eQTyczzB.
Swarbrick’s original may be found at https://peertac.org/2024/07/30/why-motivational-interviewing-does-not-align-with-peer-support-skills/.
###
When MI was first presented to me, I was skeptical, much as Peggy Swarbrick in the cited piece. At that time, and very often since, this MI is hailed as a vehicle for encouraging clients to transition from their present stage of change to the next. (“Encourage” is polite.) According to Swarbrick, “The counselor comes in with an agenda which is very different from peer support where the agenda is set by the person.”
Put simply, where the (clinical) counselor has an agenda for her client, motivational interviewing is employed as a means to achieve the counselor’s goal. Skeptics, like Swarbrick and me, might be forgiven for deploring the (unconscious) coercion implicit in this approach.
The patronizing phrase, “we meet people where they’re at [Stage X] – but we don’t leave them there [we’ve cajoled them into maybe accepting Stage Y],” captures the essence of how this clinical agenda-driven practice is so objectionable. (https://sobriety-together.com/index.php/on-meeting-people/)
By contrast, according to Swarbrick, “Peer support is built on shared experiences, empathy, trust, and a non-hierarchical relationship between peers [the coach and the client].”
As a coach, I ask, “Who is the counselor to have such an agenda for her client?” and “Is compliance, however cosmetic, the price of continuing in addiction treatment programs?”
By contrast, agenda-wielding is anathema to the mission, purpose, philosophy and value of (non-clinical) coaching whereby coaches “partner with clients in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” (International Coaching Federation, https://coachingfederation.org/guide-to-becoming-a-coach/)
That is, no agenda save the explicit goals of the client.
Accordingly, coaches use the communications tools of motivational interviewing to support clients articulate those goals to their own satisfaction, to examine whether such goals are achievable and valuable, and to identify the steps necessary to get from here to there. Coach may also employ other communications methods such as Appreciative Inquiry (https://centerforappreciativeinquiry.net/resources/what-is-appreciative-inquiry-ai/).
Viewed from this perspective, motivational interviewing becomes a valuable skill for effective communications and, thus, a gift to non-clinical professionals and to everyone looking to improve personal and professional communications generally.
