Streamline Training & Documentation: Coaching that Nurtures Change

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Coaching that Nurtures Change

The June/July 2007 issue of Scientific American Mind has a short article by a pair of psychology professors, Hal Arkowitz of the University of Arizona and Scott O. Lilienfeld of Emory University, that offers advice on how to help people change.

Since today's businesses are generally intent on effectively managing a high level of dynamism, it makes sense to tap what could be of use in the ideas Arkowitz and Lilienfeld offer. In reading the excerpts below, you need to substitute "manager" for "therapist" and "employee" for "client," but I believe the substance of the recommendations remains useful even as the context shifts from interaction in a psychologist's office to coaching in a business setting.

Arkowitz and Lilienfeld advise against adopting highly directive approaches to promoting personal change — "cajoling through advice, persuasion or social pressure" — because such techniques are too likely to elicit resistance rather than cooperation.

In lieu of a highly directive approach, Arkowitz and Lilienfeld suggest motivational interviewing, a technique developed for treatment of addiction by William R. Miller (pdf) of the University of New Mexico and Stephen Rollnick of the Cardiff University School of Medicine in Wales.

In this method, the therapist aims to enhance the client's intrinsic motivation toward change by exploring and resolving his or her ambivalence [toward change]. The goal is to help the client (rather than the therapist) become the advocate for change. In other words, a client's resistance to change is seen by the therapist as ambivalence to be understood and appreciated rather than opposed directly.

Methods to try include:

"Highlighting client statements that reflect conflict between the person's behavior and values ... Such discrepancies create discomfort about the status quo and increase motivation to change."

Paying "more attention to the cient's talk about changing versus not changing, to help resolve ambivalence and tip the scales toward change."

In other words, motivational interviewing involves "listening and understanding hesitation about change, not opposing it, and trying to supportively strengthen the side of the person's mind that wants change."

I'm not saying that there is a direct and complete applicability of motivational interviewing, a therapeutic technique designed to help people overcome addiction, to situations in which businesses are trying to win employee engagement in making change happen. What I'm suggesting is that the type of conversation involved in motivational interviewing could be helpful as part of the process of coaching employees through an unsettling transition.

Note: You can read more about the philosophy behind motivational interviewing, the principles of motivational interviewing, interaction techniques, and motivational interviewing traps at the MotivationalInterview.org website.

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