Motivational Interview
An Inner Look At Yourself And Your Lifestyle
Why Communication Is an Important Skill for Effective Leadership
There are times when you have reached a point in your career where you are perhaps the most experienced person on the team and because of this, were named team leader. Unfortunately, when it comes to leading the team, there seems to be something missing. It’s not that you don’t know your job inside out, it’s more a matter of getting the team onboard with what you are trying to accomplish.
Have you stopped to consider that maybe they just aren’t ‘getting you’? You may be a master of your trade, but your communication skills might be lacking. Here is where you might want to take a look at just why communication is an important skill for effective leadership.
You Are Living in a Global Community
Maybe you are from another country where things are phrased a bit differently. Perhaps your team doesn’t quite understand what you are trying to communicate, even though you are one of the global leaders in your profession. Have you considered the benefits of studying English as a speaker of other languages? If you live in the UK, for example, you could check out Manchester English courses that were designed for people just like yourself. Sometimes your personal accomplishments aren’t sufficient to be an effective leader and the one missing spoke on the wheel could very well be your ability to communicate.
From Idea to Product
One of the very real stumbling blocks for creative personalities is in their ability to help others visualize their goal. In the professional world, it is vital that you are able to bring others from idea (concept) to a finished product. This is especially important for team leaders who are not only tasked with managing a team but were also on the creative end of the job. If you can’t get the team to see what you are trying to accomplish, you’ll find new meaning for the term ‘spinning your wheels.’
Conveying Factual Data
A very big part of leadership communication is based on presenting factual information. When speaking with peers it’s perfectly acceptable to say, “This device is awesome.” However, when explaining the benefits to a sales team, they need more than ‘awesome’ to go on! They need factual evidence that this device does what it was created to do, reasons why it is better than anything released by the competition, and how it can benefit consumers or other B2B clients. Effective communication mandates that you are able to substantiate any claims with something more than superlatives!
The bottom line is that in order to be an effective leader, you must be able to bring the team along with you towards your company or team goals. If you are not able to clearly communicate what it is they should or shouldn’t be doing, as the case may be, you cannot possibly hope to be an effective leader. You can’t, after all, do all the work yourself. How many times have you seen a team leader throw their hands up in despair and just take over the task themselves? Could lack of communication have been the issue? That’s something you never want to encounter as a team leader, so if you want to be as effective as possible, refine those language skills.
Things You Can Do at Home to Stay Upbeat and Motivated
Motivation is a core emotion that’s necessary to have a healthy, productive life; it’s difficult to be motivated when you are feeling down and lethargic!
While short-term motivation can derive from positive thinking, we all hit bumps in the road. For sustainable long-term motivation, it must come from within. Namely, the achievement of small tasks produces prideful feelings from the accomplishment and a fresh jolt of motivation to push on to achieve greater things.
Focus on Quick Wins to Get Moving Again (If You’re Stuck)
Getting quick wins early on is important because temporary motivation from seeing an uplifting YouTube video doesn’t last. It helps to know your why. Why do you want to succeed at something? Motivation doesn’t survive in a vacuum; if you believe your why will be helpful, write it down. Add it to the top of your To Do list or as a Post It on your monitor.
Just like Dave Ramsey, the financial radio host, advises his callers, focus on paying off the smallest debt first regardless of the interest rates, then home in on a quick task for an easy win. It provides proof you’re getting somewhere which increases the motivation to continue. Without the proof, many of us will stop in our tracks and give up before seeing any progress. Get the easy win now and make great strides later.
Create a Plan and Work the Plan Daily
Setting goals, creating a plan for their achievement and working the plan every day is a proven method to succeed. To be happy, most of us need goals and things to pursue. This might be a woodworking project at home, redecorating the bedroom to make it ‘just right’ or getting a promotion at work.
Whatever your goals, just having something to work towards tends to brighten our outlook, level of motivation and happiness. This is also shown to be true with retirees who still need hobbies and interests, otherwise they end up very unhappy because they feel like there’s nothing to live for now.
Clear Mind, Cleaner Home
While mediation has been found to calm the mind and improve the disposition, along with a clear mind is the need to live in a pleasant environment. Perhaps your home is cluttered and needs clearing out to make space for the new? Just not feeling hemmed in with too much stuff everywhere is very freeing for mental clarity. It also stops you feeling like your home is too small.
Another thing to do is to get your house or condo apartment cleaned top to bottom. Just like buying new clothes and wearing them for the first time, having a cleaner home is cleansing all around. Consider paying for a service that offers house cleaning Raleigh NC to give everything a thorough spring cleaning any month of the year.
There are many things that go into getting and staying motivated. Some tricks work in the short-term, but for long-term motivation, being focused on your goals and taking daily action towards their attainment keeps you looking ahead.
Why You Should Never Give Up on Following Your Dreams
Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up? As a child, you probably just went with your dreams and passions; there was no reason for you to think about the logistics of getting there. Maybe you wanted to be a doctor, a fireman, or even a ballerina. But sadly, most adults don’t pursue their childhood dreams. As we grow up, we have other things to worry about – student loans, passing exams, creating an impressive enough resume to land the job. Yes, it’s not as easy as it seemed back when you were a carefree little kid, but is that a good enough reason to give up? Maybe your dreams now are different from what they were back then, but are you chasing them? Here are some reasons why you should never give up on your dreams.
#1. Learn from Failure:
Fear of failure is one of the biggest factors holding thousands of people around the world back from pursuing their dreams. But, failure can be more beneficial to you than you may realize. In fact, your approach to failure can be everything – learn from it, and you’re far more likely to succeed in the future. Consider some famous entrepreneurs – they’ve all had to deal with failure at some point. Bill Gates, the world-famous Microsoft founder, probably felt like a failure when he dropped out of college – but look at him now!
#2. Small Successes:
Big dreams don’t come true overnight – often, they’re the result of several small successes along the way. Yes, it may take you some time, effort and lots of determination to reach your life goals, but even if your progress is slow, it’s better than no progress at all. Look at Steve from Verellenhc – he overcame a childhood plagued by bullies and anxiety to finally follow his passions and set up a business doing what he loves. It wasn’t easy, but he was determined to succeed, and eventually made it to where he wanted to be. Now, he even employs one of the people who used to bully him as a child.
#3. Motivate Others:
Never giving up on your dreams isn’t just beneficial for you. It can also help to motivate those around you who you care about the most. For example, if you have children, or plan to start a family one day, your determination to get to where you want to be in life can be extremely motivating for them, and they’ll follow your example. Whether you agree with his views or not, you can’t deny that U.S. President Donald Trump has inspired his children to start their own businesses and pursue professional careers.
#4. Enjoy the Journey:
Lastly, chasing your dreams isn’t just about the end goal. In fact, the pursuit can be a wonderful experience. Along the way you’ll make memories, friends, and learn new things that you may never have had the opportunity to do otherwise. Remember that in the end, it’s your life, so make the best one for yourself.
If this article inspired you, we’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Your Beginning With MI
Motivational interview deals with preparing people for a change. It is a client-centric-directive method for improving internal motivation for changing, researching and resolving ambivalence. It is the challenge of internal motivation for change, and not the strategy for imposing a change of behavior. The main focus is on finding and resolving ambivalence as the key to triggering a change. A motivational interview is not a solution to all behavioral problems, but it’s a start.
Motivational interview and systematic motivational counseling (SMS)
One of the more pronounced differences between Systematic motivational counseling and Motivational interviews is that counseling is in the past fifty years increasingly associated with cognitive behavioral terrors and research. SMS is a more structured, more elaborate approach. Structure, on the other hand, can be a disadvantage, since such a type of consultation then becomes less applicable to short interventions in generalized settings whose implementation is continuously growing today and would obviously require more efforts for practitioners to become competent for its use.
Strategic Change
With appropriate help and tools, some of the aspects of a personality can be changed enough to help the person benefit from it. The goal is to create a system that will be self-sustaining and capable of producing its motivation so that a person will have the will and strength to implement the changes he or she wants and needs.
Believing is not a question – no one is ever a lost cause. Perspectives often change, and everyone needs someone who will help them to see the other sides of things. Talk to somebody and allow yourself to see the world from the angles that are unknown to you right now.
Strenght is in all of us – never assume that you know in advance how much strength you have and what its source is. People constantly change and with it the source of their strength. If at first you cant find it or have the impression that it has disappeared forever, look for help from a close and stable person or a professional. Strenght is in us all, always.
Take a positive risk – so far you’ve probably taken up a series of negative risks that can be related to certain thoughts, actions, or life decisions. Try now to take a positive risk. The risk in surrounding yourself with positive people, risk getting hugged, risk becoming more responsible and more stable.
5 Ways To Keep Your Motivation
The other half of motivation is the ability to move on, even if you do not feel the same thrill as at the beginning. Perhaps the circumstances have changed, and your old goal is no longer a priority. You may have skipped a day or two, and the return to the track seems too difficult. You may have screwed up somewhere, and you are discouraged now. If you can resume it again, you will arrive at the end, but if you give up, you will not. Here are tips to help you not give up and finish what you started.
1. Just start
There are days when you do not do anything useful. Instead of thinking about how difficult it is, and how long it will last, just start. First, make yourself stand up, then make a step, and the next step, and just start. If you feel bad, take a break, but as long as you have any energy, push yourself. When you sit in the house and think about the effort and the tiredness, everything looks difficult. But start, and you’ll see it’s not as hard as it seemed to you.
2. Be responsible
If you have committed to the public, either through the blog, your friends, or your family, be responsible to these people. Be sure to report them daily and stick to it.
3. Detect negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones
This is one of the most important motivational skills, and I suggest you practice it every day. It’s important that you start by monitoring your flow of thoughts, and by detecting negative conversations. Just try to detect any negative thought that goes through your head. Then, after a few days, go to the next step – delete. Every time you think of something negative, tell yourself that you will now better treat yourself, that it’s not right to think about it and replace your negative thought positive. Over time, you will win over negativity.
4. Build on your successes
Every small step on your way is a success – celebrate the fact that you have started at all. Celebrate every little step. And then, with this feeling, proceed to the next small step. Each step will make you feel more successful. Make every step small, really small. After a few months, these steps will make great progress and a lot of success!
5. Simply ignore bad moments
Motivation is not a constant thing that will always be there for you. She comes and goes, and comes back and leaves, like tide and tide. But always when you go, keep in mind that this is not permanent. Motivation will return. In the meantime, read about your goal, ask for help and work on other tips from this text until you return. It’s hard to do something alone. Find your support network, either in the real world, on the Internet, or both.
The Interaction Flow In Motivational Interviews
There are a few techniques that are common for a Motivational interview process. They are created to keep the conversation going in the right direction, and their purpose is to create a space in which client can address all of his problems and see all the possible solutions to find the right motivation and gain skills that will help him later in life.
The goal is to recognize the right problem and its cause, to get a deeper understanding of its creation and manifestations, to grasp the consequences that the specific problem is creating, to get motivation for a needed change and to understand that the change is for sure possible.
Open Questions
These are the type of questions that are not just summarizing the surface of the problem. They are not answered short with a simple “yes” or “no.” Here, the client is set in a safe space where she or he can search, analyze, and with a little bit of effort give more detailed and personal answers.
Assurance
In this step, the client is reminded of the facts that he overlooked, but that are essential – all the positive parts of his journey that can easily be missed but are important to build a stronger foundation of future success.
Reflective back
Listening is the important part of the relationship that is built here. The interviewer is at the same time an outsider to a story that client is telling, a professional with various skills, and a person that is deeply dedicated to the well being of his client. From those three angles, the interviewer can see presented problems from various aspects and understand not only the facts and key elements but the deep feelings and elements within. The interviewer will guide a client through the whole process safely, helping the client to find the right answers and perspective. The professional and the client will summarise together the whole story, problems, and process to gain important insights and find motivation.
Motivation and Addiction
In recent years, professionals paid better attention regarding the problems how to find motivation for addicts, how to help them to understand the consequences, how to start treatment and survive in abstinence. Motivation is the process of starting a human activity, directing its activity to specific objects and regulating this activity to achieve certain goals. Addicts tend to satisfy some of their needs as soon as they appear, regardless of how that satisfaction may have subsequently negative consequences. The addict does not have a strong motivation to cure. That’s why the Motivational interview is here to help.
It is more difficult to respond to the need that arises immediately, without taking into account any inconvenience that may result from meeting the need. As the person mature, it becomes more and more capable of delaying the satisfaction of their needs for a later period, to take into account, in a higher degree, not only actual but also future pleasures and inconveniences. An adult, a mature person can give up goals that are currently very attractive, to achieve goals that are not immediately satisfying but will in the future provide more intense and lasting satisfaction than providing an immediate goal.
Motives and goals
People achieve their goals to satisfy more than one single motive. Motives are driving forces that trigger action. Motives that are based on physical needs are innate (hunger, thirst, motherly motives and sexual motives). When their satisfaction is difficult or prevented, there is an imbalance in the organism that causes tension, and it leads to action. Disapproval of the motive causes frustration. The motives who rest on certain needs about other members of society are called social motives (personal motives, the need for company, the need for recognition). Most social motives were acquired, and are based on psychological needs, that can be satisfied only with the direct or indirect involvement of other people. With maturity, social motives prevail over biological ones.
If an obstacle occurs, the addict reacts with a shout, anger. He/she can not stand frustration. That is happening when the person is to a very small extent, or not at all capable of giving up the immediate satisfaction of the needs that have arisen. But when a person becomes more mature, their tolerance for frustration is also growing. The Motivational interview is a really good approach for persons with addiction problems.
Principles That Motivational Interviewing Is Built Upon
There are certain rules and principles that are important for the relationship between counselor and client, all for the whole process to have a better effect on the client. These principles help the two parties establish a relationship, become a team, but also to use their time together and find common motives, motivations, and goals that the client needs to be able to continue further.
Resistance
The resistance is a normal reaction here. It is hard to change the way we think, act, and what we do with our feelings. The counselors’ job is not to shush or kill any raised alarms and questions client has, but to explore motives behind the resistance, to address it, and to help both get a better understanding of it.
Support
Believing the change can happen is a first and most important motivator in this process. The counselors’ task is to explain the importance and the reality of that belief and to show its sustainability. In this process, clients have the freedom to choose an carry out their specific actions that will lead them to change, and the counselors’ job is to keep client focused, prepared, and motivated.
Empathy
To fully understand a client, professionals need to have a lot of empathy. The only way they can help their clients is to see things through their eyes, to imagine how would be if they walked in their shoes. This is also important to show the client that he is in a safe environment and that he or she can express themselves fully. The professionals are here to give support and guidance. All of this is building trust between those two people and helping them both get a better understanding not only of the problem but also of its motives and future solutions. The honest empathy can facilitate change.
Autonomy
This is the part where clients get a better understanding how to find the motivation, goals, and strength within themselves, and how to gain autonomy over problems that they were and will encounter.
All about Motivational Interview (MI)
MI is a type of counseling developed to help people in resolving their contradictory ambivalent and mixed insecurities and feelings. All to help them find the motivation that they need so they can become more able in changing whole or just parts of behavior they manifest. A motivational interview is a short-term, practical and empathetic process. The fact that life-changing decisions are complicated and difficult for everyone is the part of the process in this type of counseling.
When is it needed?
Counseling of this type is mostly used when there is a need to resolve addiction problems, and when a person wants to learn how to manage life-changing conditions that are affecting their health – such as asthma, heart problems, or diabetes. This is a form of intervention which purpose is helping people to find and keep their motivation so they can change their behavior which is preventing their healing process. MI is also used to help people lead healthier lives physically and psychologically, and it also prepares them for further therapies.
The goal is to help people become and stay motivated and prepared for the change that is awaiting them, and for the changes, they need to make. It is also helpful for the individuals who often feel hostile or angry. Committing to a change is not the main part of the process because this counseling can also concentrate on help people in navigating through different stages of their emotions, to find the right motivation.
Process and expectations
The role of an interviewer is in large to keep an open conversation, to listen carefully, and to reflect back all the thoughts client said, for a client to hear all those motivations and reasons again, but this time said back differently. This counseling is short-term and can be between one to three sessions, but it can also be a part of a longer therapy.
Motivational Interview has two goals. The first one is to find a way how to increase motivation; the second one is about committing. MI is created to help clients in expressing and understanding their needs; it is helping them to find motivation, focus and a way to commit to the change. This type of counseling can be combined with support groups (like AA), cognitive therapy, or other types of interventions.
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Recent Posts
- Why Communication Is an Important Skill for Effective Leadership
November 8, 2018 - Things You Can Do at Home to Stay Upbeat and Motivated
September 28, 2018 - Why You Should Never Give Up on Following Your Dreams
April 30, 2018 - Your Beginning With MI
January 9, 2018 - 5 Ways To Keep Your Motivation
January 4, 2018
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