Motivational Interviewing Practice Guides

Working guides to MI skills and how to keep them sharp: the MI Spirit, OARS, change talk, the four processes, and MITI fidelity coding. Start with the motivational interviewing overview, or practise what you read in the MI Practice Lab.

Change Talk vs Sustain Talk: Examples & DARN-CAT

Change talk points toward change, sustain talk away. How to recognise both in motivational interviewing, evoke change talk, and answer sustain talk.

Getting Started with Zenobits

Create and publish your first roleplay scenario in Zenobits.

MI Fidelity and MITI Coding Explained

MITI is the standard system for coding MI fidelity. What it measures, the competence and proficiency thresholds, and how to use the feedback.

OARS in Motivational Interviewing (With Examples)

Open questions, Affirmations, Reflections and Summaries are the four core MI skills. Worked examples of each, the mistakes to avoid, and how to practise them.

Spirit of Motivational Interviewing Explained

The four pillars of MI Spirit: partnership, acceptance, compassion and empowerment. What each looks like in session, and how to build it deliberately.

Embedding Zenobits in Articulate Storyline 360

A complete guide for Instructional Designers on integrating Zenobits AI roleplays into Storyline projects.

Motivational Interviewing Example (Annotated)

A full motivational interviewing example: an annotated session showing OARS, change talk and the four processes in a real conversation.

The Four Processes of Motivational Interviewing

Engaging, Focusing, Evoking and Planning: the four processes of Motivational Interviewing, set out by Miller and Rollnick (2013). Examples and traps.

How to Practise Motivational Interviewing

MI is a skill and it fades without practice. Practical ways to practise motivational interviewing between workshops, and how to get feedback.

Motivational Interviewing Questions: 50 Examples

50 motivational interviewing questions grouped by the four processes, with worked examples of each and the common traps that turn a good question bad.

Stages of Change and Motivational Interviewing

The five stages of change, what each one sounds like in session, and why Miller and Rollnick say MI was never built on the transtheoretical model of change.

7 Core Motivational Interviewing Techniques

The main Motivational Interviewing techniques with examples: OARS, agenda mapping, the readiness ruler, elicit-provide-elicit, and rolling with resistance.

Reflective Listening in Motivational Interviewing

Simple and complex reflections in Motivational Interviewing: how to build one, how deep to go, the mistakes a supervisor hears, and how to practise the skill.

Motivational Interviewing for Substance Use

What the evidence actually shows about MI for substance use, why the righting reflex is strongest in this work, and how to run a mandated appointment well.

Ambivalence in Motivational Interviewing

What ambivalence means in Motivational Interviewing, how to tell it apart from discord and from low confidence, and why a pros and cons list often backfires.

Motivational Interviewing Assessment Tools

How MI competence is assessed: MITI, MICA, BECCI and MIA:STEP compared, which one suits a training cohort, and how to sample sessions so the results hold up.

Motivational Interviewing for Smoking Cessation

Using motivational interviewing for smoking cessation in brief clinical contacts: what to say when a patient says no, and what the evidence really supports.

Motivational Interviewing in Health Coaching

How motivational interviewing fits inside health coaching: when to stop coaching and start evoking, what to put on hold, and how to check you actually did it.

Motivational Interviewing Practice Guides

Reading about MI is not practising it