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Motivational Interviewing & Goal Setting

Listen deeply. Evoke change. Set goals that hold.

Motivational Interviewing and Goal Setting cover: a practitioner sitting outdoors at sunrise, listening closely and taking notes as a service leaver talks, beside the OARS cycle of open questions, affirmations, reflective listening and summaries.
  • Professional
  • £20.00
  • Course 5 of 6
  • About 100 minutes
  • Certificate on completion

Why advice rarely changes behaviour, and what actually does. Learn the four core skills of motivational interviewing, how to listen for someone's own reasons for change, and how to help them set a goal that survives contact with real life.

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About this course

A five-lesson practitioner course on motivational interviewing and goal setting, built on the established, evidenced methods of Miller and Rollnick, and Locke and Latham. Covers why direct advice tends to backfire, the four core listening skills of motivational interviewing, listening for and evoking someone's own reasons for change, and setting goals specific and challenging enough to actually hold.

What you will learn

  • Understand the righting reflex and why direct advice often produces resistance instead of change
  • Use the four core motivational interviewing skills: open questions, affirmations, reflective listening, summaries
  • Recognise and evoke change talk, rather than arguing for change yourself
  • Help someone set a goal that is specific and genuinely chosen, not just technically SMART
  • Roll with resistance and ambivalence rather than confronting it directly

Why this matters

Most practitioners are trained to help by explaining, suggesting and solving. The evidence says that rarely changes behaviour. What changes behaviour is helping someone hear their own reasons for change, and then setting a goal they genuinely own.

Course curriculum

5 lessons. The lesson content itself opens once you start the course.

  1. Lesson 1 · about 20 minutes

    Why Advice Doesn't Work

    This lesson names the righting reflex, the instinct to advise, and why curiosity works where advice does not.

    • Name the righting reflex in your own practice
    • Ask a question where you would normally offer advice

  2. Lesson 2 · about 20 minutes

    The Four Core Skills — OARS

    This lesson gives you the four core motivational interviewing skills that replace advice.

    • Use open questions, affirmations, reflective listening and summaries
    • Use a reflective statement in place of a question

  3. Lesson 3 · about 20 minutes

    Change Talk vs Sustain Talk

    This lesson is about what to listen for: change talk, and how reflecting it back strengthens it.

    • Tell change talk apart from sustain talk
    • Reflect change talk back rather than arguing against sustain talk

  4. Lesson 4 · about 20 minutes

    Setting Goals That Actually Hold

    This lesson is about setting a goal specific enough to act on and genuinely owned enough to hold.

    • Judge how specific and challenging a goal really is
    • Place a goal honestly on the Goal Ownership Scale

  5. Lesson 5 · about 20 minutes

    Rolling With Resistance

    This lesson is about expecting resistance to return, and meeting it with curiosity rather than confrontation.

    • Expect ambivalence to resurface as a normal pattern
    • Respond to a defensive reply with curiosity

What is included

  • Guided reflections
  • Interactive exercises
  • Practical activities
  • Downloadable worksheets
  • Assessment
  • Portfolio work
  • Certificate on completion

The OARS Cycle

The AURIS Signature Framework, the OARS Cycle: a continuous loop of open questions, affirmations, reflective listening and summaries, returning to open questions, with notes on why the cycle builds trust, reduces resistance and evokes someone's own reasons for change.
A cycle of curious conversation: an open question, then an affirmation, then reflective listening, then a summary, then back to an open question. Return to this before every session, not just once.

Before you start

Courses 1 to 4 of the AURIS Practitioner Programme.

After you finish

Before You Speak In the moment, ask yourself: - Am I about to solve? - Am I about to advise? - Or am I about to understand? Use this every time you feel the urge to jump in, for the rest of this course and beyond.

Research and evidence

This course draws on established, evidenced external research: William Miller and Stephen Rollnick's Motivational Interviewing, and Edwin Locke and Gary Latham's goal-setting theory, applied through the AURIS Framework. Like The Communication Reset, this content is not drawn from AURIS's own interview research. That distinction is stated plainly, the same honest-sourcing standard used throughout the rest of the Academy.

Course progression

This is course 5 of 6 in the AURIS Practitioner Certification.

  1. Foundation
  2. Applied
  3. Practitioner

Course 5 of 6 in the AURIS Practitioner Programme. Next is Applied AURIS Practice, the capstone course where every skill from the programme comes together in supervised delivery.

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£20.00 one-off payment, with lifetime access to the course.

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