One thing we will always struggle to make others do is change, by way of force. If someone is going to effect a change in their training, their career, or their life, it’s something they need to find the motivation to do themselves. This important understanding of how people function is the founding idea behind a counseling technique called motivational interviewing. At its core, motivational interviewing is about helping others find the motivation to effect change even when that person is initially ambivalent to change.
Motivational interviewing grew out of therapeutic counseling but has found its way into the sports domain—particularly with coaches. Simply telling an athlete what to do can succeed for a bit, but ultimately, to achieve their potential, an athlete has to find their own motivation to do so.
Here to discuss this concept of motivational interviewing and how it applies to sport is Dr. Jeff Breckon, the associate dean of the School of Health and Life Sciences at Teesside University in the U.K., and one of the authors who wrote the seminal book on motivational interviewing for coaches. He explains to hosts Chris Case and Grant Holicky why “motivational interviewing” may not be the best title for this concept, and explores the five principles of MI: engaging, focusing, evoking, planning, and maintenance.
Dr. Breckon also details the traps that motivational interviewing helps us avoid, such as the praise trap—yes, we can praise too much—and the fixing trap. Most importantly, he talks about how to apply these principles to help others find their own motivation.
Joining Dr. Breckon, we’ll also hear from Dr. Stacey Brickson, long-time physical therapist and owner of Draft Responsibly Coaching.
Prepare to learn the art of motivating athletes to effect change. Let’s make you fast!
Episode Transcript
Chris Case 00:00
Chris, hello and welcome to fast talk. Your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host, Chris case, and I’m here with Coach grant holocaust. One thing we’ll always struggle to make others do is change by way of force. If someone is going to affect a change in their training, in their career or in their life, it’s something they need to find the motivation to do themselves. This important understanding of how people function is the founding idea behind a counseling technique called motivational interviewing. At its core, motivational interviewing is about helping others find the motivation to affect change, even when that person is initially ambivalent to change. Motivational Interviewing grew out of therapeutic counseling, but has found its way into the sports domain, particularly with coaches simply telling an athlete what to do. Can Succeed for a bit, but ultimately, to achieve their potential, an athlete has to find their own motivation to do so. Here to discuss the concept of motivational interviewing and how it applies to sport is Dr Jeff brecken, the Associate Dean of the School of Health and Life Sciences at teside University in the UK, and one of the authors who wrote the seminal book on motivational interviewing for coaches. He’ll explain why, quote, unquote, motivational interviewing may not be the best title for this concept. What the five principles of MI are, including, engaging, focusing, evoking, planning and maintenance. He also details the traps that mi helps us avoid, such as the praise trap, yes, we can praise too much, and the fixing trap. And most importantly, he’ll talk with us about how to apply these principles to help others find their own motivation. Joining Dr brecken Today, we’ll also hear from Dr Stacy Brixton, a long time physical therapist and owner of draft responsibly coaching. Now prepare to learn the art of motivating athletes to affect change. Let’s make you fast welcome. Dr brecken to fast talk
Dr. Jeff Breckon 02:00
thanks for having me. Thanks for the invitation. You’re very welcome. So
Chris Case 02:04
I just wanted to mention the reason that I thought it would be great to cover motivational interviewing on the show. Fast talk Labs is working with USA Cycling to create new content for their coach education program, and we had a lecture or a webinar with a coach named Nate Dunn, and he was talking about his training plan process, how he worked with athletes to create a training plan goals, sort of the things that he did, both before the training plan was produced during and and somewhat after, to assess what went right and what went wrong in the in a given season or year, and he started his entire webinar by talking about how important motivational interviewing was to the process of creating this plan. And so I thought, well, that’s really interesting. I hadn’t thought about it in that way. I think that that would be a valuable tool for a lot of coaches and a lot of self self coached athletes out there to have a familiarity, at least with this subject matter. And so that’s when I started looking into the various books that have been written. And I came across your name, Dr breken, so you have a very intimate knowledge with the subject. You’ve written books to take motivational interviewing and apply it to endurance sports. So I was wondering if you could, in brief terms, tell us the quick history of how motivational interviewing was conceptualized, first of all, and then how it became to be applied to endurance sports. The
Dr. Jeff Breckon 03:29
history is really interesting that it emerged really in the early 80s, when the first work was done, the applied work of Bill Miller over in the Bergen Institute in Norway, and the work that he was doing there was just different, you know, he rather than flying, this is around substance misuse, drug and alcohol services, and rather than imposing interventions on on service users, I kind of span it round, spun it on its head a little bit, and began to use their resource, their willingness, their motivation, and just really try to amplify that, which kind of took the the observers watching his work by by storm a little bit, and asked him to write up the way he was working. So that was the first paper in the early 80s that was picked up by Steve Rollnick, who was working in in healthcare and addiction settings. And they got together, I think, at a conference in Australia, and he asked Bill to put more papers out. He’ll give me more information in this, this motivational interviewing work that you do, and the first book came out in 1991 the two of them, as a result, still focused very much on drug and alcohol services, cessation behaviors. And really, it wasn’t until probably the mid late 90s that a number of us began to pick this up. And three of us were working in physical activity, Exercise and Health, and me, specifically, in sport and exercise. So I would probably say there was a handful of us in the late 90s, early 2000s that began to think, Well, this has so many. The applications to sport and exercise and broader physical activity and well being. And that really is where the emergence of some of the early work came out, especially in a coaching perspective and a sport exercise perspective. But still, there wasn’t much research that came out. So the work has really begun to shift in terms of the adoption settings rather than succession settings. And more and more practitioners and applied researchers have begun to move as much away from that drug and alcohol context into the healthy life choices and sport of exercise, which is really, really interesting. Could you give
Chris Case 05:37
us a better sense, maybe, of how it’s used in endurance sports, what types of and a broad overview of the various applications, I guess you could say,
Dr. Jeff Breckon 05:47
Yeah, I think the one of the most interesting things from it, I can speak with the experience of having trained a lot of sports psychologists in the UK, and knowledge of colleagues in Australia that I’ve worked with that it’s been as much about giving skills to sport scientists, to sport psychologists, sport nutritionists and even strength conditioning coaches to shift their style of communication. So while it’s been applied in a like a clinical sense, from a sports psychology perspective, I’ve seen it more as a part of their toolbox, rather than a pure mi application. So the use of it has been as much this kind of trellis that we’ve talked about in one of our papers, upon which can add interventions like psychological skills training, goal setting, imagery, visualization, coping with pressure, resilience, training, etc. So it’s been a style of communication that has enabled the layering of other interventions upon it, and given, I think, skills to non psychologists in terms of how they might deliver some of the interventions that they work with athletes on can
Chris Case 06:57
you now take it a step deeper, and maybe before we even dive into the principles and the steps that you would go through in this process from a clinical point of view, let’s break it down and talk about, I guess, why is it called motivational interviewing? What is the reasoning behind that, and what does that have to do with the technique itself?
Dr. Jeff Breckon 07:17
Yeah, this is an interesting one. I would probably lay the blame at Bill Millers door for this one enough, in some of the sessions I’ve I’ve had the fortune to listen to of bill he said he probably wouldn’t call it motivation interviewing, where he had to have his time again. Certainly, there’s an essence of tapping into the motivation of the individual, but it’s not a formal interview. It’s this two way collaboration. So to be honest, I don’t know what he would call it, but I think the name stuck, and he’s that’s how it is, and forevermore, 35 or 40 years on, we still have that name and that brand. But I wouldn’t necessarily read too much into the motivation to per se, but certainly it perhaps is more about supporting the individual to make their own change that just doesn’t roll off the tongue as
Grant Holicky 08:03
much. No, I think for sure, what we’re watching and what we’re seeing with this is kind of lowering the gap, maybe, of power, and how we communicate with an athlete and how we communicate with the individual really asking them to give us information, as well as us telling them what to do, so to speak, and in coaching, that’s a big shift. That’s not something that we’ve seen for years and years. I mean, the old style of coaching and teaching is do this. This is why don’t really question me, but putting some of the onus back on the athlete to understand not just why, but how they’re going to change and what their pathway toward that change is.
Dr. Jeff Breckon 08:43
And I think there’s two real gems in what you’re saying there. Grant that if we try and apply force, it’s met with force. You know that defensiveness breeds defensiveness, and you’ve got to be lucky that the athlete is in the position to accept the information or the criticism or the advice that you’re giving at the right time, in the right context and the right topic. And that key part, for me, the thing that keeps having so many of us come back to this, this is also about taking the pressure off the coach that they don’t have to be the expert of that person to change. You know, this is about tapping into the resource that athlete brings. And if you’ve got an 1820, 25 year old athlete, that these are experts of their own behaviors. They know what works. They know what doesn’t work. They know about their enthusiasm, their reluctance. So this is really shifting it around, and we describe it about tapping into the athlete as the resource, and it’s probably the most effective way of engaging with someone when you show respect and give them the opportunity to share with you what they already know, and that begins to help us avoid one of the key traps in communication, which is that expert trap. And it’s so tempting when you’ve got all your certificates and letters after your name, you’ve done all these coaching awards and you’ve got certificates. Having done it. But the risk with that is that you become the expert of that change. And yes, you may be someone knows about the science and the evidence and what works for other athletes, that’s pretty much it. You know, we need to give the athlete more opportunity to really take responsibility and be part of their own change process. Yeah, and
Grant Holicky 10:18
I love one thing you said there, Dr Bricken that the individuality of the athletes, right? We may have coached numerous athletes, and this is how most of them responded, or even all of them responded, but understanding that over time, we’re going to find that athlete that responds a completely different way, and they’re the ones that understand more than us what they’re going to respond to and how they’re going to take anything that we give them. And it
Dr. Jeff Breckon 10:43
could be that they’ve had experiences that we’re not aware of, you know, and they can draw on some anecdotes or things they’ve heard that look real off the COVID, just throw away comments, but it’s stuck, and you will never find out from, you know, multiple question and answers or trying to find that fixing trap, another trap that we might talk about, but in order to try and fix what we feel is wrong, you’re going to miss that positive element and that solution focus that is key to an effective coaching relationship. So yes,
Chris Case 11:14
you’ve mentioned a couple traps, and I think there’s some others we’ll talk about, but let’s maybe save that to the end or further on in the conversation where we talk about some of the pitfalls, let’s give people a bit better understanding of what we’re talking about here. I know that there are five principles of motivational interviewing. Would you like to list them and break them down one by one for us? Yeah.
Dr. Jeff Breckon 11:34
So there’s probably, I probably talk about the four processes first of all, within MRI, the first of those processes that Bill and Steve came up with these around 2011 2012 and I remember them presenting for the Mi conference in Sheffield, actually, in 2011 and they talked about the the first being engaging. You know, that relational Foundation, where there’s lots of empathy, lots of client centered skills, really listening, really trying to understand the athlete’s perspective. The second is focusing where you’ve got the strategic focus. And it could be agenda mapping, identify the target behavior to move forward with. It’s trying to find that focus for change. Within that there is information and advice, but it’s about listening and evoking from the athlete. The third is evoking. And here we’re transitioning that MI, where we’re beginning to selectively elicit, responding, summarizing, and especially looking for that we’ll call change talk, that language that suggests that intention or their optimism, or that movement towards change, we then move into this planning phase. So that was really the bridge to change. We’re negotiating that change plan. We’re listing from the athlete, we’re providing with permission, we’re finding out how well that lands, and their perspective in terms of that planning. And was trying to then consolidate that commitment language towards change. We’re always tuned in to listening for that ambivalence, that reluctance. Now we’re pushing too far, too soon. Am I making sure in that planning phase that the target and the the action plan is is collaborative and partnership, rather than me imposing what I think they should do? So we’re always sense checking that communication, that connection with the athletes, that engaging phase that talk about start never goes away. I think that wraps around the whole thing I’ve always added in this, this fifth element, and I think it’s, it’s really about the maintenance. You know, planning is fine, but we know that things can go wrong once we start to take action and and the maintenance is is the toughest to achieve. We know that relapse is inevitable. We know that setbacks are often and we often talk about how the athlete will deal with setbacks when they occur, and they will occur, especially with that injured athlete that’s recovering from that potential long term layoff. So I would say there’s the four processes that Bill and Steve talk about in the 2013 text, but I always throw in that fifth one about making sure we have that sustainability, that maintenance strategy towards change.
Grant Holicky 14:06
There’s a big piece that I kind of wanted to jump in and talk about a little bit with you. You talk about it all throughout this, but specifically in the first piece, and it’s that rapport and that relationship and establishing that trust back and forth between the athlete and the coach that is essentially even all the way into your step five, which is that maintenance like that relapse is inevitable, and the athlete needs that coach to be able to come back and say, okay, we can do this. We can rebuild this. We can go back to the beginning or continue along and trust that that’s actually going to happen, and trust that the coach understands them and understands that relapse and is okay with it. You know, to me and so much of what we’ve been talking about with the coaching aspect of this, with educating coaches in the US, is that relationship and that rapport, how essential it is to create that with the athlete. Because trust and that empathy and that understanding underlies everything that you’re talking about with MI,
Dr. Jeff Breckon 15:06
it’s absolutely key grant that engagement, that empathy and that clarity for the athlete to understand your intent is one of helping them to succeed, and you’re going to do it from a position of trust and respect. What we know is that the coach that imposes their perspective and is particularly aggressive, or think of a one trick porn, if you like, there’s a shelf life to those coaches. You know that those coaches that always have the respect of the athletes are those that have flexibility and have a dynamic approach to working, and you know, we call them good man or athlete managers, don’t we? But the there is a skill in that, and we haven’t got 20 years to learn that. You know, I think the skills that even those near fight, those young athletes, those young coaches, those young psychologists, can pick up to avoid some of those, if you like, the you know, the holes they can wander down into, in relying on on getting the message across, because they haven’t got a plan B. So I think that the two magic words for me in all that I’ve ever read about mis is the empathy and engagement. If you’ve got those two things, a hell of what else can happen if you rely on your knowledge and Dieter and stats and big words and how successful you’ve been with other athletes that can only take you so far. I was
Grant Holicky 16:27
told one time by an athlete that I was taking in they were leaving an old coach, and they were thinking about coming to me, and they said, Yeah, you know, I’ve heard a lot that the coach athlete relationship has like this four or five year shelf life. And I remember hearing that and just being shocked and almost hurt and like, really, that’s not the way this should go. But as you said, you know, that type of relationship gets old, that power dynamic gets old, and it gets stale. And I think coaches using MI, coming back to the athlete and saying, Tell me how you feel. What are we doing well? What are we doing poorly? What do you miss? What do you want to change? And then being able to kind of change and be malleable with that athlete, it’s pretty essential for long term relationships, and those are key in sport. I
Dr. Jeff Breckon 17:13
think you’re right. I think there’s two elements to that. I think one is that there’ll be, there is a shelf life in in that high level coaching, the actually a fresh voice at some point can be a good thing. I think it’s that shelf life can be shorter. It can last less long if there is a really didactic one way approach to it. I think the more you tap into the athlete as the resource, I think that the longer that relationship, and maybe the relationship changes over time, you know, maybe, you know, you set the athlete up to be more autonomous and independent. So as they transition through their professional career, perhaps of their elite career, into their late 20s, 30s, the nature of that relationship should change, and it’s perhaps less about the technical and the instruction on the sports skillfulness and more about the life transition and the physiological and looking after their career, and maybe that mentoring kind of role becomes more prominent. I think we should also not be scared to at the right time in the conversation or the right time the relationship actually be quite directive, you know. And I think the problem with people early in learning Mi is they go around in circles with fairly simple reflections and asking the athlete what they want, I think with permission when we see the sense and the opportunity to fix and to help and to be action orientated, I think should take that, because otherwise you can disappoint the athlete if all you’re doing is trying to find out what they want to do. Actually, they’ve come to you. So, you know, there are times when we do need to take that more action orientated approach. So it’s a bit of that dance in the relationship. Sometimes we move forward and they’ll move back. Sometimes they’ll move up against us and we move back and let them in. So that dance is a nice metaphor that I’ve heard a number of times for MI, and maybe that awareness of conversation and how it’s going is the dance that we’re talking about in MI.
Chris Case 19:06
I want to ask both of you, maybe Dr brecken, from a more clinical point of view, and then grant from your just massive experience working with athletes, we hear this empathy is key, and having building their support is key, and encouragement is key. All these things are key. What if you’re not the type of person that just knows how to do that? So for grant, what does that actually look like? And maybe Dr brecken, what are the word choices that people might make to show that or try to capture those positive emotions and build that rapport so that this works for people that just don’t have that innate sense of what this means. Do you know what I’m saying? I
Grant Holicky 19:46
think I do understand what you’re saying. I mean there, it’s a bit overused, but people who are empaths, right, that just can kind of look at somebody and understand and feel what they’re feeling. To me, the biggest phrase that I use that I took a. A lot of ways from Mi is, how did that feel after a performance, or after an attempt, or even after practice? How did that feel? And then probably the biggest thing is talking less just as a coach, being in a place that our primary goal is listening and the secondary goal is talking and fixing. So how did that feel? Open ended questions and say, Okay, have at it. Bring it to me, put you automatically in that place where you’re on the receiving end instead of the delivering end. And I think that’s a great way for young coaches to just start. This is get out of your own way a little bit to an extent. Grant,
Dr. Jeff Breckon 20:38
I wish I had you as a coach when I was a young failing athlete and an older failing athlete, there’s a rule of thumb that we use in Mr. Certainly early in the conversation is, don’t do more than after talking that in itself talks to what Grant said that you should be falling, you should be listening, should be absorbing the content and not falling into that, that knee jerk response of fixing, you know, when they come up with a problem, yeah, but yeah, but, you know, you start to lose the athlete when you hear that that front end. But really, we should be absorbing in a way that we understand. And those open questions are really useful to as you’ve said already, you know, how does he feel? What would you do differently? What that looked like? What would that feel like? What would be the impact if you did that? And even with eight, 910, year old athletes and juniors in a recreational level, they get it. You know, they are a great resource. They know what it’s like when they do well or when they do less well. And we sometimes set the bar too long we don’t challenge them enough to be part of their own change process. So I guess the core principle, the core tenet of MI is where we are trying to challenge that athlete to be part of their own change process. And the how we do that is using the technical skills like the open questions, the affirmations, the reflections, those summaries that draw the story together. At the heart of it, it is really about challenging the athlete to review and reflect on their experiences of that change.
Grant Holicky 22:06
I think one of the things that I always like to point this out that I’ve spoken about this the coaches and they can see their eyes glaze over, sometimes with the warm and fuzzy and the soft science mindset to this. And one of the things that I like to point out is one of the major pieces of pedagogy now in how we teach learning is to step away a little bit and to encourage people now try this. Go do it for a little bit, and come back and tell me what went right and tell me what went wrong, because that helps me fine tune it to you. So there is a lot of research just outside of psychology and outside of coaching, in straight learning, research of the effectiveness of what we’re talking about right now. And I think that’s really important to note that this isn’t just something we’re pulling out of thin air. It’s really been infused in how we learn as humans, let alone how we learn as athletes.
Chris Case 23:03
Motivational Interviewing isn’t just for coaches. Let’s hear how Dr Stacy Brixton used it to motivate her physical therapy clients.
Stacey Brickson 23:13
I think I’ve used motivational interviewing more in my role as a physical therapist than I have as a coach. I think it’s a matter of getting the patient or the athlete to own what it is that they’re after. So it’s requiring that they identify what it is they want out of the session, rather than me telling them what I want them to have out of the session. So I think it really has improved the compliance, both in athletes and in patients, because it allows them to identify what it is that they’re after, rather than me telling them what it is that they need, then it’s connecting through education why it is that a stretch is gonna ultimately result in what they are hoping to achieve. You don’t need to give them an entire lesson on anatomy and physiology, or exercise Fizz, but you do need to make it meaningful for them. And I find that helpful is I do spend an awful amount of time upfront explaining why that exercise will ultimately result in helping them meet their goal.
Dr. Jeff Breckon 24:18
That whole growth principle, I think you’re right, is maybe that is, is where Mi is really landed well and been popular, because it’s, it’s really clarifying a name and a label to things that we know innately are important to us, and that has been listened to, that’s been heard, that’s been challenged, but challenged with empathy, but also drawing on resources and actually someone being willing to listen and appreciate the skillfulness and the experiences you bring and that that is different to a traditional coaching and skills in position approach. You know, we’re really trying to engender that, that challenge for the. Athlete, but in a style that that is more meaningful and helpful and that can adapt for different situations. You know, we haven’t necessarily talked about it yet, but you know, a lot of our athletes are they’re not immune from any of the other life challenges that will come across. You know that your athlete may be having a tough time at home, they may be having some mental health challenges or addictions. So there is a need to, at its heart, have that compassion. But I can also see what you say in grant around this warm, fuzzy talking stuff, when actually the context demands it. It’s a brutal world. You know, professional sport is a brutal world. Maybe there is a blend of approaches here where it isn’t a pure MI, whatever that looks like, but maybe there is a blend where a good coach and a good sport sign support team can take elements of an MI approach that blend and work well with their style. So it doesn’t have to be a binary one or nothing. I think there is an opportunity to take elements of MI but work in the right context for you. I
Grant Holicky 26:03
really feel bad for Chris, because I feel like Dr perkin, and I could go back and forth today. I’m sure you could and and I’ll just want to say one piece before I throw it back to you, Chris, and that’s the piece of challenge. And as we talk about motivation and athletes motivation in humans, we need that challenge, whether we’re talking about getting into flow state, whether we’re talking about goal setting, whether we’re talking about any success. If we don’t see this somewhat as a challenge, we’re going to shut down from it. As humans, it’s just kind of becomes rote, it becomes a little boring, it becomes a little old. So I think it’s really important for people to understand as we talk about using MI, we’re not asking coaches to not challenge. We’re not asking coaches to back off and just let the athlete direct everything. There’s a lot of challenges that can be built in when there’s trust that’s created and the athlete knows we’re not just like forcing it or messing with them or just brute forcing something through that challenge is key to the growth, and I do think it’s such an important piece of what we’re talking about today is it is important to continue to put that challenge in the relationship.
Dr. Jeff Breckon 27:15
There is a lovely continuum that I saw in one of Steve’s books that surround their mind healthcare, so not sport, but he had one really simple continuum. And he said, at one end, you might just follow the patient, the client, and they’ll take you where they want to take it. At the other end, you’ve got the directing, where that expert, a health professional, tells you what’s going to do, what’s going to be successful. They do all the talking in the middle is that guiding principle, where you challenge at the right time, you listen, you follow, but you are a helpful guide towards that change process. I just love the way that actually, as as good sports coaches, we should be that helpful guide. Sometimes there’s a there’s a need to follow, find, sometimes there’s a need to direct. But let’s, let’s take that, that default position of being a guide, as much as we can, and we won’t necessarily go too far wrong with those, again, young coaches, if we ask them to be helpful guards that do challenge at the right time, and they do listen at the right time, but not to take one approach and stick to it irrespective.
Chris Case 28:15
I wonder if at some point here we should create a hypothetical situation, and you could just do the Mi thing. Am I them? Am I them? Yeah. Just
28:27
sounds like, you
Chris Case 28:29
know, I mean, to that point about challenge, I’m just looking for an example of what that looks like. Can you think of something? Well,
Grant Holicky 28:36
yeah, I can. In my experience, I do think Dr brecken brought up a phrase earlier, the Yeah, but. And listening to athletes, I coach, age group, swimming forever, many years, right? And adolescents, you know, you get this in 20 year some year old athletes, but you get it all the time in teenagers. How did that feel? Why did you approach it that way? And we’ll go through that conversation, and I’ll say, okay, maybe we should look at something this way, yeah, but I can’t do that because, yeah, but I can’t do that because, in excuses, yeah, excuses and to me, and not to oversimplify it, but so often it’s this lack of personal responsibility, and I don’t want to take that in A phrase of like overarching in their lives, but taking that personal responsibility for change to sit there and say, No, I do have some control over what I do, and I can make some changes, but I may have to get way in front of it. I may have a sequence of events that I follow anytime I go under stress or anytime I’m under pressure, so we have to backtrack on that. Okay, what happens next? Okay, then what happens next? What makes you feel that way, what triggers it? And if we can go backward down that line and get to that point to go, oh, wait a second, I do have a little bit of control over this. So for me, this. Piece of MI. I think the traditional approach to an athlete is to say, well, they’re not taking personal control. Take personal control so often they don’t know how. So how do we use MI? How do we use these questions and this empathy and this trust to go back down the line enough in this decision making process that they’re going, Oh, that I do have control over I do have a place where I can choose to combat my anxiety and my stress with logic and reason and facts. But to me, that phrase of Yeah, but is really a trigger for me to start asking more questions. Sounds
Chris Case 30:35
like what you’re saying is, sometimes you have to dig pretty deep to get at root causes of these things. It’s not apparent to the athlete, potentially. And it’s not a this causes this. It’s sometimes it’s this thing causes this thing, this, yeah, and it’s a chain reaction that leads to this thing. And there’s a very large gap between initial cause and
Grant Holicky 30:55
effect, final effect. Yeah. And a big piece to me is, as we’ve been noting, there’s no way I can guess that. I can look at an athlete and maybe I can see through one layer, two layers of the onion, just because I have a ton of experience. But if I’m not asking those questions of, How does this feel? What does this feel like when you get into this situation, why does that stress you out? Without those very open ended questions that are very individual to that athlete, I’m not going to be able to understand or even comprehend or even know what the root causes of this may be.
Dr. Jeff Breckon 31:28
I can imagine that if the athlete comes up with a yes, but because we’ve pushed prematurely, or we’ve imposed our idea of change, you know which? So that resistance, that reluctance, that ambivalence, isn’t an immediate result of that premature push. Even worse, if we, as the practitioner, fall into that, yes, but we fall into that. We’re not talking about them yet, but that convincing, that arguing for change track that, well, yeah, but don’t you realize, if you don’t do that, then your head position won’t be in the right shape if you don’t train harder then, and all of a sudden, you’ve got this, this horrible game of table tennis, ping pong kind of going on, where it’s a lose, lose, so that Yeah, but results in Yeah, but neither of them were, and I guess that’s about perhaps having that listening smoke alarm, where we listen for the trap, we listen for that language in order that we don’t we try and avoid it happening in the first place, and be willing to challenge athletes and give me an example of when that hasn’t worked for you. Give me an example of when you felt less likely to train, or where changing that your golf swing actually had negative results. What were you thought of? What would you have done differently, what would that look like? Whose role or who could help you in developing that? What would that change look like? Comes back to that feeling question, you know, what would that feel like if, if, actually, you did that differently next time, and you’re a listing there that changed top Well, you know, I could, I’m able, I need, I, you know, I would be able to, rather than that deficit perspective of I can’t it won’t work. It never has. And you can get that shift pretty quickly without that, like you said, the open questions, but also then follow that off with those really quite challenging reflections on the athlete, which shows that you’ve heard them, but it also moves forward based on that change talk that you’re hearing from there and in Mr. These different levels of change talk, those desired statements I want, which is a weak predictor of change, the ability, the reasons I need to change again, all of those fairly weak predictors we’re trying to really mine for that commitment language I’m going to, or I’ve started to, or I am doing, and that’s really that sharp listening that we’re aiming for in MI so that we can respond effectively and use the open questions and the complex reflections, the reflective summaries, to really elicit and strengthen that change talk when we do hear it, but to also avoid that fixing trap and having them fall into that. Yeah, but language early on in the conversation.
Chris Case 34:06
Do you actually ask athletes if you’re coaching them to use different language like that, instead of saying, I want or I need, start to make it more Absolutely. Yeah,
Grant Holicky 34:17
yeah, absolutely. I mean I do, particularly when we talk about goal setting and goal attainment, I will cut them off if I hear the word should. I mean should’s a trigger for me. I don’t like the word should. I could I can. I may be able to because what I’m trying to do is frame what’s within their control and what’s not within their control. I should win this race, and then I’ll look at an athlete and go, Well, you can’t control the other 45 people in this race. So what do you mean? You should, you could? You have the skills, and maybe even nine times out of 10 we may. But should is a dangerous world, because it just implies so much failure. I definitely have had conversations with athletes where I have flat. Out said you are not allowed to use the phrase but yes, but you cannot say that the first thing you say to me cannot be yes, but so find a way to navigate that, because by eliminating some of the language, I’m forcing thought and degree of mental gymnastics that they’re watching how hard it is to dance around that phrase, and it can be enlightening at times, but absolutely, I’ll eliminate language from the arsenal and for myself as well. What do I have to take out of what I say and changing how I talk so that it elicits open ended questions? One of the things that’s really high early teaching in applied sports psychology is here are open ended questions. These are closed questions. Understand the difference between those two questions really important, and even
Dr. Jeff Breckon 35:53
within that, I’d be tempted. I’m wondering about that idea of challenging the client by let’s be open and then transparent with them. So listen, I’m Can I share a concern with you? Bad they’re hooked in because they’re in the concern? Yeah, some concern is that you’re using that you know should win. And yet, what I’m not hearing is I’m going to, or if I do this, then I’m going to be able to, what do you make of that concern that I’ve got? And again, we’re putting them in the center of it. But we’re not falling into that direct. You need to change your language. I’m I’m wondering about changing the focus of being inquisitive and curious. To say, this is what I’m hearing. What do you make of that? It’s another layer, another opportunity to maybe challenge them to reflect on their use of language, which challenges them to, you know, so is the seed, if you like, and an opportunity. Yeah.
Grant Holicky 36:42
And I’ve even gone so far as to say, listen, understand, for me, this word is a trigger. And being very upfront and honest and open with them, and saying, I’m going to share a little bit about me, I’ve done this for a long time. When I hear this, I have a little bit of a trigger. So let’s both try to find a way to change our vocabulary around these things so that we can communicate better.
Jared Berg 37:07
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Chris Case 37:35
Let’s shift gears a little bit more and talk about the components of MI and what it looks like. Dr Brechin, could you tell us more? I
Dr. Jeff Breckon 37:42
think probably the most common description is the relational and the technical elements of MI, the relational lobe, the spirit of MI has number of elements to it, and it includes collaboration rather than confrontation, acceptance rather than agreement. It has compassion as a core element, and it has evocation rather than education. So rather than fall into that educating and giving information trap, it’s about evoking, which we talked about earlier, that we can then really focus on drawing the evidence from the athlete. So that’s really the relational or the spirit. The technical elements of MI are the micro skills probably best described as using the acronym or the mnemonic of oars, which is about open ended questions and grants. Can some nice examples of that already about affirmations rather than praise. I’ll come back to that in a second. And also using reflective listening, where we are showing we’ve heard them with statements rather than questions, and then reflective summaries that draw together the story and present that back to the athletes so they can digest what’s happened three or four different mini topics, if you like, I mentioned in the affirmations, and there is a one point probably the hardest aspect to learning, Am I? I would say reflective, listening and affirmation reflections, but really important in terms of a principle that we try and avoid raised trap and affirmations are a way of reflecting the strengths and the behaviors and the intent of the athlete rather than falling to that. That’s great, well done, which subtly imposes a hierarchy that you are going to judge whether what they’ve done is good or bad, and you create that dependency, so they become dependent on praise. So with an affirmation statement, we’re looking something more like actually a head position really enabled you to hit that ball harder. Or the way you’re training now is really different to what I’ve seen in the last three or four weeks, or that shift that you’ve made that you talk to me about you now put into practice, and I’m seeing some real positive results from that, which is really different as a statement of positive behavior. Rather, that’s great, well done, which there’s not really a lot of substance behind. Hand up. So that’s a form of affirmation reflection, but at its heart, it avoids this praise trap and us taking the role of the expert and judging whether what they’ve done and their behaviors have been good or not.
Grant Holicky 40:12
I love that you brought up the praise trap. One of those phrases that parents and coaches both get into is I’m proud of you, and that creates this external locus for what they should be striving for. And as a coach, directing that becomes very, very important, after a poor performance, or not up to par performance, being able to come in and say, you know, you did something in there that I’ve never seen you do before in a positive way. Yeah, there’s all this other stuff that you know is in the trash a little bit, right? That’s not what we wanted. But I watched you respond to that and come back and fight in a way that I haven’t seen before. That’s really impressive. And even that phrase that we give to parents constantly, I loved watching you do that. I loved watching you fight. I think really can work for coaches as well. That trust in that relationship is very deep. Man, it was a lot of fun to watch you come back from that mistake. It was a lot of fun to watch that shift between bats, whatever that might be, that’s a way that you’re directing it back to the athlete and the change they’ve made, and taking yourself as, as you said, Dr brecken, as the arbiter of good and bad out of the equation, almost, right? It’s back. And I love, I always love coming back to an athlete after a swimmer, after a race, saying, What did you tell me you wanted to do? I wanted to do this, this, this and this. Yeah, you did a great job of one and two. We missed the mark a little bit on three, though, and again, it goes back on them, right? So instead of them coming out of this equation, going, Man coach is disappointed in me, or man coach is really proud of me, they’re coming back. Going, all right, I said I was going to do these things, and I was really successful on these two. And I think you have to really be aggressive as a coach to highlight what they were successful on because athletes are great at what they did poorly. They’re not necessarily great at what they did well. And
Dr. Jeff Breckon 42:10
I think one nice example in that is that you’re shifting from the affirmation of their strengths coming from the coach to that. Again, we talked about open questions. There’s an open question that can elicit from the athlete their self affirmation. What did you do differently in that game compared to last time you’re challenging them to elicit their own strengths, their own behaviors? That’s different, and that gives you, therefore, two tools to think about to avoid that prayers trap, either affirming through reflection of the strengths that you’ve seen, or eliciting from the athlete, using an open question to elicit their own thoughts about what was different and what was strong in how they behaved, especially if there’s a discrepancy between a previous performance and today, a more recent one. You know that that discrepancy, that gap between performances and their description of it, can be really powerful because, like I said, Grant, you know they’re so used to being told what isn’t good and what they’ve done wrong. You know, it can be quite refreshing to not all the time. It can become a little bit boring and mundane and lose the gravitas. So at the right time, when it’s meaningful, I think it can be powerful tool to affirm the strength in what we’ve
Chris Case 43:17
done. I don’t know if this is a tangent, necessarily, but a lot of people that are listening to this podcast in particular are self coached athletes. Are these the types of things that an individual can do effectively for themselves? I’m sure it’s pretty hard to separate sort of the two roles that an athlete might have, the athlete and the coach of themselves. But are there things that self coached athletes can do to improve how they analyze their own performances, to kind of have a reflective attitude about it, self talk, whatever that might be, or whatever it might look like, to do a better job of this, instead of being so harsh on themselves, like a lot of athletes, tend to be any thoughts, I
Dr. Jeff Breckon 43:56
would probably suggest that it’s about that mindset. I think it’s important. I think having that positive mindset and being willing to be critical and challenge and evoke from yourself what you’ve done well that could be via writing, the writing task of a listing what you felt were strengths, what you felt were areas to work on differently, clearly, self talk and the talking therapy element isn’t going to be there, but I think you can use some writing tasks to agenda map and set clear goals with the target behavior, and use some scaling questions on importance and readiness and confidence to maintain which gives you a very objective, clear, black and white visual of what’s happened and what’s gone on that can really help clear the mind a little bit. It’s an adaptation of that change talk. It’s it’s that kind of written Stoke, or that written contract towards agenda mapping and planning, I think probably to have that objective viewpoint at probably technical coaching point, isn’t it that I remember when I. Played soccer as a younger athlete, and volleyball, and I used to think I jumped higher than anyone, and I moved quicker, and then I saw myself on video, and jeez, and and it was only, and it was only once I saw the reality. There was no coming back from that. And I had to shift my perspective so you can blend the technical skills of all the tools that we have, all the tracking devices and the movement analysis and match analysis, and that, I think, is a really useful tool for that self exploration and that self mapping of what you do differently think without that and that self monitoring, I think it’s pretty tricky to do because you’re so engaged and so involved in the match itself. But that’d be really interesting to grab Grant’s thoughts on that. I
Grant Holicky 45:46
love the idea of the writing because it almost puts a little space between your thoughts and you right. If you write down my goals for this race, write those down, I’m stepping away from those goals for a period of time. So when I come back to look at them post race. It almost can feel like I’m talking to somebody else. There’s that little bit of space. So it almost can create that small amount of objectivity to have written them before and stepping away, I say this when I even write my own training plan, if I try to write my own training plan the day of, it’s a disaster, right? Like I’ll go through mental gymnastics to not do the workout that I know I should do, but if I write it two weeks out, there’s this objectivity to it that now I come to it and go, Okay, well, I was thinking about it then, and there must have been a reason I had this in mind. So we’re gonna go do that. So writing down those goals, and then coming back and then writing how the race went. And comparing those two pieces can be really effective, because it almost starts to feel like an objective observer looking at you, but the self evaluation piece of this puzzle, whether as an athlete, an individual athlete, or as a coach or as a motivational interviewer, how did I do? What would I change about that interaction I still go through this. I fall into one of the other traps that I would throw into this is the fixing trap. And you mentioned it earlier. Dr brecken, this idea of somebody saying, Well, I can fix that. I’ve been down this road before. I can fix that. For that athlete to run down that road of the fixing trap,
Chris Case 47:17
and you just tell them, Oh, this is what I did in this situation. It should work for you, because it worked for me, and that’s the trap, yeah,
Grant Holicky 47:24
or it worked for another athlete. This is the answer, right? This is how you fix it. And it’s interesting, because I think people with high empathy, we can get sucked into that really easily, because we want to help people. We’re looking at somebody struggling. We’re like, I have the answer, and I had to work like crazy. Still do to just shut my mouth and stop trying to fix it. I can maybe lay down a path. I can maybe make some suggestions. And I took this off your tangent, and took it back to where we were talking about. But you can do this yourself, a little bit too, of really laying out that path. This is what we’re trying to do. How can I come back to that? Okay? I gotta touch base with that again. I gotta go back to that again. But for myself, as a coach, that’s the biggest trap that I fall into. I know how to make this better. We do it as parents all the time, right? We do it as friends all the time. I can make this better. I can fix this. And the struggle is such an important piece of development of an athlete, development of a child, development of an adult, like really trying to change that role as from the fixer to somebody who’s providing support or guidance.
Dr. Jeff Breckon 48:31
You need to go about Rosa, a nice paper a number of years back around agenda mapping, and I think even that it’s just got me thinking, Chris, the way you phrased that, of that self directed and within that agenda map. But we, you know, we could challenge our athletes to look at that agenda setting and that menu of options where they identify different elements that they might focus on. Because if you try and self grant, you know, if we try and focus on everything at once, you get overwhelmed. You would do any of it well, you know, so that there is that need to demonstrate mastery in small steps sometimes, and having to, always great to have an objective pair of eyes, clean pair of eyes on it. But having that, that menu of options, of key elements that focus on first, then get the confidence that you’ve achieved that then move to the next. And that sequencing can be very useful, because we are our own harshest critics, and if we overwhelm that change process, then we’ll probably get swallowed up, and we won’t do any of it particularly well.
Chris Case 49:30
I want to just clarify for people out there that might not know what you’ve mentioned, the phrase agenda setting several times. Now, could you just give us a definition of what that is and what that looks like, Yeah,
Dr. Jeff Breckon 49:40
sure. So at the start of the conversation is probably three phases, if you like, to an MI conversation, and the first or the early phase of that conversation is exploration background. And that exploring phase will identify what are the topics that we take forward into the action planning. So if. It could be around your from an athlete perspective. It could be about building resilience. It could be about training differently. It could be about different diets or a different S and C plan or a different phase in the season. So identifying that that map, that agenda, that menu of different options, it’s just identifying which of those tasks will we do first? So that’s very much the the exploring phase. We move then into the garden, where we were starting to identify with that gender map. You know which, which are the priority areas that take forward, and in the language that we use with the athletes, is around just developing that discrepancy which sounds like we’re doing it the wrong way around, but that discrepancy between current and future, and there’s those open questions around, what will that performance look like if you’re able to build that new agenda, that new strategy, into place? And the key strategies we can use within there are scaling rules, not turn on importance or readiness, understanding the values of the athlete and what makes them tick, and aligning those values, if you like, values matching to the target behaviors and then summarizing to bring the story together. And we’re also using different types of open questions, but we might use those advantages open questions, or those hypothetical directional open questions around, what would that change look like if you were able to put that into practice? How would that affect your performance if you don’t? What might be the impact if, if that doesn’t happen? So there’s a number of strategies that that we can blend in at each of the different phases that we’ve been talking about. And just coming back to the question of that gender mapping, it’s it’s just setting the the scene of what all these different target behaviors might look like. So
Chris Case 51:47
we’ve mentioned the praise trap, the fixing trap. Dr brecken, I would like you to maybe explain a few more traps that exist, and maybe how am I helps people avoid falling into those traps. Yeah,
Dr. Jeff Breckon 52:01
it’s a nice way of describing those. Chris, you know, how can we use mi to avoid the traps? We can’t be perfect. You know, I’ve never done a perfect session in my life, but there are certain things that mis helped me to try and avoid falling into those, those traps, or those bear pits, if you like one. And it’s quite a technical one, is the question answer, trap. And the rule of thumb we use with MI is try not to ask three questions overall. We should be maybe using an open question, but then reflecting and following and challenging, using those complex reflections to open up and explore with the the athlete. There’s also then the talk time trap. I’m going to turn up briefly that especially early in the conversation, we shouldn’t be doing more than half the talking. If our mindset is one of tapping into the resource and understanding the experiences that the athlete brings, then we shouldn’t be doing more than half the talking and towards the action planning. Fit is fine and with permission and when there’s change talk, yes, but let’s move into that action orientation, where we might be doing more of the interventions of it, but early on, it should be about them doing the tour. The fixing trap is trying to avoid that knee jerk reaction to the problem solving where I don’t like that technique. Well, why don’t you try this one? Now, I’ve tried that before. That didn’t work. Well, why don’t we try different you’re not listening. You know, where there’s ambivalence or resistance, you are going to amplify that ambivalence and resistance if you use that premature focus. So be comfortable with ambivalence, you know, let them talk about it, give it oxygen, and they’ll soon get bored of talking about the reasons not to but challenge them with the view to how to change, or I’m trying to fix it in the way you think. Another one which we see all this all the time, is that kind of sympathy trap. So rather than empathy, while trying to understand their position, there is the sympathy perspective. We see a lot more in healthcare, I think you know, but we just need to be careful of that sympathy rather than empathy, the prayers trap we’ve talked about. It sounds easy on the surface that using reflections to affirm the strengths of their change, but it avoids that phrase of well done, that’s great, which comes meaningless, if you like. And then the final one, if we can do a number of these, then we avoid what call the expert trap, where we take that position, even unintentionally, have been the expert of their change, and that creates dependency, and it creates a crutch, and we know what happens when that crutch gets knocked away, people fall over. So the avoidance of a number of these different traps can help us avoid being the expert of their change. And listen, you know, we sometimes in context, we are challenged to be the expert. We’re paid to be that expert coach, but within that, I think that role demands a number of different styles of communication, and not automatically, by default, being the expert of their change. I think if we start to use them as the resource more, there is expertise in that, and that’s perhaps the thing we need to try and help our young coaches to become as much. Or expert on how to communicate and elicit from the athletes so that you both get something out of that change relationship. The
Chris Case 55:06
final question I’d like to ask both of you is, how do you know when this is working? What are some measurable ways to understand that you’re creating better outcomes with this technique, this strategy? Is there a way to do that effectively? I would probably
Dr. Jeff Breckon 55:23
say you get a sense of the athlete being willing to be challenged, to respond in a in a manner that pushes themselves forward, that you aren’t exhausted at the end of every conversation. You know that you you feel like there has been a collaborative partnership and a real dance towards change from this, this wrestle that we quite often see and hear. So again, another metaphor that we’ve seen a lot with MI which is we’re trying to dance rather than wrestle. And, you know, a number, number of conversations I’ve seen and observed and received as an athlete, it was just a wrestle. Whereas, you know, we want this, this to and from, we want this collaborative partnership towards change, and it’s a measure of that as success, whether that then translates into more medals and bigger contracts and more success. Who knows. But I think at least what we can control is the quality of that conversation and the growth and the development and the motivation of the athlete. And you know, I think we all get a sense of when that happens in a conversation. Grant your thoughts on that? I
Grant Holicky 56:30
think the first thing that came to mind was when it changes, when there’s a different flow to the conversation, when there’s a different direction the athletes taking the conversation. I love that statement of like, almost enjoyment when the coaching process starts to become enjoyable for the coach, that’s something that we don’t teach enough that this is a very difficult profession coaching, and we give a lot of ourselves. And, you know, we talk about work life balance, and we talk about these other pieces of the puzzle for coaches, but we’re almost taught that you’re just going to give and you’re going to fight and you’re going to wrestle and you’re going to do these things as a coach instead of being taught as man, this could be just a lot of fun working with an athlete and getting that relationship and achieving that rapport and that trust both directions, creates Just a really enjoyable relationship that changes together and evolves together and goes through all those things together, and just takes so much listening and so much and I think again, as coaches, we’re taught that it takes so much talking and teaching, but in a lot of ways, it takes so much listening, and so for me, is it working? Such a great point Dr brecken makes that it’s less of a wrestle, it’s more fun, it’s more enjoyable, and you’re both getting something out of it. That’s really one of the big pieces that I’ve learned as a coach through the years, that if I use this process and I really incorporate mi into my coaching, I’m learning I’m learning about the athlete, and I’m learning about their craft in my craft
Dr. Jeff Breckon 58:01
and grant, would you say, therefore, that relationship enters a flow state?
Grant Holicky 58:06
Absolutely? Yeah, absolutely. And it’s funny, because it’ll drop in and out, right? One of the things that I hate about flow, I love flow, right? But one of the things that I don’t love about it is everybody, how do I get there? How do I get there? How do I stay there? Like, oh, you know, almost by his definition, is, the more you try to be in flow, the less you’re going to be in flow, right? So it is. I have a couple of coaching relationships that are going on eight years now, and in one of those relationships recently, the athlete looked at me and said, race weeks, I just need you to tell me what to do. And the rest of the coaching relationship is unbelievably collaborative, right? It’s very much this support together. It’s a mentor relationship, as Dr brecken alluded to, that a lot of these evolved to a mentorship relationship, but they looked at me and said, in some of these race weeks, I need you to be the old style coach. I need you to just tell me what to do, because it takes away my cognitive load, and I can be more successful. And almost that statement by the athlete flipped us back into flow. We’re back into this, okay, yeah, I know how to do this dance, and I know how to do that, and it kind of evolves, and it changes and it’s different, but it’s so wonderful to know that I can say something to an athlete. They won’t take it personally. They can say something to me and I won’t take it personally. That’s where so much of this works.
Chris Case 59:25
You’ve built that trust, yeah. Well, thank you very much for your time. Dr Breckin, it’s been very educational. I appreciate all your thoughts on this topic. Thanks
Dr. Jeff Breckon 59:32
for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation. Really helpful to unpack this and greater your perspective. So thanks for the invitation. Really enjoyed it.
Chris Case 59:41
That was another episode of fast talk. The thoughts and opinions expressed on fast talk are those of the individual. Subscribe to fast talk wherever you prefer, to find your favorite podcast and be sure to leave us a rating and a review. As always, we love your feedback. Join the conversation at forums. Dot fast talklabs.com. Com, or learn from our experts at fast talk labs.com for Dr Jeff brecken, Dr Stacy Brixton and grant hollow key. I’m Chris case. Thanks for listening. You.
