Motivational Interviewing – Collaborating to Facilitate Change

Agilists often work with individuals who are new to Scrum, or partner with teams that have been challenged to adopt Scrum as part of an organization undergoing an agile “transformation.” In scenarios such as these, you can often encounter resistance, perhaps even reluctance to change established ways of working.

The reasons these knowledge workers might not want to change are very understandable. We're coaching individuals who have anywhere from five to 15 years experience, and they’ve been working in a particular way… Until one day, seemingly out of the blue, one of their leaders says, “By the way, we're going to be Agile.” Oh great, the latest industry fad; why don’t we just play “buzz-word bingo?”

Unfortunately, this typical scenario does not instill a lot of motivation to restructure daily practices, which those professionals honed over many years. So finding ways to work with these change-resistant individuals/teams can be difficult.

While going through the pains of coaching a particularly change-resistant team, I discovered a technique called Motivational Interviewing (MI). Commonly used by psychologists and behaviorists to help subjects changes habits that impact their lives/health adversely, MI can apply across a wide range of situations: Perhaps a practitioner wants to convince a substance abuse client to quit, while another needs to convince an elderly patient to take medications regularly.

Since a lot of our Scrum framework revolves around introducing change, why not borrow this technique to help our team members? First, we'll dive into the basic MI framework, then we’ll think about how to apply MI in an Agile setting. Keep in mind, however, that MI takes practice. Simply reading about it will not make you proficient. The more you practice this conversational art, you’ll find that following these MI steps will help you create the canvas and colors of your masterpiece.

What is Motivational Interviewing?

Motivational Interviewing is a goal-oriented way of having a collaborative conversation with a person or group, while paying particular attention to the language of change. The MI framework and processes are designed to strengthen a person's own motivations to change via these conversational techniques, which elicit and explore that individual's own, often-overlooked reasons for not changing. This is not done through manipulation or “Jedi mind tricks;” it's merely a way to structure your conversation and pose questions that allow your subject to come to his/her own conclusions about the change. 

Mindset

Just as we describe agile “as a mindset,” we must adopt an equally important mindset before attempting MI techniques.

• People are more inclined to change when a recognized need comes from their own, internal motivations (rather than external motives, or influences from others).

• Change cannot be forced or directed. Since directing your team member to change probably will not produce results you want, neither should you try to solve their problems, or give them the answers. Instead, you can guide your team member toward arriving at his/her own conclusion, which increases self-efficacy.

• Your team member is the expert, and is best-positioned to make decisions around his/her own life; you must respect that individual’s choices.

Note that MI includes two parts:

• Communications Skills (OARS)

• Processes

Communication Skills

Let’s start with the four communication skills, which you can incorporate throughout the MI process. In doing so, you will build trust with your team member, and obtain a far deeper understanding of that person’s motivations, as well as any ambivalence about the impending change. An easy way to remember these steps is with the acronym OARS.

1. Open Questions – Ask more open-ended questions, instead of questions that can be answered with a “Yes” or “No” response. An easy trick: Make it a “What” question, such as:

   • “What role does X play in your life?”

   • “What concerns do you have about X?”

   • “What benefits might X create for you?”

2. Affirmations – This is when you acknowledge or praise work your team member has done in the past., reminding him/her about that ability to be successful and accomplish difficult tasks. An example might be, “You showed a lot of (insert trait: strength, persistence, etc.) by doing that.”

3. Reflections – Paraphrasing back to your team member what he/she is feeling and saying is a key aspect of active listening; this technique demonstrates trust, and that you understand and acknowledge a different point of view. Even if you do not agree with what you hear, let your team member know his/her opinions are being heard.

   Let’s say you’re in a scenario where you’re speaking with someone from leadership, who just finished explaining why they’re pushing the team so hard. An example reflection might be, “I’m hearing that you’re trying to ensure the project is done on time, and I can understand the pressure of that responsibility.”

4. Summary – This is a synopsis of your reflections, when you paraphrase all the key takeaways from your discussion. You can use this summary to steer the conversation to focus on topics you want to discuss.

These steps are only half the battle, however. Perfecting your open-ended questions and reflections in a strategic way that allows you to steer the conversation is where the rubber truly meets the road. But now that you know what skills to practice, let's give you the framework for how to use them.

Processes

While some refer to these four MI steps as a framework, it’s even easier to simply view it as the agenda for your meeting… Except it’s an agenda that doesn’t need to be shared; it’s simply the path in which you want your discussion to flow.

1. Engaging - Start by establishing a connection. For those of us working with a scrum team, we'll likely already have some sort of rapport with the person or people we're meeting. Even still, start the conversation on a friendly note, or in the world of psychology, "Connect, then direct."

   Though we (and they) don't direct anyone to do anything (which represents the opposite approach of “command and control”), we want to establish a connection. People are much more open with those with whom they have a rapport. It is ideal for your colleague to feel comfortable, and have an open mind early in the conversation.

2. Focusing - This is when you steer the conversation toward the behavior you want to help your team member work through. Essentially it's your transition from the engaging phase, to the topic at hand.

   It's important in this phase to invite your colleague to have this particular conversation, which makes it more collaborative, while providing some control over the discussion. A baseline example might be, "I'd like to discuss X, would that be alright with you?"

   A more scrum-related example of focusing might be:

   “I wanted to chat with you about how we’re sizing our user stories. Would you mind if we talked through that?”

   More often than not, they'll agree. If for some reason they don't, then now probably isn't the best time to try, since they may not be receptive.

3. Evoking - This is the stage where you truly begin to elicit your team member’s own motivation to change. It's also where those open-ended questions truly start to shine.

   Tease out any internal motivations your colleague might have to make the change, whether that motivation is apparent to him/her or not. Understanding what's driving their current behavior and what their goals are can help you inform your approach.

   For example, let's say your Product Owner keeps influencing the number of story points your team assigns to each user story. You might say, "I noticed when we're sizing our stories, you often push the team to choose fewer points. What are your reasons for that?"

   With that baseline knowledge, you're in a better place to start digging for that person’s possible motivations to change.

   A great technique to draw out those motivations is by using a 0–10 scale to measure that person’s interest/motivation to make a change. You might ask, "On a scale of 0 to 10, zero being 'no chance', how would you feel about allowing the team to size the user stories without any recommendations or suggestions from your end?"

   Let's suppose your PO responds to that question with a two. While this response may initially seem bad, it gives us a lot of directions from which we can work. For example:

   • "What made you decide to choose two instead of a one, or a zero?".

     • This question can tease out internal motivations for change.

   • What would need to change for that number to go up to a five or a six?

   • What's the worst thing that could happen if we made this change?

   • What's the best thing that could happen?

   With each of their responses, try to identify and explore their possible motivations for change. Listen for words like "I want" and "It would solve," then explore those ideas deeper. Ask them questions like, "What would the benefit of doing X be for you?"

   At no point should you try to fix their problems or tell them what they need to do.

   You can, however, offer ideas and get their thoughts on your suggestions. As in:

   “I often hear of teams trying X for two sprints and then re-evaluated it from there. What are your thoughts on that approach?”

   If you're providing factual information, do so in small chunks, in an informative way, such as "Some teams find that X works well" or "Studies have found that X is ideal."

4. Planning - This is the last item on your MI agenda. Here you'll solidify some next steps based on the conclusions you derived in your discussion. Perhaps it's the classic, "We'll try X for two sprints and adjust from there." Whatever it may be, ensure you've got their buy-in. State the next steps and get their verbal agreement: "So we'll try X and re-evaluate it at Y time, sound like a plan?" And remember, the best ideas for change come from your team member, who will more readily act on ideas that he/she suggested, thus are more comfortable with. While it may not always be the full change you're looking for, you've planted the seed that will help open minds to change and new ideas. You'll often find that these conversations provide you with a small step forward right away, and a larger step forward over time.

Conclusion

Now that you understand the fundamentals of Motivational Interviewing, it's time time to take a moment to let that information digest. There's a lot of info here, and even more to practice. Those who use this technique for a living will spend lots of time role-playing different scenarios to perfect their ability to think on their feet and ask the right questions.

How might you apply Motivational Interviewing techniques to your present circumstances? If you're one of those brave souls, here’s some food for thought that may help you structure your conversations:

• Change often comes when the individual’s actions don't align with the way they see themselves.

• How might you use your open-ended questions to help your team member come to the self-realization that current practices don't align with their goals?

• How might agile practices get them there?  

Let us know about your experiments and their outcomes… and continue to inspect and adapt this practice!