January 2017

Dear Friend,

I’m spending the winter in Key Biscayne, FL where the sun is (almost) always shining. 

I’m an outdoor person, and love plants, flowers and birds, so south FL is the perfect spot for me.

I recently toured Fairchild Tropical Gardens (www.fairchildgarden.org), which is a 83 acre set of gardens and landscapes dedicated to preserving tropical and subtropical plants. It is a fabulous, colorful and fragrant place to walk, learn and have an al fresco lunch.

I also went to one of Miami’s newest hotels, La Faena (http://www.faena.com/miami-beach/) for dinner at Los Fuegos, one of the restaurants in the hotel. 

Here is a picture of me at the restaurant with my husband Barry and my 2 friends Stacey and BJ.  What a great evening!






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What Constitutes MI Training?

I always open my presentations on MI asking the audience who has had MI training in the past.

In most of my audiences, a number of people raise their hands. When I ask what sort of training they have had, it’s usually a lecture, a short session at a conference, or read a book on MI.  These are useful activities to introduce the ideas of MI and to allow people to discuss these ideas.  Often the people who have such experiences tell me they know MI and use it “all the time”.

To be very clear, these activities are not MI training.  The research on how people learn MI is clear; it takes 2-3 full days of training to achieve minimum competence in MI.  This amount of training can be accomplished in stages, beginning with a half day training, and followed by other in person workshop experiences and coaching and mentoring in MI.  Another way of really learning MI is in a college course in which a semester is spent doing a “deep dive” into MI, with lots of practice and perhaps even a video tape of themselves using MI, to be rated by a skilled and MI trained instructor.  Those who have this opportunity are fortunate, indeed.

The overall goal of “real” MI training is getting to a place in which you know intuitively what to say in response to a client in MI consistent way.  Just like many other complex skills, learning the MI spirit and skill takes time and practice.