Importance and Confidence in Motivational Interviewing
August 12, 2026 2026-09-22 20:57Importance and Confidence in Motivational Interviewing
Importance and Confidence in Motivational Interviewing
Wanting change and believing change is possible are different. Exploring importance and confidence can help practitioners understand what may be influencing readiness.
Two different conversations
Someone may consider a change extremely important but have little confidence that they can achieve it. Another person may feel perfectly capable of changing but see no compelling reason to do so.
Importance
Exploring importance can help uncover values, concerns, hopes and reasons for change. Useful questions include “What makes this matter to you?” and “What might be different if you made this change?”
Confidence
Confidence conversations look for ability, strengths, previous successes, resources and possible routes through difficulty. “What gives you some confidence that you could do this?” often opens a different conversation from “Why haven’t you done it?”
Using rulers skilfully
A practitioner might ask someone to rate importance or confidence from 0 to 10. The number itself is rarely the most interesting part.
Person: “My confidence is about a 4.”
Practitioner: “Why a 4 and not a 1?”
This invites the person to voice what confidence already exists rather than immediately explaining why the score is not higher.
Rulers are optional tools, not tests. Their usefulness depends on the conversation they create.
Continue exploring
Change Talk in Motivational Interviewing · Working with Ambivalence · Planning in Motivational Interviewing
For further MI resources, visit the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT).
