Motivational Interviewing Made Easy: A Simple, 5-week Program to Build Motivational Interviewing Skills
by G. Scott GrahamPublish: Feb 15, 2015Series: Motivational Interviewing Made EasyGeneral NonfictionBook Overview
Master Motivational Interviewing — In Just Five WeeksHave you ever felt stuck in conversations with clients who resist change—no matter how much you try to help? Do you find yourself giving advice, only to have it ignored or dismissed? Motivational Interviewing (MI) is the key to transforming these interactions into powerful, change-driven conversations.
But knowing the theory isn’t enough. Most professionals attend a training, get excited about the ideas, and then revert to old counseling habits. That’s where this book is different.
Motivational Interviewing Made Easy takes the complexity out of MI and gives you a practical, structured, and action-based five-week program to develop essential MI skills—without the overwhelm.
Each chapter introduces one core behavior to focus on for an entire week, allowing you to build habits naturally and deepen your MI practice over time. You’ll learn how to:
Ask before advising – and why this one shift changes everything
Replace advice with information – so clients feel empowered, not instructed
Integrate client language – reinforcing autonomy and insight
Discover the motivational “why” – tapping into intrinsic change drivers
Apply the “magic scale” – a simple yet powerful tool for forward movement
The strategies in this book aren’t just best practices—they’re grounded in the MITI (Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity) framework, which is used to assess competence in MI across clinical settings. If someone scored you using the MITI, and you consistently applied what’s taught in this book, you’d perform at a high level.
That’s the promise of this approach. But here’s the problem: most people won’t do it.
They’ll read the book. Maybe highlight a few pages. And then go back to doing what they’ve always done. That’s not how mastery works.
Don’t let the simplicity fool you. One skill. One week. That’s the structure. But the power is in the practice. This book is deceptively simple because MI, when done well, looks effortless—but is the result of deep, intentional skill-building.
Very few readers ever take the author up on the offer of free coaching and feedback. Most don’t complete the weekly tracking sheets. Fewer still submit a session for MITI coding. Yet those who do? Their skills change dramatically.
This book is for counselors, therapists, coaches, and healthcare professionals who are serious about becoming better at what they do. It’s not for people who want to read about MI. It’s for those who want to live it.
If you’re ready to build Motivational Interviewing skills that actually show up in your sessions—and hold up under scrutiny—then this is the place to start.
