Paul is Team Leader of a group of four M.I. instructors in Canada who have delivered introductory, advanced and M.I. Peer Coaching training to more than 5000 professionals across Canada. He has extensive esperience in providing training in the addictions, health-care, mental health, social service and corrections fields, and in providing consultation and program development assistance to organizations who want to develop sustainable "M.I. Learning Systems" to support the uptake of M.I. as a standard way of working with clients and who want to integrate M.I. into program development.
I began learning M.I. in 1994 through a series of excellent workshops presented by MI trainers who I continue to respect as some of the best in the world. That said, by about 1998 I came to a personal awareness of what we now know about the fact that people don't learn MI at workshops! There is an important difference between simple "exposure training" in MI and the more complex process of "MI learning". If there is anything I have learned about M.I. and about helping people to learn MI, it is that there is a very important difference between "knowing about" MI - and "learning MI". "Knowing about MI" is a nice start - but it is not sufficient to facilitate the development of MI competency in helpers. I have considerable experience with assisting organizations in developing approaches to MI training that facilitate integration of the approach - above and beyond "training". The integration of the MI approach often involves change at both an individual and at an organizational level - and sensitivity to that at the point of developing the training plan is essential in order to prevent the "money flushing" that can happen with single-shot, "drive-by" training sessions. Feel free to call anytime to "chat MI" or to discuss the variety of approaches available to encourage movement toward teh MI way of working with clients. I never any charge for an agency consult, and the coffee is always hot!
