Our Services
Change Talk Associates offers continuing education and coaching in MI to support helping professionals confidently and competently support others in making changes.
Modelling this evidence-based guiding style of communication in the facilitation and coaching approach, learners experience and practice how to ignite change by transforming the conversation.
About Our Trainings
Sharing Motivational Interviewing is our life’s work. Our deep passion and commitment to the approach are evident in our facilitation. We model MI in the delivery, honouring learner ambivalence throughout the process and guiding towards practice changes. Drawing on our extensive experience offering multi-level training with interprofessional groups across Canada and larger lenses on the work (such as trauma-informed practice), our hope is to create the conditions for transformative learning experiences in both in-person and virtual contexts. This relational learning approach fosters connection in a time when it is dearly needed and reinforces the necessity of engagement and compassion in our learning and beyond.
Some words to describe our facilitation style: learner-centered, informed, grounded, relational & passionate about MI!
Who We Work With
Organizations
We provide multi-level MI training to organizations across Canada that support the well-being of individuals, families and communities.
Individuals
We offer continuing education opportunities for helping professionals independently seeking to enhance and refine their practice in a supported and safe learning environment.
Our Trainings
Open Access
Continuing education opportunities available to individual helping professionals or smaller groups that want to learn together. Learners include a broad range of practice areas and professional roles, such as social workers, occupational therapists, physicians, counsellors, speech-language pathologists etc. Courses are run multiple times each year. See the Events page for upcoming sessions.
Private Training
Private, in-person or virtual multi-level training is available for organizations, from Introductory MI to Skills Coaching and MI Community of Practice Development for sustainability. The content is tailored to reflect the service area and conversation focuses. Organizations often offer the learning across program/service delivery areas as an overall collaborative and compassionate communication style to bring organizational values/principles to life and enhance care. When there are new hires, some organizations send staff to the open-access courses to ensure continuity of learning and development.
Introductory MI
Introductory MI training is knowledge and skills-based training. Learners gain familiarity with MI core elements and overall communication style. They also have the opportunity to practice skills and strategies to increase engagement and motivation, decrease discord, and initiate and guide change conversations across a range of topics.
Formats:
In-person = 2 days
Online = 4 morning sessions
Advancing MI
Advancing MI training is a practice-based training building on the learning in Introductory MI. Through self-assessment, coaching, and feedback, learners deepen their understanding of MI’s relational and technical components and continue to learn how to learn MI. A fidelity coding tool (MITI) is introduced, and learners audio-record and review their own MI practice conversation.
Formats:
In-person = 2 days
Online = 4 morning sessions
MI Skills Coaching
Research indicates that MI competencies are strengthened when initial training is followed with individual coaching and feedback, with three to four sessions over a 6-month period supporting skill sustainability. Coaching can be done individually or in small groups and involves creating MI practice conversations to be reviewed in a supportive environment with an MI Coach.
What is MI?
A collaborative and compassionate communication style to support engagement and build motivation for change. Informed by decades of research, MI conversations hear opportunity in ambivalence and guide towards change.
What Our Clients Say
Excellent course, excellent instructor! Thank you so much – I’d happily take a semester long course from Cristine in this topic!
This experience has been very transformative and inspiring. Thank you for the way that you teach!
Really appreciated the skill and expertise of the instructor. It was clear how well she knew the material and was really able to keep things relevant and made the 2-days feel meaningful and enjoyable. Thanks!
Cristine, I’ve never had such a profound seminar leader. Great Job.
You bring calmness and grounding to your teachings. So nice. Thanks for creating a safe space to learn.
Amazing workshop! So glad I attended. I would definitely recommend to colleagues. This helped me developed skills that will help me be a better counsellor.
An excellent introduction to a tool that should be in every clinician’s toolbox. I wish I had found out about this sooner.
Excellent resource to any healthcare professional, and from a personal development standpoint. Will be recommending to colleagues.
Awesome presenter! Very skilled at managing group dynamics and encouraging the energy of the group.
Thanks for a great experience – Cristine is a fantastic facilitator. Very warm, knowledgeable, and flexible to the needs of the group. She also did a great job adjusting the material to fit with the online format and keep people engaged.
This was a fantastic training. I loved how you modelled MI through your skilled facilitation and created a safe space for learning even via Zoom. Thank you so much.
The course took MI concepts from conceptual to practical and implementable for me – I feel I walked away with a few quick changes I can make in my day-to-day practice to counsel patients more effectively.
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