the sun and the wind

Aesop's fable of The North Wind and the Sun is about a competition to decide who is the stronger. The challenge is to make a passing traveller remove his cloak. However hard the North Wind blows, the traveller only wraps his cloak tighter, but when it's the Sun's turn, the Sun shines, the traveller becomes too warm and removes his cloak. And the moral? Persuasion is more effective than force.

When I worked in health promotion, I ran courses in motivational interviewing (MI). This is a client-centred counselling style for helping clients to decide they want to make changes in their behaviour e.g. cut down their drinking, give up smoking. The approach was pioneered by clinical psychologists, William Miller and Stephen Rollnick.

Unlike more traditional, 'advice-giving' methods, MI is about the health worker/therapist providing the environment for a client to identify they want to change, rather than telling them they need to. The fable of the Wind and Sun is relevant, the wind being the more forceful approach, the sun being the MI approach. Evidence shows that the gentle methods are more effective.

In MI how the practitioner is with the client makes a big difference to the client's success in making changes. Skills used include active listening, asking open questions, reflecting back what you've heard to check you’ve understood, affirming.

MI is a way of being with people which is likely to be different from what they expect. The courses I co-facilitated were popular with a range of health workers and staff working in voluntary organisations e.g. for homelessness, substance abuse.

I think this is a great approach for every aspect of communication, whether at work or with family and friends. The most helpful thing we can do we when someone needs to talk is to really listen, check we've understood. This can help the speaker work out what they need to do and is far more useful than rushing in with advice. It's a facilitative role, an enabling one. When we think about it, we probably know who are the good listeners in our lives, and who are not so good. When we reflect on that, the listeners are the ones we probably feel better after talking to. They might think 'all they have done is listen'. Real listening requires energy and attention. It's a gift.

Listeningly yours,


Jane