Motivational Interviewing Worksheet

Motivational interviewing worksheets can be a useful tool for taking notes during or shortly after a client’s session with you. This is to ensure you recall the motivational interview techniques you used with your client, and don’t forget any details.

Open-ended questions are questions that cannot be answered with “Yes” or “No”, or a simple one-word answer. These questions might start with “tell me about…”, “how”, or “why”. The goal of open-ended questions is to get your client to tell their story in their words and share their own perspective.

Motivational interviewing is a technique best employed for clients demonstrating low motivation to change their behavior, low confidence in their ability to enact change, ambivalence towards making a change, and who place a low importance on the need for them to make a change. Motivational interviewing will likely be unnecessary for clients with high motivation and belief in their ability to change, and similarly for clients with absolutely no interest in enacting a change.