Today at a meeting someone asked me what my favorite music is, and I said, “folk music.” My love of folk music began when I was a counselor at a Virginia Boy Scout camp in 1969. One of the few vinyl albums available to listen to in the Admin/Dining Hall was Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence. And the lyrics from the title song that really caught me were:
“And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening”
In that summer 52 years ago, I thought those lyrics were so profound, and they sit with me still today.
Photo by Vitolda Klein
“The Vaccine Whisperers.” This week I read a story, a narrative like I described in my last article, about “vaccine whisperers” that will also sit with me for many years. In his book Think Again, Adam Grant tells us the story of Canadian Marie-Helene, who was a mother of four children and one was a two-pound newborn named Tobie. She insisted none of her children be vaccinated for measles and that included Tobie, who was growing healthy in the hospital.
Because there was a huge measles outbreak in Quebec, the nurses feared for Tobie if he was not vaccinated before discharge. So they called-in neonatologist Arnaud Gagneur, whose nickname was the “vaccine whisperer”, to chat with Marie-Helene.
Motivational Interviewing. Grant reminds us that if we try to persuade someone to change a strong belief, it rarely works and often has the opposite effect – it strengthens their belief and makes them less curious about alternate positions. These folks often report that the persuaders reek of condescension, which only deepens their belief. Marie-Helene was one of these people saying of one persuader that it felt like “she was accusing me of wanting my kids to get sick. As if I was a bad mother.”
Chart – Resilience Rehabilitation
When Arnaud Gagneur met with Marie-Helene he used motivational interviewing (“MI”) to talk about vaccinations. I admit that while I have heard of MI, it wasn’t until I read Grant’s description of how to use it and his own example, that it made sense to me. He writes, “The goal (of MI) isn’t to tell people what to do; it’s to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities.”
The process for the interviewer to use MI essentially involves four steps:
- Ask open-ended questions.
- Engage in reflective listening.
- Affirm the person’s desire and ability to change.
- Summarize.
The summarizing step happens either at the end of a conversation or at a critical break or transition point. Summarizing includes a) “Explaining your understanding of the other person’s reason for change; b) Checking on whether you’ve missed or misrepresented anything; and c) Inquiring about their plans and possible next steps.” This last step is critical and one Grant admits forgetting in his failed MI example.
Four More Takeaways. First, effective motivational interviewing takes skill, but we all can learn the basics. It never hurts to try, but you might want to start with low-risk situation. I recommend you buy Grant’s book and read the Chapter Vaccine Whisperers and Mild-Mannered Interrogators.
Second, one of the keys to successful MI is learning to ask truly curious questions. Grant credits journalist Kate Murphy who wrote that curious questions don’t contain hidden agenda terms aimed at “saving, advising, convincing, or correcting” the person.
Photo by Artem Maltsev
Third, the hardest thing to do during MI is avoiding our natural “righting reflex” – which is our desire to fix the problems and offer answers. (Miller and Rollnick) Grant writes, “Although people want a doctor to fix their broken bones, when it comes to problems in their heads, they often want sympathy rather than solutions.”
Fourth, if you like trivial tidbits, as I do, Grant taught me the word abracadabra comes from a Hebrew term that means “I create as I speak.” Since I often talk to myself as I try to understand things, I will start saying “abracadabra” when I wrap-up!
What Happened with Marie-Helene? The vaccine whisperer, Arnaud Gagneur, helped Marie-Helene decide to have little Tobie vaccinated before he left the hospital. But that wasn’t the end of the story – she chose to have all her other children vaccinated and successfully convinced former anti-vax family members and friends to do likewise.
I think if leaders practice the basics found in motivational interviewing, we will build more successful teams. And we can only wonder what could happen if Paul Simon changed the last words in Sounds of Silence to “People listening without hearing.”
