BETTER CHANGE
experienced these six stages. I can certainly relate to this myself when it came to giving up smoking. To use the old adage “I was brilliant at giving up smoking, I did it hundreds of times” was true. I would move between contemplation of giving up and non-contemplation daily! Occasionally I would make plans to give up (it was always tomorrow or a date in the future, never today) and sometimes I would follow through with my plans and take action. I would set a date and chuck what would now be a small fortune’s worth of tobacco in the bin, ready for the new me. This would be maintained for a few weeks, days, or sometimes even hours before, inevitably, I would form some sort of excuse or explanation as to why it was ok for me to smoke again. This cycle continued until around 18 years ago, when I was fi nally able to maintain my abstinence. I put this down to two reasons: the smoking ban in the UK and the birth of my fi rst child. The combination of both changed my priorities and gave me the motivation I needed to work harder on maintaining my change.
Good for you, Rob, but how is this relevant to our interactions, I hear you ask! Well, let me explain.
In our interaction workshops, we work on motivational interviewing skills designed to provide colleagues with a toolkit to help improve the quality of interactions, but even the best interactions can miss their intended purpose if the recipient is not responsive to change. We are often so solution-focused that we skip to the intended outcome without thinking of where the customer is in their own mind. To support this, we cover the cycle of change to help colleagues understand how to take customers on a journey that supports positive change as opposed to making them feel they have to change because they are doing something wrong. If a customer is in the pre-contemplation phase of the cycle of change, it is pointless to try to recommend what action they should be taking or how they need to maintain it. If they are resistant to change, the best outcome we can hope for at that point is for them to move towards some kind of contemplation, the next stage of the cycle. This is done by identifying “change talk” from the customer. These small windows of opportunity can often be buried in “sustain talk” from the customer, where they advocate for their gambling or behaviour. Quotes such as “I don’t have an issue with gambling” or “I can always afford what I spend” are barriers which we need to overcome if we are to effectively support a customer. If they said “I can always afford what I spend, but I sometimes think about what I could have done with the money I have lost” the change talk in the second part of the sentence is our opportunity to ask them to contemplate their behaviour, ask them how that makes them feel, if they sometimes regret their spend before moving with them into preparation by offering advice or speaking to them about support tools available. Advocating for their plan
Rob Mabbett
of action positively reinforces their decision, making it more likely to take the action they have planned for, supporting that action and providing them with affi rmations helps support the maintenance of that action too.
It is not a perfect science, of course; some will not wish to contemplate their behaviour and if we see it as overly risky or potentially harmful to them, or the business, we may take action into our own hands for the safety of the individual and to remain compliant. Further on in the cycle, people will relapse, but instead of this being a terminal failure, we can again move to contemplation and look at what went wrong, then make a better plan, and the cycle of change starts again. For more information on our training courses, do get in touch or visit our website www.
better-change.org Play Positively Rob
Rob joined Better Change from the charity Gordon Moody where he spent 5 years running their international gambling helpline “Gambling Therapy” as well as helping to raise their profi le and ensure suffi cient treatment spaces were available in their residential treatment centres to meet demand. With over 12 years industry experience, including being a previous winner of the Racing Post and SiS Betting Shop Manager of the Year award, Rob brings a unique insight into the prevention and treatment of
gambling harm and is keen to focus his
efforts further upstream as we aim to prevent against
gambling harm at Better Change through
Positive Play.
NOVEMBER 2025 19
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
