How to Assess and Improve Readiness for Change

Clients who seek professional support from a counselor, coach, or therapist often recognize that something needs to change but are not yet ready to begin the process.

Effective professional consultation seeks to understand the client’s challenges and concerns while recognizing that they often already possess many of the resources needed to make change (Miller & Rollnick, 2013).

To foster change, practitioners build an alliance that highlights client strengths and evokes readiness. This article examines how to create that readiness and support the client through their change journey.

Before you continue, you might like to download five free positive psychology tools—practical, research-based exercises to help create goals and sustain behavior change.

What Is Readiness for Change?

Change can occur at individual, organizational, or societal levels. Understanding readiness for change helps practitioners support people more effectively and increases the chance of lasting outcomes.

Readiness at the individual level

Coaching, counseling, and therapy typically center on change—altering how people feel, think, and behave so they can live more effectively (Hagger et al., 2020; Nelson-Jones, 2014).

To design helpful interventions, consider these core questions (adapted from Michie et al., 2014):

• Understanding the behavior: What problem are we trying to solve? Which behaviors must change, and how? What will it take for the desired change to happen?
• Identifying intervention options: Which approaches are likely to produce the change?
• Identifying implementation options: What should the intervention include and how should it be delivered?

Underlying each question is one vital consideration: what is the client’s readiness for change? If a person is not prepared or willing, attempts at change will stall or never begin.

Clients rarely change until they themselves are ready (Arloski, 2014). Even when both client and practitioner see the need for change, pushing too quickly can undermine progress. Instead, consider change as a journey with distinct stages that clients move through at their own pace (Hagger et al., 2020).

Employee and organizational readiness

Organizational change can unsettle staff and should be planned and managed thoughtfully. Preparing ahead of time is essential: the best time to prepare for change is before it happens (Rinne, 2021).

Common impediments that block organizational change include:

• An anxious or burned-out workforce
• Insufficient trust between teams or leadership
• A “just do it” culture that ignores engagement
• Missing metrics to track progress or success

A change audit helps identify which parts of an organization are ready for change, which need support, and where lessons from successful areas can be applied (Rinne, 2021; Harvard Business Review, 2019).

4 Theories & Models for Readiness

Several models help predict, explain, and promote readiness for change. Below are four practical approaches commonly used in coaching and therapy.

1. GROW model

The GROW model (Whitmore, 2017) is a coaching framework that builds awareness, ownership, and readiness through four stages:

• Goal – What do you want to achieve? Set short- and long-term goals.
• Reality – Where are you now? Review the current situation.
• Options – What could you do? Explore possible strategies and actions.
• Will – What will you do? Define specific steps, responsibilities, and timing.

Setting goals early can promote readiness and prevent clients from being constrained by past performance.

2. Transtheoretical model (TTM)

The transtheoretical model describes stages people typically move through when changing behavior (Hagger et al., 2020):

1. Precontemplation
2. Contemplation
3. Preparation
4. Action
5. Maintenance

Clients may be at different stages for different behaviors (for example, ready to exercise but not to quit smoking). Progress is often non-linear; relapses and repeated cycles through stages are normal.

3. Self-determination theory

Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2018) identifies three basic psychological needs that support intrinsic motivation and well-being:

• Relatedness – feeling connected to others
• Autonomy – feeling in control and self-directed
• Competence – feeling effective and capable

When these needs are supported, people are more likely to initiate and sustain change. Interventions that foster relatedness, autonomy, and competence make change feel personally chosen and achievable (Hagger et al., 2020).

4. Motivational interviewing

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a collaborative, person-centered approach that helps people resolve ambivalence and strengthen their motivation for change (Miller & Rollnick, 2013). Through open, directed conversation, MI encourages clients to voice their own desire, ability, reasons, and need for change—helping them move toward commitment.

MI techniques and worksheets can be effective tools for eliciting change talk and building readiness.

Download 3 Free Goals Exercises (PDF)

Practical, science-based exercises to help you or your clients set actionable goals and build lasting behavior change.

How to Create Readiness for Change

Readiness is essential, particularly in health and wellness coaching (Rogers & Maini, 2016; Arloski, 2014). Knowing a change is needed—exercising more, cutting back alcohol, altering diet—does not automatically translate into readiness to act.

Forcing a client forward rarely helps. The initial step must come from within (Arloski, 2014). Work often begins by strengthening self-worth, confidence, and awareness of the benefits of change. The first three stages of the TTM—precontemplation, contemplation, and preparation—are central to building readiness (Hagger et al., 2020).

To help clients move out of precontemplation:

Client tasks	Coach/counselor tasks
Become aware, concerned, hopeful, and confident that change is possible.	Build rapport and gently increase awareness of risks and problematic behaviors.

To move out of contemplation:

Client tasks	Coach/counselor tasks
Weigh the risks of inaction against the benefits of change and begin to decide.	Normalize ambivalence, explore reasons for change, and tip the decisional balance toward action.

To move out of preparation:

Client tasks	Coach/counselor tasks
Commit to change and agree on a concrete plan.	Co-create a plan that anticipates barriers and identifies clear steps.

Once readiness is established, the client proceeds through action and maintenance, returning to earlier stages when necessary if relapse occurs (Hagger et al., 2020).

Effective coaching balances supporting change with avoiding persuasion; it’s a delicate line between facilitating growth and convincing someone of its benefits (Arloski, 2014).

Worksheets to Support Your Clients

Motivational interviewing techniques are especially useful to help clients “talk themselves” into change. Practical worksheets guide that conversation and strengthen motivation.

Use the acronym DARN to elicit different types of change talk: Desire, Ability, Reasons, and Need. Examples of useful worksheets include:

• Desire questions – What do you want? What would you like to be different?
• Ability questions – How confident are you that you could do X?
• Reasons questions – What are the advantages of making this change?
• Need questions – What needs to happen for change to start?
• Querying extremes – What worries you most about this behavior? What’s the best that could happen if you change?
• Looking back – How were things before this issue started and what has changed?
• Looking forward – If you make the change, how might your future look different?

The Readiness for Change Ruler

The Readiness for Change Ruler is a quick visual tool for clients to rate their preparedness. It can be revisited across sessions to track changes in readiness over time.

Positive Psychology Resources

The Positive Psychology Toolkit© offers a wide range of exercises, activities, and assessments that practitioners can use to support motivation and goal achievement. Many free tools are also available to try.

Assessment Tools: Questionnaires & Scales

Assessing readiness helps tailor support to the individual or organization. Assessments can range from brief intake questions to formal, validated measures.

Organizational readiness

A change audit evaluates where change impacts an organization most, which teams cope effectively, and which areas require additional support. Questions to guide a change audit include:

• Where is change hitting hardest?
• Which teams are more ready or resilient?
• What areas have performed well in the past 6–18 months and why?
• What types of change are most challenging?

Client readiness

Assessment options include structured interviews, brief consultation questions, or validated self-report measures. Formal motivation assessments are particularly helpful for planning behavior-change interventions.

Commonly used measures include:

• URICA – a well-studied 32-item measure of stages of change for adults.
• Readiness to Change Questionnaire – evaluates perceived pros and cons of changing specific behaviors, such as alcohol use.
• General Self-Efficacy Scale – a 10-item scale that assesses a person’s belief in their ability to cope and achieve goals.
• S-Weight and P-Weight – questionnaires that assess readiness and processes of change for healthy eating and physical activity.

Using Software to Improve Readiness for Change

Digital tools and apps can extend support beyond sessions, delivering timely interventions, assessments, and homework that increase engagement and promote readiness (Ribbers & Waringa, 2015; Kanatouri, 2020).

Benefits of a digital platform for practitioners include:

• Delivering customized exercises and psychoeducation when clients need them.
• Sending micro-teachings, inspirational prompts, and visualizations to reinforce progress.
• Automating assessments and feedback to monitor readiness over time.
• Reducing administrative workload so practitioners can focus on high-value interactions.

When integrating software, choose platforms that protect privacy, are easy to use for both practitioner and client, and support the therapeutic goals of autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

17 Tools to Increase Motivation and Goal Achievement

A collection of evidence-based exercises and worksheets can help practitioners guide clients in setting meaningful goals, sustaining motivation, and achieving lasting change.

Tools From PositivePsychology.com

PositivePsychology.com provides a range of free and premium resources to support clients across the change journey. Examples include:

• Advanced Goal Analysis – refine and reframe goals into actionable plans.
• Goal Visualization – mental imagery exercises to reinforce goal-directed behavior.
• Abstraction Worksheet – define the behavior to change and the steps required.
• WDEP Questions Worksheet – clarify what a person wants, what they are doing, whether it works, and how to plan change.
• Self-Contract – a behavioral contract to increase commitment (client states and signs their intended action and timeline).
• What Does Not Need to Change? – identify and preserve positive aspects of life while focusing on specific change targets.

For practitioners seeking an extensive collection of validated tools, curated packs and toolkits are available for those who want more structured resources.

A Take-Home Message

Ambivalence and resistance are normal parts of the change process and should be acknowledged and normalized (Miller & Rollnick, 2013). Building a positive alliance, increasing awareness, and enhancing clients’ confidence and competence fosters readiness to act.

Rather than instructing people what to do, evoking readiness through dialogue, empathetic listening, and guided reflection helps clients align their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with their values and goals (Hagger et al., 2020).

Motivational interviewing and the transtheoretical model are practical frameworks for stimulating change talk and guiding clients through stages of readiness. By helping clients identify their strengths and control, practitioners can support sustainable change with greater self-compassion and confidence.

Consider the models and tools described here and choose the approaches best suited to each client’s stage and context. For practical exercises, you may wish to download the free five positive psychology tools.