Tools and Techniques to Promote Client Engagement

✅ Reviewed for accuracy and relevance by Deanna Cooper Gillingham, RN, CCM, FCM on July 22, 2025.

The case manager utilizes several tools and techniques to establish trust, foster collaboration, and promote client engagement. These include motivational interviewing, active listening, person-centered care approaches, goal setting, and health coaching. While each technique can be used independently, they are most effective when used together. The foundation begins with active listening and interviewing skills, which support more complex techniques like motivational interviewing and health coaching.

Active listening

Active listening forms the foundation for all client interactions, fostering relationships and understanding while facilitating cooperation and collaboration. It is a structured communication method in which the case manager focuses attention on what the client is saying, suspending personal biases, judgments, and distractions. To incorporate active listening:

  • Avoid jumping to conclusions or making premature judgments
  • Make appropriate eye contact
  • Use nonverbal cues such as nodding
  • Reflect back on what was heard

While note-taking is important for accuracy, it should be kept to a minimum, so as not to spend more time looking at the computer or notepad than at the person speaking.

Motivational interviewing

Building on active listening and interviewing skills, the motivational interview is a collaborative, client-centered approach that focuses on helping the client discover his motivation for change by identifying, examining, and resolving the client’s ambivalence toward change. Principles of motivational interviewing include:

  • Express empathy – See things as the client sees them.
  • Support self-efficacy – Focus on the client’s skills, strengths, and previous successes.
  • Roll with resistance – Do not increase resistance by confronting the client when resistance occurs.
  • Recognize discrepancy – Help the client see the difference between where he is and where he wants to be, without judgment.

Person-centered care

Person-centered care principles guide how case managers apply all tools and techniques. This approach ensures all decisions and interventions are “respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values” and that these values guide all clinical decisions (Institute of Medicine, 2001, p. 3).

The case manager provides person-centered care by:

  • Learning what matters most to the client
  • Understanding the client’s cultural beliefs and values
  • Respecting the client’s right to make his own healthcare decisions
  • Involving the client in care planning and decisions
  • Supporting informed decision-making
  • Promoting client autonomy
  • Ensuring care is delivered in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner

Goal setting

Goal setting in case management uses a person-centered, collaborative approach between the case manager and client to ensure goals are meaningful and achievable.

The SMART acronym helps ensure goals are:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Time-bound

Breaking larger goals into smaller, manageable steps helps maintain client motivation and provides opportunities to celebrate successes along the way. The goals should be directly related to what matters most to the client and what aligns with their needs, values, and preferences. The case manager acts as a facilitator, helping the client identify his goals rather than imposing goals upon him. This approach increases the likelihood of success, as the client is more invested in goals they have helped create.

Health Coaching

Health coaching utilizes all the above tools and techniques—active listening, motivational interviewing, person-centered care, and collaborative goal setting—in a proactive approach to managing care for clients with chronic illness. Rather than telling clients what to do, health coaches support, encourage, and empower clients to achieve their goals using evidence-based guidelines. Health coaching involves:

This article shares a portion of the information covered on this topic in CCM Certification Made Easy, 4th Edition by Deanna Cooper Gillingham, RN, CCM, FCM (2025). For more details on this topic, including interview tools and techniques, as well as additional information on Motivational Interviewing and health coaching, purchase your copy at CCMCertificationMadeEasy.com