I believe counselors need to have and know the following skills and techniques:

 The ability to disengage from their own personal life feelings/emotions so that
they can remain unbiased.
 The ability to listen, remain attentive, and empathize with others.
 The ability to be open-minded but also be grounded enough to separate
professional relationships from personal ones.
 The ability to be genuine and congruent with themselves and others (their
clients).

Personally, I hope to improve on and learn more about disengaging from personal life
and remaining open-minded. I also hope to learn more about what it takes to truly
become an effective counselor that is confident in my approaches and my ability to help
transform others.
The term counseling means to help others explore and identify personal difficulties by
providing guidance in helping them resolve these tribulations effectively.
Stages of the counseling process include: 
(1) Relationship building – the counselor and the client introduce themselves and
become familiar with each other; a trusting relationship is built, or not built. Maintaining
a strong relationship would help influence this stage.
(2) Assessment – the counselor begins assessing the reasons behind the client seeking
sessions. Increasing the client’s motivation and expectations of help and raising
emotional arousal and promoting emotional expression would help influence this stage.
(3) Goal Setting – the counselor and the client determine the wants and needs of the
areas that need attention and focus working on. Enhancing the client’s sense of mastery
or self-efficacy, providing opportunities to practice new behaviors would help influence
this stage.
(4) Intervention and Action – the counselor begins the implementation of techniques and
the client spends time working on specified areas with the specified techniques
provided; this is a lot of trial and error. Providing new learning experiences and providing
opportunities to practice new behaviors would help influence this stage.
(5) Evaluation and Reflection – the counselor discusses progress with the client and
reflects upon what has and has not worked and what has improved and what still needs
additional work; the counselor and the client also determine which goals to remove and
which new ones to add (if applicable). Raising emotional arousal and providing
opportunities to practice new behaviors would help influence this stage.
Common stages that students pass through in their journey to becoming a counselor
include:
(1) The challenge of development – feeling as though effectiveness should occur right
away and time and training is necessary.
(2) Taking responsibility for one’s own learning – comparing oneself to that of another
student; take responsibility to educate yourself and request the training needed, don’t sit
back and expect knowledge to come naturally without effort.
(3) Finding a mentor – use effective models to help develop skills and receive feedback,
don’t see models as being restricted to only those who are experts in the field.
(4) Finding the perfect technique – gathering techniques from outside sources, such as
workshops, and abandoning the therapeutic relationship because a technique is exciting
rather than effective; don’t be so anxious to learn specific techniques and interventions
that you lose yourself and your purpose in the process.
(5) In limbo – abandoning one’s natural helping style; use training as something to rely
on, not something to overcome.
(6) Accepting feedback and being perfect – unwillingness to accept feedback and
attempting to justify actions rather than listening to critiques and suggestions.