Essential Counseling Techniques and Skills

SOME QUALITIES OF A GOOD COUNSELOR

 Empathic
 Respectful
 Warm
 Discreet
 Honest
 Attentive/Listening
 Unbiased
 Positive regard
 Unhurried

GOOD COUNSELING SKILLS

I. Effective questioning
 Closed-ended questions – to gather information (yes/no)
 Open-ended questions – are critical for eliciting feelings and detailed information (what do
you know about AIDS?)
 Probing Questions – to elicit more in-depth information. (can you tell me more about ____?)

II. Active listening – this technique involves communicating, without words, your interest in
the needs the client expresses. You can open communication by using silence.
III. Paraphrasing, summarizing and clarifying – this technique involves repeating, synthesizing,
or summarizing in the words what the clients has told you. This helps the provider clarify
what the client is saying, and helps the client to feel that he or she has been heard.
IV. Reflecting and Validating Feelings – this technique involves clarifying the feelings the client
expresses to help understand his/her emotions.
V. Giving Clear Information – before you give any information, it is helpful to ask questions to
determine how much the client already knows.
VI. Arriving at agreement – this technique involves clarifying and summarizing the decisions
that a client has made during the counseling session.

INAPPROPRIATE RESPONSES IN COUNSELING

 Judging – “you wouldn’t have these problems if you hadn’t had sex without married.”
 Attacking – “How could you be that irresponsible? Having sex without using a condom!”
 Denial – “Don’t worry. I’m sure that it’s nothing important. Just a little infection.”
 Pity – “Poor thing! How terrible that happened! I hope you don’t have an STI!”

DIRECTIVE COUNSELING – Edward Griffith Williamson

ROLE OF THE COUNSELOR

The role of the counselor is to assist the clients to develop their full potential without violating their
right to determine their own life goals (Williamson, 1963).

Specifically, the role of the counselor is to teach or help individuals to:

  Learn to understand and accept themselves in terms of capabilities, aptitudes, and
interests.
 Identify their own motivations and techniques of living and inform them of their
implications or consequences; and
 Substitute more adequate behavior to achieve desired life satisfactions that they
may have set as their personal goal.

To implement the above, (Williamson, 1958) exhorts the counselor to assist the clients in:
 Obtaining data or providing them with necessary information.
 Presenting and discussing alternatives; and
 Reaching the best choice, decision, or solution.

COUNSELOR SKILLS AND CHARACTERISTICS

The following characteristic and skills must be manifested by the counselor (Williamson, 1962):
1. Concern for the values of society, the institution served, and those represented in
the goals of counseling.
2. Ability to assist clients to make a hierarchy of values involved in human existence
without unduly or unreasonably restricting their right to choose;
3. Commitment to the sovereignty of reason.
4. Possession of a sympathetic concern for the affective development of clients.
5. Respect for the dignity and worth of human beings.
6. Friendliness and warmth.
7. Treatment of the counselee as an equal; and
8. Ability to balance definiteness and open-mindedness.

LEADS AND RESPONSES

In interacting with the clients, the counselor can utilize any of the following leads and responses
depending upon the need (Williamson, 1950).
1. Listening
2. Acceptance
3. Restatement
4. Clarification
5. Interpreting and translating the diagnosis
6. Direct Teaching
7. Advising
i. Direct advising—the counselor’s frank statement of his/ her own opinion
especially with tough-minded clients who ask for a frank opinion or persist in
counterproductive behavior.
ii. Persuasive method—the counselor’s marshaling of evidence in a reasonable
and logical way when a definite choice is to be made, to lead the clients to
see the outcome of alternative actions.
iii. Explanatory method—the counselor’s careful and slow explanation of
diagnostic data and identification of possible situations that will utilize the
clients’ potentialities. This involves careful and detailed reasoning of the
implications of the data.
COUNSELING TECHNIQUES

There are five categories of techniques in Directive Counseling (Williamson, 1950). These are:
1. Forcing conformity.
2. Changing the environment.
3. Selecting the appropriate environment.
4. Learning needed skills; and
5. Changing attitudes.
Williamson believed that no technique is appropriate to the counseling of all clients. Believing that
each technique is appropriate only to problems and particular clients, he cautioned that the
techniques must be adapted to the individuality of the clients.

COUNSELING STEPS

(Williamson, 1950) identified six steps in the counseling process, although he himself claimed that in
actual practice, the counselor uses a flexible procedure rather than rigidly follow the sequence of
steps.
Steps in the counseling Process
1. Analysis—collection of information and data about the client.
2. Synthesis—summarization and organization of data gathered in such ways as to
reveal the client’s assets, liabilities, adjustments, and maladjustments.
3. Diagnosis—finding consistencies and patterns leading to succinct summary
problems, their causes, and other significant and relevant characteristics of the
client together with the implications for potential adjustments and maladjustments.
4. Prognosis—deciding whether counseling would be sufficient and effective or
whether a referral to another specialist may be necessitated by the problem or
situation.
5. Counseling—assisting the client to understand the factors that cause the behavior,
anticipates future developments if the present situation continues, generate
alternative actions and the means to implement them, and produce the desired
changes in behavior.
6. Follow-up—helping the client with new problems and possible recurrences of the
original problems, along with determining counseling effectiveness.

STEPS OF THE COUNSELING

The specific involved in counseling proper are as follows:
1. Establishing rapport.
2. Cultivating self-understanding.
3. Advising or planning a program of action.
4. Carrying out a plan of action; and
5. Referral to other personnel workers.