Attending Behavior Skills

Communication skills are key when conducting an effective interview with clients. I believe attending behavior skills are the most important for a helping professional to master, yet they seem to be the easiest to forget to use. Attending behavior deals with appropriate eye or visual contact, your vocal tone or speech rate, keeping to the subject during the conversation, and one’s body language. If used appropriately these qualities allow you to be yourself and gives you the ability to truly listen to your client (Ivey, Ivey, & Zalaquett, 2010, p. 65). Helping professionals have so many tasks they are trying to complete at once that at times they can become more of what seems like a “robot”, mechanically trying to check things off their