Role of a Counselor

Introduction
In previous chapters, some fundamental questions were asked about the theory and practice of counseling. Ultimately, though, counseling is an activity carried out by people. Theoretical insights or research findings can only be expressed through the behaviour of counselors. The aim of this chapter is to explore the skills and qualities associated with effective counseling. Much attention has been given in the counseling and psychotherapy literature to the notion of counseling skills. Writers such as Ivey, Carkhuff and Egan (see Larson 1984) have attempted to identify a set of core skills that are necessary for effective counseling, and that can be acquired through systematic training. Ivey, for example, has broken down the work of the counselor into a set of microskills. There are, however, serious limitations to the concept of skill in the context of understanding the activities of counselors and psychotherapists. The idea of ‘skill’ was first developed to make sense of fairly simple, short timescale, observable sequences of behaviour in workers performing simple manual tasks: for example, on an assembly line. The aim of an analysis of skilled performance is to break down the actions of a person into simple sequences that can be learned and mastered in isolation from each other. This approach can be seen in the Ivey model. It can be argued that this way of looking at the task of the counselor is inappropriate, for three reasons. The first is that many of the essential abilities of the counselor refer to internal, unobservable processes. For example, a good counselor is someone who is aware of how she feels in the presence of the client, or who anticipates the future consequences in the family system of an intervention that she plans to initiate with a client. Neither of these counselor actions is easily understood in terms of observable skills. The second problem of the skills approach lies in the fact that it would appear that one of the differences between truly effective and less able counselors is that the former are able to see their own actions, and those of the client, in the context of the total meaning of the relationship. Therefore, the ‘skilfulness’ of an intervention can rarely be assessed by dissecting it into smaller and smaller micro-elements. Finally, it can be argued that personal qualities, such as genuineness or presence, are at least as important as skills. For these reasons it is desirable to find an alternative to the skills approach to understanding counselor behaviour. A more useful concept would appear to be to adopt the much broader idea of competence, which refers to any skill or quality exhibited by a competent performer in a specific occupation. In recent years there has been an increasing amount of research interest devoted to identifying the competencies associated with success in the counseling and psychotherapy. This is an area of research that is very much in progress, and there exist competing models of counselor competence. For example, Crouch (1992) suggests that there are four main areas of skills development: counselor awareness, personal work, theoretical understanding and casework skills. Larson et al. (1992) have constructed a model that breaks down counselor competence (which they term ‘counselor self-efficacy’) into five areas: micro-skills, process, dealing with difficult client behaviours, cultural competence and awareness of values. Beutler et al. (1986), in a review of the literature, identified several categories of ‘therapist variables’ that had been studied in relation to competence: personality, emotional well-being, attitudes and values, relationship attitudes (e.g. empathy, warmth, congruence), social influence attributes (e.g. expertness, trustworthiness, attraction, credibility and persuasiveness), expectations, professional background, intervention style and mastery of technical procedures and theoretical rationale. For the purpose of this chapter, subsequent discussion is structured around consideration of a composite model consisting of seven distinct competence areas:
1 Interpersonal skills. Competent counselors are able to demonstrate appropriate listening, communicating, empathy, presence, awareness of non-verbal communication, sensitivity to voice quality, responsiveness to expressions of emotion, turn-taking, structuring time, use of language. 2 Personal beliefs and attitudes. Capacity to accept others, belief in the potential for change, awareness of ethical and moral choices. Sensitivity to values held by client and self.
3 Conceptual ability. Ability to understand and assess the client’s problems, to anticipate future consequences of actions, to make sense of immediate process in terms of a wider conceptual scheme, to remember information about the client. Cognitive flexibility. Skill in problem-solving.
4 Personal ‘soundness’. Absence of personal needs or irrational beliefs that are destructive to counseling relationships, self-confidence, capacity to tolerate strong or uncomfortable feelings in relation to clients, secure personal boundaries, ability to be a client. Absence of social prejudice, ethnocentrism and authoritarianism.
5 Mastery of technique. Knowledge of when and how to carry out specific interventions, ability to assess effectiveness of interventions, understanding of rationale behind techniques, possession of a sufficiently wide repertoire of Interventions.
6 Ability to understand and work within social systems. Including awareness of the family and work relationships of the client, the impact of the agency on the client, the capacity to use support networks and supervision. Sensitivity to the social worlds of clients who may be from a different gender, ethnic, sexual orientation or age group.
7 Openness to learning and inquiry. A capacity to be curious about clients’ backgrounds and problems. Being open to new knowledge. Using research to inform practice.