108 Improve your Communication Skills Counselling Counselling, like coaching, helps someone to help themselves.
Unlike coaching, you are not helping to develop a skill, but rather
helping to resolve a situation that the person sees as a problem.
Counselling is not giving advice. As a counsellor, your role is
to provide a different perspective from which to try out ideas. The
counselled person (I suppose we must call them the ‘counsellee’!)
must find their own solution and exercise their own
responsibility. Neither the counsellor nor the counsellee knows
the answer at the start of the counselling interview. The answer
emerges from the interview itself.
Counselling always relies on the assumption that the
counsellee has the skills, knowledge and – deep down – the
desire to find a solution. It also assumes that these skills and
qualities are impeded in some way. The impediment may be no
more than the belief that the counsellee doesn’t know what to do.
The skills of counselling The skills of counselling are not unlike the skills you use
every day when people tell you about their problems. The
difference is that you must behave professionally; in other words,
honestly, consistently, and without prejudice. Your contribution
should be well informed and appropriate to the situation.
Counselling, more than any other managerial interview,
demands deep listening skills. Indeed, you may be required to do
nothing but listen. Beyond the essential skill of listening, there
are two main skills that come to the fore in counselling:
• reflecting; • confronting. Used well, they will all help to make the interview more
productive.
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