Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

112 Improve your Communication Skills
from you. They should be visualising various results and how 
they would feel about them. They should be feeling more enabled 
to choose a course of action. 
Part 
At this last stage of the counselling interview, you are not 
making a request – beyond the simple request that the counsellee 
makes a decision. Now that they can see their situation more 
clearly and have assessed various options, they need to make a 
move. It might be a very small one; it might be the beginnings of 
a planned strategy. (Many of my own more stressful problems 
seem to dissolve in the face of a clear plan.) 
If you have helped someone to make a clear plan that they are 
motivated to act on, then your counselling has succeeded. You 
can also use this stage of the interview to help the counsellee 
reflect on the skills, knowledge, experience and personal 
qualities that are likely to help them through. 
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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Think of a presentation as a formal conversation. Speaking to 
groups is a notoriously stressful activity. Most people spend 
hours of their time holding conversations. Something strange 
seems to happen, however, when they’re called upon to talk to a 
group of people formally. A host of irrational – and maybe not so 
irrational fears – raise their ugly heads.
7
Making a presentation
What do you fear most? 
A recent study in the United States asked people about 
their deepest fears. The results were interesting. Here they 
are, in order: 
• speaking to groups; 
• heights; 
• insects and bugs; 
• financial problems; 
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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