What exactly makes a good counsellor - Essay Example

Introduction The role of counselling today is evidently on the rise in every walk of life, whether it is work, health, family, personal, social or individual lives of human beings. Counselling is manifestly about a counsellor and the people he deals with a motivation to help them. This paper provides an investigation into the core traits or characteristics that conjure up, in the truest sense, the picture of a good counsellor. For this purpose, the paper provides a brief exploration of the term 'counselling' to illustrate what the role of counsellor actually entails and then proceeds to the crux of the discussion, i.e., an evaluation of the essential features that make a good counsellor in any field. Counselling Counselling, fundamentally is a term used to refer to the collaboration of a person with other people to help them easily cope with the problems encountered in life and guide them to act decisively and hopefully towards their goals. As Burks and Stefflre (1979, p14) define it, "Counselling denotes a professional relationship between a trained counsellor and a client. This relationship is usually person-to-person designed to help clients to understand and clarify their views of their life space, and to learn to reach their self-determined goals through meaningful, well-informed choices and through resolution of problems of an emotional or interpersonal nature". Hence, the authors' words mentioned above comprehensively pen down the complete picture of a counsellor's role and responsibility in effectuating significance and instigating substance into one's life. The main purpose of the counselling profession revolves around the word 'help', i.e., whatever the counsellor does is meant only to help, assist or guide a person or client to bring about change in his life in a successful or at least in a satisfied and confident fashion. Man-tak Yuen (1993, p30) depict that, "in counselling, the client is helped to increase self-consciousness, develop positive self-concept, commit in relationships, achieve in tasks, and strive for meanings in life". What Makes A Good Counsellor At the essence of this paper is the exploration of the aspects crucial for the development of a good counsellor. Observed efficaciously, there appears to be a bundle of attributes that the researchers (e.g. Man-tak Yuen (1993), Combs, Richard and Richard (1976), and Peavy (1997) etc.) point out to be essential in building a good counsellor. What actually is pre-eminent in becoming a good counsellor is a cluster of human, social and professional values instigated into a single personality. These specific qualities or features, as they may be referred to, are important in developing the personality of the counsellor to the extent that he can be able to guide others in an efficient and responsible manner. Some of these dimensions have been specified by Man-tak Yuen (1993, p32) as "positive self-concept, belief in human dignity and potentiality, acuity, and counsellors' capacities to orientate towards goal and communicate respect, empathy, genuineness and concreteness are essential personal qualities of an effective counsellor". All these qualities are, in essence, personal and human qualities that are imperative for a counsellor for the reason that if he lacks these traits for himself, there will remain less probability that he inspires these attributes into other human beings. In order to help clients invigorate effective personal qualities into their lives, the counsellor needs to experience these values primarily. People are different in their backgrounds, approaches, thoughts, feelings, attitudes and responses. To know how to communicate and help different kind of people, a good counsellor should be ready to learn to dig out the perceptions of people he comes across. Combs, Richard and Richard (1976) (as cited in Man-tak Yuen, 1993, p30) explain this as, "when we know how people see themselves, much of their behaviours become clear to us, and often we can predict with great accuracy what they are likely to do next". Although, it is not facile to know how people think and react, it can be learnt through consistent efforts to develop oneself into a good counsellor. Man-tak Yuen (1993) puts forward six rule of thumb principles that a counsellor should strive to achieve in order to be more effective. These are: establishing compatibility with people, corroborating with their thoughts, feelings and endeavours, helping and prompting people to set controllable targets, assisting people in becoming aware of the assets bestowed upon naturally to them such as their strengths and hopes etc, facilitating people to precipitate change in their lives and finally evaluating consistently the progress people make in these endeavours. Plausibly, most people approaching a counsellor happen to be desperate with their lives and shackled by their everyday sufferings. In such a situation, for a counsellor to be efficient enough in his profession, certain endeavours are required to bring those despairing people to a beam of light. Peavy (1997) propounds that a good counsellor is the one who instigates desire, encouragement and a drive to socialise in the people's lives. Hope and desire seem to be the most helpful and influential factors in turning people again towards their lives cheerfully with vigour to fulfil their specified targets in life. Jevne and Reilly-Williams (1998) illuminate that hope is not about expecting everything to be right at all times, rather it is about always envisioning life as right no matter how the consequences are. Again, to incite such a feeling into clients, a good counsellor should not only be aware of the importance of hope but also have this feeling developed in his own personality. Conclusion Understandably, there happen to be no stringent formula or prescript that can be utilised to articulate a demonstration to the issue in question. However, the evidence obtained from the analysis of above research exhibits that there do exist some human and personal characteristics that collectively compose a good counsellor and as mentioned above, these can be well learnt through logical and untiring efforts. All a counsellor does is dealing and communicating with human beings in need of help and guidance. Therefore, a good counsellor should be a compassionate human, a gentle friend and a sympathetic listener, before every other thing. A person needs to develop in his personality all positive and intrinsic qualities essential for human coaching and mentoring. In other words; all the qualities that make a good human being are a pre-requisite in order to become a good counsellor. References Burks, H.M. and Stefflre, B. (1979), "Theories Of Counselling", 3rd Edition, McGraw Hill Combs, A.W., Richard, A., & Richard, F. (1976), Perceptual Psychology: A Humanistic Approach To The Study Of Persons, In Man-tak Yuen (1993), "On Empowering Clients To Be Responsible Persons: Reflections On My Counselling Approach", Asian Journal of Counselling, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 29-37 Jevne, R. F. and Reilly-Williams, D. (1998), "When Dreams Don't Work: Professional Caregivers And Burnout", Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company Inc Man-tak Yuen (1993), "On Empowering Clients To Be Responsible Persons: Reflections On My Counselling Approach", Asian Journal of Counselling, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 29-37 Peavy, V. (1997), "Socio-Dynamic Counselling", Victoria, B.C., Trafford Publishing Read More