I have had the pleasure and challenge of providing counselling over the last few weeks for people making critical life decisions. While this work is a psychologist service, it makes me realise how important these counselling and decision-making skills are for life and work, and especially if you lead a team.
Face to face counselling skills
If someone has a problem – a friend, a colleague, a member of staff or even a client there are certain core skills that should be remembered:
- Make eye contact.
- Avoid distractions.
- Face the person.
- Nod and show interest.
- Allow the person to fully explain.
- Listen and summarise what has been said.
- Use exploration questions – open ended questions like “why, how, what, describe”.
- Use a calm and caring tone to respond.
Use empathy
- Observe and recognise feelings.
- Take care with language – “I can see you are upset”, “I can hear you are angry”, “You sound so frustrated by this”, “I can only imagine how hard this must be for you”, NOT “I understand how you feel”.
- Show the other person you have some understanding of being in their shoes.
- Use for dealing with emotions – anger, sadness, confusion, euphoria.
- Use empathy to lower the emotional level before beginning problem solving.
Help create a road map – practical steps that the person can use to resolve their issue
- Work out exactly what is wrong. Find out what hurts or is upsetting.
- Get a clear statement of the concern, upset, key issues.
- Identify blocks – causes, obstacles – the negatives.
- Identify possible solutions – evaluate which ones are practical, what outcomes will be beneficial.
- Create an action plan with best option.
Avoid the “yes, but” game
Sometimes when you fall into giving advice – making suggestions and telling the person what to do they give you a “yes, but…” response either verbally using similar words with similar meaning, or showing that with their facial expressions, ie. “Okay but I won’t do it because I am not committed to that action or it doesn’t feel right for me.”
The best way is to ask open ended questions and be prepared to have a silence while you wait for THEIR ANSWER – not you rushing in to reply and fill the gap. This pushes responsibility back on the other person and increases commitment to the
solution.
Scenario options
- You can provide invaluable help to someone confused by helping them paint their scenario options and then looking into the future and imagining these options playing out. The person can then predict how they would manage each scenario option, how they would feel, how others would feel and how successful this option might be
- Go through how unproductive it is to stay tortured without a decision. Help the person set a deadline for a decision and then help them sort through what needs to be considered to get to that date with an effective decision.
- Analyse decisions to make sure they have the necessary commitment to carry them through.
- Work out what communication is needed and with whom to make a final decision.
- Gather options of “wise” ones in the person’s life if this is suitable.
- Recognise that not all decisions feel great. Sometimes they are the best of two painful outcomes and might involve loss.
- Recognise previous inability to stick to decisions – work out why and what will be different this time.
- Make sure safety and risk factors are taken into account and that solutions and decisions are realistic.
- If the decision must be delayed – make sure it is for good reason and a new date set for finalising.
Gut-feeling decision-making
Value what ‘feels right’. Too often we ignore our non-logical, ‘gut-feeling’ – our intuition.
Sometimes we can make a snap decision that is as good as if not better than one made after agonising analysis.
View Essential Counselling Skills and The Power of Empathy.
Eve Ash is the producer of a wide range of DVD resources and is author of Rewrite Your Life! and Rewrite Your Relationships!
