Becoming a Skilled Counselor

Richard D. Parsons, Naijian Zhang

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781483321523
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Counseling

The core text for counselor skill development, Becoming a Skilled Counselor prepares students with the fundamental knowledge and skills necessary to be effective helpers. Authors Richard D. Parsons and Naijian Zhang explain the essentials of the counseling relationship, the dynamic and intentional nature of the helping process, the knowledge and skills necessary to facilitate change and the theories and research guiding the selection and application of interventions.

Uniquely focused on the process of counseling, the authors? approach invites students to conceptualize clients using a fluid and dynamic model rather than a linear, step-by-step process. Each chapter is structured to reinforce concepts by first introducing the key constructs and empirical support, then providing application opportunities through detailed case illustrations with dialogue transcripts and guided practice exercises. The text emphasizes mindfulness, intentionality, ethics, and reflection to aid counselors in their journey of self-discovery and professional identity development.

Becoming a Skilled Counselor is the first book in Counseling and Professional Identity, a series that targets the development of specific competencies identified by CACREP (Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Programs).

Part I

Counseling: A Process and a Profession

Counseling, as the upcoming chapters will explicate, is both a dynamic, intentional helping process as well as an established and ever-evolving profession. Prior to discussing the specific knowledge and skills essential to becoming an effective, ethical counselor it is important for all entering the profession to understand the essence of both the process and the uniqueness of the profession. Chapter 1 highlights the unique knowledge, skills, and process that make counseling unique from other forms of day-to-day helping. Chapter 2 then details the elements intentionally employed within a counseling process to facilitate understanding and achieving desired outcomes.

Chapter 1

Counseling: Helping as a Professional Practice

Counseling—more than lending a helping hand

INTRODUCTION

On more than one occasion, each of the authors has been politely challenged by a student who truly questions the need and value in having to take a course on the fundamentals of helping, or the requirement to read a text such as Becoming a Skilled Counselor. One such student, Lydia, presented the concern stating,

I hope this doesn’t sound obstinate but I’m wondering why we need a course on the fundamentals of helping. I mean isn’t helping just common sense? I mean hasn’t everyone in the class provided help to someone at sometime? Helping seems to be something we all do naturally.

Lydia’s question is not only valid, but also extremely valuable. Training experiences in counseling differ from other courses or training experiences where the goal is basically to promote understanding of the concepts presented. Becoming a counselor demands moving beyond simply understanding the information being presented in order to pass a test or satisfy a course requirement to valuing the information as essential to one’s professional identity and practice. Whether presented by a professor or found within a textbook or research article, the theories, principles, concepts, and constructs that provide our discipline’s foundation must be processed not as passive students but as developing professionals. Asking questions to gain clarity of understanding is only part of our responsibility as developing professionals. We need to seek evidence of the validity of these concepts and their utility to our own practice and promotion of our profession as counselors. It is essential that we challenge that which is presented by asking questions such as, “Why should we know this?” and “What should this or will this do for me as a professional counselor if we are to move from simple understanding to valuing and assimilating what we are taught?” Our profession and, more important, the people who entrust us with their concerns demand such questions.

In this initial chapter, you will not only discover what distinguishes counseling as a form of professional helping from the natural, unprofessional form of helping most of us have experienced, but also begin to see what it takes to become a professional within the profession of counseling. Specifically, after reading this chapter you will be able to do the following:

• Describe the elements that distinguish professional counselors from their lay, nonprofessional counterparts.
• Describe what is meant by professional identity.
• Identify the unique characteristics of an effective, expert professional counselor.
• Describe the impact of training on the effectiveness of a professional counselor.

HELPING AS A NATURAL HUMAN EXPERIENCE

As noted previously, Lydia’s question regarding what appears to be a natural human trait—to help—was quite insightful. The desire to help seems to be engrained within our DNA. Research has demonstrated that babies are innately not only sociable but also helpful to others. Biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help (Tomasello, 2009). Research (e.g., Constantine, Myers, Kindaichi, & Moore, 2004; Hoogasian & Lijtmaer, 2010; Patterson & Memmott, 1992) has demonstrated that many of us are natural helpers to whom people turn in times of difficulty. These natural helpers provide informal, spontaneous assistance, which is embedded in everyday life—so much so that their value is often not recognized (Israel, 1985).

Research on these natural or indigenous helpers (see Constantine, Myers, Kindaichi, & Moore, 2004; Hoogasian & Lijtmaier, 2010) demonstrates that many employ effective skills of helping. Natural helpers appear to be effective, in part, because they are part of the community and not only possess knowledge that is meaningful to those seeking help but are also able to communicate with similar language and cultural values.

According to Patterson and Memmott (1992), these natural helpers assist others by facilitating (i.e., listening, encouraging, focusing on strengths, suggesting alternatives, etc.), doing (giving advice or material help, making decisions for others, or using persuasion and influence, etc.), or facilitating-doing (i.e., providing social support services for others). These natural helpers may compensate for their lack of formal training by being sensitive, empathic good listeners who have good judgment and expertise in solving certain types of problems. Further the evidence supporting their effectiveness led one noted counselor, Robert Carkhuff (1968), to declare that “…evidence indicates that with or without training and/or supervision the patients of lay counselors do as well or better than the patients of professional counselors” (p. 117). Needless to say, such a statement created quite a stir among professional counselors.

Given the previously noted research on the “naturalness” of helping, it would appear that Lydia’s question is even more valid and deserving of an answer. If helping and the ability to help are natural, why do we need a course or a text covering the skills of helping?

It is certainly true that many elements, found in professional helping, are also present in our own nonprofessional helping encounters. For example, if we were to analyze a time when we provided help to a friend we may discover that the helping took place in the context of a trusting relationship, one in which the friend in need willingly and freely shared his or her story of concern or vision of desired goals. And when effective, it was most likely because we, who were attempting to provide help, not only heard what our friend shared, but truly understood the message—the story. These elements of trust, disclosure, and understanding appear universal in all helping encounters, whether the helping occurs in the context of a friendship or a more professional encounter.

Albeit these abilities may come naturally for some of us, each of us can increase our knowledge and skills of when and how to employ them. It is this need to gain knowledge of the elements of helping along with the skills to employ that knowledge that argues for the value of a course or a text on the essentials of counseling. But the value of such a course or text lies beyond the value of training in these general elements of helping. The conditions of helping which we may have employed or encountered in our own experiences of helping or being helped—conditions such as trusting, sharing, and understanding—are not the only, nor are they the sufficient, elements defining professional helping or professional counseling. As you will see, helping as a profession entails much more than simply offering a friendly, understanding ear.

COUNSELING AS A HELPING PROFESSION

Professional counselors intentionally construct with their clients a helping process that is very different from the lay helper’s conversation with his friends. More specifically, helping as a profession differs from that provided by a lay nonprofessional helper along four dimensions: (1) the formality of helping, (2) professional helping’s expanded goals, (3) the process of helping, and (4) the characteristics of the helper. Each of these dimensions is discussed in detail in the subsequent sections.

The Formality of Professional Helping

While there are many variations among the way counselors approach their professional duties, all ethical professional counselors are obligated to approach helping with a set of standards and guidelines (e.g., standards and guidelines of American Counseling Association [ACA], American Mental Health Counselors Association [AMHCA], American Psychological Association [APA], and American School Counselor Association [ASCA]). In addition to these standards or guidelines of practice, the professional counselor understands the fundamental nature of helping, the processes employed, and the rights and responsibilities of one operating as a professional. These standards and common structures the professionals employ distinguish them from their lay-counterparts.

Professional helping is structured

Unlike lay helping which can be spontaneous, informal, and reciprocal with the roles of helper and helpee being fluid and changing within the exchange, there is a fundamental structure to professional helping which maintains the distinction of the roles being assumed as well as the expectations of what will and will not go on within the helping encounter.

It is not difficult to imagine that a friend may seek out your help and assistance. This can happen anywhere and at any time. For example, you may find yourself approached within your home, or on the beach, or as you are walking with a friend to and from class. During these times you could be wearing anything you feel comfortable wearing, even shorts or pajamas, and you may choose to sit, slouch, or lie in a position that is comfortable to you. The language employed during the exchange may include slang, possible vulgarity, and both parties may find themselves “fighting” for talk time. This is the informality that characterizes a nonprofessional relationship.

The professional counselor, however, will not be so informal. The professional counselor will look and act professionally. The formal structure of helping is evident in that most professional helping occurs in a designated location, with designated, if not scheduled, times. Professional helping, again with an appreciation for the various settings and clientele a professional counselor may see, will often employ a referral process, a mechanism for scheduling appointments, paperwork to document the work being done, and, when called for, procedures for the collection of fees for service. But perhaps the most distinctive element to professional helping is the distinctive roles being assumed. Professional counselors recognize that...