Styles of Counseling Leadership

Effective Leadership Styles in Counseling

Sue, Sue and Sue (1994) report that one of the most well-known and practiced counseling/therapeutic leadership styles for both individual and group counseling is the style made famous by Carl Rogers; this is a style that is often termed the "person-centered" approach. The person-centered style of counseling leadership contains several elements. First, the counselor needs to have strong feelings of strong positive self-regard for the client.

Second, the Rogerian style of counseling leadership is non-directive which is to say that the therapist or counselor does not prescribe actions for the client to take. Instead, the counselor's focus is upon attaining real empathy with the client's internal frame of reference (e.g. thoughts, feelings, perspectives, etc.)

The Rogerian leadership style is best known for its counselor/therapist communication technique of "reflecting feelings." Here, the counselor rewords, paraphrases or simply repeats what the client says. For example, if

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According to Rational-Emotive theory, unpleasant emotional responses such as anger, unhappiness, fear, depression, or anxiety are said to result not from childhood or other traumatic events but from our thoughts about these events. I agree with this view and think it offers a key underlying explanation for why most forms of "insight-oriented therapy" are effective. That is, I believe that in most cases what people are really gaining insight into is how irrational their thought system really has been. When, they then change this system of thinking, successful client outcomes arise. Another directive leadership style is based on what has come to be known as Gestalt Therapy. This style of therapeutic/counseling leadership was developed by Fritz Perls (1969). The Gestalt style of leadership is rooted in the view that psychoemotional problems arise because the totality of one's experience of life has somehow been fragmented or separated. The goal of therapy, therefore, is to heal this separation and get a person back to functioning on a psychoemotional level that is free of hidden and closed off branches of thought and feeling. The style of leadership associated with Gestalt therapy is confrontive. In particular, it is a cou
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