Characteristics of Effective Counselors

Also, effective counselors tend to be those who are caring and understanding. They have strong interpersonal skills and belief in their own abilities; that is, they are confident with good self-esteem. They tend to be genuine and authentic in their communications and relations with others with a large capacity for intimacy.

Effective counselors are also unafraid of interpersonal risks such as being rejected. They are trustworthy, self-exploring, and self-disclosing. They have high levels of personal energy, and tolerance for ambiguity and a non-discriminatory nature. Further, counselors tend to be non-dogmatic in their perspective.

Igoe and Speer (1994) have noted that:

The ability to counsel...skillfully is an art. The counselor's responsibility is to provide information, to listen objectively; and to be supportive, caring and trustworthy. Counselors do not make decisions; they help clients arrive at the decisions that best su

. . .
and Nisenholz (1994). As the authors put it, counselors do not attempt to use the role as a barrier against self-disclosure on their parts. Rather, they are honest, sincere, and genuine in their communications. There is a cohesiveness to their values, attitudes, believes and their expression of these. One of the most important elements of authenticity is the ability to self-disclose. In this regard, Peterson and Nisenholz state that counselors must have the capacity for self-disclosure and that if they have difficult in this area, there is both a practical and ethical need for them to develop this ability. Further, they state that counselors should make sure that they do not just tell stories which appear to be self-disclosing but in fact reveal little. Ability to self-disclose is a counselor characteristic that was studied by Neimeyer and Fong (1983). The authors noted that the existing research on counselor self disclosure had demonstrated that disclosure flexibility was positively related to social perceptiveness and to other counseling-relevant behaviors. In other words, the higher the capacity for self-disclosure, the greater the counselor's degree of perception regarding the thoughts and feelings of others. In th
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Peterson Nisenholz, Gutsch Kazelskis, Couch Childers, Martin Rubenfeld, , Indeed Carlozzi, Endurance Findings, Igoe Speer, Neimeyer Fong, Scale Data, effective counselors, peterson nisenholz, counselor effectiveness, effective counselor, nisenholz 1994, peterson nisenholz 1994, novice counselors, counselors tend, highly effective, counseling psychology, tolerance ambiguity, attributes effective counselors, journal specialists 161, characteristic effective counselors, mentioned peterson nisenholz,
Approximate Word count = 3112
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Characteristics of Effective Counselors