Describe the basic counseling skills.

 Some of the important skills essential for counselling are as follows:

● Trust building or rapport building is a very important skill a counsellor should have. Building trust or rapport with the client helps the client to feel comfortable to share what s/he is going through without any hesitation.

● Attending skills means being physically and psychologically with the client. Some of the non-verbal behaviours useful in attending to clients have been summarised by the acronym SOLER by Gerald Egan in his book, The Skilled Helper (1994).

● Active listening is engaged listening when you are listening for meaning and understanding. Active listening is very different from passive. It requires listening to thoughts, feelings, and non-verbal messages. The counsellor says very little but conveys an interest in what the client is talking. The counsellor speaks in between to clarify and paraphrase to communicate if client has been correctly heard and understood.

● Observational Skills are very crucial for the counsellor as it helps to observe client. There are four specific areas which needs to be focused for observation: body position, postures and gestures, grooming and non-verbal expressions (body language). Body language of the client includes our facial expressions, angle of our body, proximity of ourselves to another, positioning of arms and legs, etc. Observe how much can be communicated or expressed by raising and lowering your eyebrows. Make sure you observe the client objectively i.e., observing the client as a person without counsellor’s own biases or prejudices.

● Counsellors need to monitor the Tone of the voice. As it is required to monitor one’s body language to help understand beyond what is said, similarly, it is important to pay more attention to ‘how it is said’ rather than ‘what is said’.

● Counsellor needs to have the skill of questioning as it helps to get maximum information about the client without being interrogative or intruding. A Closed question is one which elicits answers in ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or with limited inputs. It can start with ‘what’, ‘who’, ‘do’, ‘is’, ‘are’ etc., e.g., ‘Did you go there?’, ‘Is she your friend?’. Whereas an Open question is one which typically starts with ‘how’, ‘could’ etc. that elicits elaboration from the client, e.g., ‘Can you please tell me more about the picnic you had with your friends?’. Although open questions are more used in Counselling than closed questions, the use of both the type of questions will depend on the type of information sought and the objectives of the particular Counselling session. A Probe is a question that generally starts with who, what, where, when, how etc. which helps you in getting specific further information into a particular aspect or issue, e.g., ‘What do you plan to do after you finish college?’. An Accent emphasizes the last few words of what the client said by repeating it (by the counselor) so that it is highlighted. A Clarification question requests the client to repeat or elaborate the point mentioned by the client.

● The skill of Paraphrasing refers to restating of what the client said, thus focusing on the content of the conversation. It helps the counselor to understand the client and be at the same page with client. It can be described as a mirror response to the client and requires active listening to the client. Sometimes paraphrasing is also used to seek clarifications.

● Reflection of feeling is similar to paraphrasing skill but it focuses on reflecting on the feelings in verbal and non-verbal expressions of the client.

● Counsellor also needs to have the skill of Summarizing which is focusing on the main points of an entire session or a particular conversation on an issue and also the feelings involved in it. Thus it highlights the important points and feelings, or the gist of the conversation. This conveys that the counselor has understood accurately what the client has conveyed.

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