Defn:

 “Something that provides direction or advice as to a

decision or course of action”
 Counseling is a process that focuses on enhancing the
psychological well-being of the client, such that the
client is then able to reach their full potential.
 This is achieved by the counselor facilitating your
personal growth, development, and self-understanding,
which in turn empowers you to adopt more constructive
life practices.
 Counseling may be helpful in a number of ways. It can
enable you to develop a clearer understanding of your
concerns and help you acquire new skills to better
manage personal and educational issues.
 The counselor can offer a different perspective and help
you think of creative solutions to problems.
 Sharing your thoughts and feelings with someone not
personally involved in your life can be most helpful
The counseling process will depend on the
individual counselor, the individual client and the
specific issue. However, there is a general
counseling process that the counselors will follow:
 Background information collection 
 Identification of core issues
 Case formulation
 Goal setting for the therapeutic process
 Implementation of intervention
 Evaluation of intervention
 Closure
1. Establish a safe, trusting environment 
2. CLARIFY: Help the person put their concern into words.
3. Active listening: find out the client's agenda 
a) paraphrase, summarize, reflect, interpret  b) focus on feelings,
not events 
4. Transform problem statements into goal statements. 
5. Explore possible approaches to goal 
6. Help person choose one way towards goal 
DEVELOP A PLAN (may involve several steps) 
7. Make a contract to fulfill the plan (or to take the next step) 
8. Summarize what has occurred, clarify, get verification 
EVALUATE PROGRESS 
9. Get feedback and confirmation
 “It is … in an organization's interests to avoid
uneconomic use of their human resources, and
the provision of counseling services may be
one way of sustaining employee performance,
achieving business targets and showing
commitment to employees as individuals
 Staff members with problems may take more time off work
for sicknesses that are either real or imagined.
 Many may suffer from stress related illnesses like high blood
pressure or ulcers.
 This is expensive for the organization both from the
viewpoint of the cost of the treatment and the cost of the
time away from the job.
 Remaining staff members also suffer since they will have to
do additional work to cover for the member who is away.
This impacts on their productivity and lowers their morale.
 Others may agitate for job or career changes within the
organization because the problems make them unable to
cope with their work. They may even decide to leave their
job and this will create difficulties as new people will have
to be found, recruited, inducted and trained to replace them.
This is an expensive and time-consuming exercise for an
organization
 For employees who are in customer care situations their
personal difficulties will impact on the customers they serve.
Their organization may lose business as a result of their
problems. Customers who are badly treated initially quickly
escalate to becoming problem customers who take a great
deal of the organization's time and senior management
intervention before they can be soothed.
 Bosses with difficulties will impact on the staff they
supervise. Each staff member may lose productivity
even though they are ordinarily productive because they
are hurting from the way their boss treats them The
boss's decisions will be clouded with the personal issues
and the organization may lose money or customers as a
result. Expensive mistakes may be made.
 Modern business methods call for people to do a great
deal of work as part of a team or a project group. When
the members of the team don't interact well because of
their personal issues, the work of the team or the project
will suffer.
The ability to counsel is an important skill for managers
and caring co-workers.
Organizations that have people trained in counseling will
be better able to handle their people issues than those
that do not. Staff who are feeling anxious, stressed, or
unhappy will not be able to perform very well on the
job despite their background and experience.
If they have had an opportunity to talk through their
problems with a trained counselor, they will be able to
be much more productive.
This will save the organization time and money.
 Judgment
 A good counselor is someone who can learn not to make
judgments on behalf of the person being helped.
 Patience and Acceptance
 A counselor rarely needs to use his or her self control in
dealing with people, even those people who are not likeable.
 Experience
 Learning to grow into a more complete person from the
experience of life’s hard knocks can be a valuable quality in
a counselor.
 Education
 Formal degrees in psychology do not necessarily make good counselors,
but a common sense approach is not sufficient. Good counselors are willing
and able to learn about themselves and other people too.
 Education
 Formal degrees in psychology do not necessarily make good counselors,
but a common sense approach is not sufficient. Good counselors are willing
and able to learn about themselves and other people too.
 Genuineness and Warmth
 Effective counselors have a genuine interest in other people.
 Discretion
 Counselors must show complete discretion, never revealing what others say
or do within the counseling context. Confidentiality is paramount in
counseling relationships.
 Practice, Practice, Practice
 Counseling requires a lot of training, followed by much practice. A current
job that will allow the possibility of a helping role could be very useful