BY

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BASIC SKILLS AND QUALITIES FOR COUNSELLOR
BY Mr. Nabajyoti Saud. Art Teacher JAWAHAR
NAVODAYA VIDYALAYA, South Garo Hills, Meghalaya
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• Counseling is a human centered job. In a school
  setting a counselor has to deal with the
  children. So, professional qualification alone is
  not sufficient. A counselor must be basically
  interested in working with human beings. Since
  the counselor has to work with human beings, he
  can not expect a standard application or uniform
  result of their knowledge. So the counselor
  should be able to adjust according to need and
  nature of individual case.

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COMMUNICATION SKILL

• The effective communication is an urgent need for
  each and every individual. In day-to-day life,
  we keep communicating with people around us.
  This give and take relationship will be
  successful and effective, if we know how to
  convey our thoughts to others. In every
  communication, there is some loss of information.
  Hence effective communication implies the
  clarity.

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• A Counselor should have excellent communication
  skill both verbal and non verbal. He/ she must
  use language to the level of counselee, the
  language that client can understand. There should
  be fluency and the fluency provides direction to
  the session. The pitch, volume and the rate of
  speech should be cared.

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NON-VERBAL

• Eye contact it should be between shifty eyes
  and fixed gaze.
• Head nods It indicates that counselor is
  listening and attentive. It gives a faith to the
  client that counselor is involved and committed.
• Facial Expression The facial expression is the
  mirror for the client. It should have happy look
  and smile but not always.
• Distance An ideal or healthy distance to be
  maintained between the counselor and the
  counselee.

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RELATIONSHIP SKILL

• Relationships are vitally important in all
  spheres of life and people create relationships
  for all sorts of reasons. We create relationships
  because we are social by nature. We form
  relationships because of our inner urge to be
  with others and also we are told by the voices of
  authority and tradition. But sustaining a healthy
  bond in our relationships depends largely on our
  interpersonal relationship skills.

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• Interpersonal relationship skills help us to
  relate in positive ways with our family members
  and others around. Relationships are like bank
  accounts the more we deposit the greater they
  become. Therefore, the more we can draw from
  them. However, if you try to draw without
  depositing, it leads to disappointment. Generally
  the poor interpersonal relationship with others
  leads to stress, lack of communication,
  suspicion, isolation, prejudices, conflict,
  frustration, lack of sympathy and empathy, poor
  health etc.

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EMPATHY SKILL

• The empathy is the ability to imagine what life
  is like for another person even in a situation
  that we may not be familiar with. Empathy is the
  imaginative transposing of ourselves to the
  thinking, feeling and acting of others. The
  empathy has got significant role in the
  counselling process. It is the ability to feel
  and describe the thoughts of others. A counsellor
  must have empathy for the client.

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EMOTIONAL STABILITY

• The Emotional Stability is the ability to manage
  emotions and remain calm in any decision-making
  situation. Emotion is the effective aspect of
  consciousness. Emotion is generally considered to
  be a feeling about or reaction to certain
  important events or thoughts. An emotion may be
  either pleasant or unpleasant. When one is
  emotionally involved in a situation, he/she will
  not be in a position to be objective or think
  logically.

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COMPETENCIES

• Knowledge A counselor must have knowledge of
  child adolescent, personality development and the
  child psychology. Should also be competent to
  handle different situation and the knowledge of
  approaches, procedure and techniques of
  counseling.
• Role Model In all respect, in his behavior,
  habits and knowledge, the counselor is to be the
  role model for the counselee.

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COMPETENCIES

• Sense of Humour The counselor should have the
  strong sense of humour.
• Patience Counselor should have the patience in
  any life situations.
• Sensitivity The counselor should have the strong
  sensitivity in the process of helping the client.
• Non-judgmental The counselor in the process of
  helping the client to find out where and when
  things went wrong and how to correct the same,
  should be non judgmental.

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TRUSTWORTHINESS

• It means the counselor is reliable and
  responsible person. It also means that counselor
  is honest, dependable and has skill to safeguard
  clients communication. In other words, we
  should not promise more than one can do, do
  exactly as one has promised. A counselor should
  not divulge the clients information to others
  he should promise for the strict confidentiality
  and should keep it up.

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OPENMINDEDNESS

• A counselor should not have fixed idea. One
  should be open to all types of idea and opinion.
  The open-mindedness will
• a) Allow the counselor to accommodate clients
  feeling.
• b) Allow the counselor to interact with different
  types of clients.

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OBJECTIVITY
c) Allow the counselor to interact with even
unacceptable by society or criminal minded
people. d) The open mindedness is pre requisite
for the honest communication.

• It means without having personal bias and should
  be rational in thinking and impersonal without
  getting affected by emotions. A client should not
  be allowed to play with sympathy.

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• The objectivity is important because
• It helps the counselor to avoid getting caught up
  in certain client behaviour, dysfunctional
  communication pattern.
• It also safeguards against developing
  dysfunctional emotional feeling about the client.
• It is extremely important to maintain objectivity
  for the clients sake. The objectivity provides
  client a new set of eyes to look into problem
  from a new angle.

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RESOURCEFULNESS

• The counselor should have the knowledge and have
  good contacts with people who work in different
  fields. It is necessary to collect information to
  guide the client. At any circumstances a career
  counselor should be a resourceful person. The
  counselor should have the list of experts,
  institutions in the field of health, law,
  banking, social service, training centers etc.
  The counselor may feel to refer the client to
  those agencies when the need arises.

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PERSONALITY NECESSARY

• Several studies have been made to determine the
  personality characteristics of counselor for
  effective counseling. The following personality
  characteristics are suggested by different
  scholars for an effective counselor.
• Interested in helping Since a counselor is to
  deal with human behaviour, he should be
  interested in helping others. This attitude helps
  the client to feel comfortable.

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• Perceptual sensitivity The counselor should
  perceive and understand the thoughts and feelings
  of the client and should be sensitive to the
  clues given by the client.
• Personal Adjustment The counselor, like any
  other normal person may have adjustment problems.
  Counselor should try to adjust with these
  problems in constructive manner and should not
  try to solve problem, when he himself is facing
  difficulties.

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• Personal Security Felling of personal security
  is an important. A counselor may feel secure in
  counseling situation on the role of counselor but
  may feel insecure in other certain areas outside
  counseling.
• Genuineness The counselor should establish a
  genuine relationship with his client by which he
  can achieve his goal. Carl Roger rightly
  suggested that the counselor should be a real
  person to his client.

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COUNSELLORS ATTITUDE

• The nature of the counseling relationship depends
  largely on the attitude of counselor on the
  client.
• BELIEF A counselor must believe that a client
  must be treated with dignity, equality and
  individuality, in the value and worth of the
  counselee. The client should have faith on
  counselor about the ability to deal effectively
  with his or her problem.

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• VALUES A counselor must follow social and moral
  values. He should be fully aware of his values
  because the changing of values is the important
  goal of counseling. Humanness is the most
  important value that a counselor should have.
• ACCEPTANCE The acceptance implies respect and
  liking for the client. It also implies the
  regards for the feeling. Acceptance means helping
  an individual. Counselor should also accept
  himself only then he can accept his client.

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• UNDERSTANDING It means the ability to grasp
  clearly and completely the meaning that the
  client is trying to convey. The counselor should
  be able to participate completely in the clients
  communication. The understanding has four levels.
• Knowledge about another individual, his
  behaviour, personality and interest.
• A verbal and behavioural understanding
• Knowledge of individuals internal world, his
  fear, love and anxieties.
• Self understanding.

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The counsellor word

• C Caring, Committed.
• O Open Minded.
• U Understandable.
• N Neutral or Objective.
• S Systematic or Service oriented.
• E Empathetic, Expect no Reward.
• L Listens with Interest.
• L Loyal to the Clients Welfare.
• O Obliging.
• R Resourceful.

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THANK YOU ALL