Qualities of a Counsellor

Qualities of a Counsellor

A Counsellor being one who offer helping services to people is expected to poses certain typical characteristics to enhance his/her effectiveness and success in the helping profession. These characteristics which are classified into two major groups personnel and professional qualities are made available by Anagbogu (1992:75) Unachukwu and Igborgbor (1991) Kochhar (1999) and Okoye etal (1990).

Personal Characteristics

There are inherent characteristics in the counselor which through training are modified or developed. These are:

a. Intelligent: The counselor must be intelligent to be able to understand the client feelings, behaviours and motives so as to manipulate situation especially where the client find it difficult to alter certain impression.

b. Dependability: A counselor must be trust worthy, dependable and consistent if he/she is to earn the trust of the student.

c. Warm and caring: The counsellor must show positive attitude and regard to the client by being warm, caring comforting and respecting the worth of the clients. He/She should possess un-conditional positive regards for the client not being bias or judgmental, irrespective of their past negative behaviours.

d. Self- confidence: The counselor must give an unconditional acceptance to the client considering individual difference and also accepting the right of the client in personal matters.

e. Acceptance of client: A counselor must give an un-conditional acceptance to the client considering individual difference and also accepting the right of the client in personal matters.

f. Sensitivity: The counsellor should be able to sense that over and over behaviour of the client, feeling, needs, thought and action. This the counsellor does through his/her verbal and non-verbal activities, perceiving and responding to the feeling, needs and conflict of the client without becoming threatening, disrupting or alarming the client.

g. Empathetic: The counsellor should be empathetic in nature being able to place him or her self in the position of the client to understand the feelings, belief, attitude, needs, though and actions he or she should also be able to communicate this understanding to the client so that they (clients) sense it.

h. Geniuses: A counsellor must be his or her real self at any point in time, being natural in behaviours, honest and should not fake situations.

i. Sense of honour: A counselor is more directed to people rather than things, therefore he or she should live a good sense of honour, which help ion making client to relax and be open to him or her.

j. Commitment: The counsellor must demonstrate a deep sense of commitment to the job which reflect his or her personal moral standard and the code of conduct and norms of the counseling profession.

k. Self control: A counsellor must be able to control his or her biases and the defenses so that he or she does not interferes with the progress of any person whom he or she is working. He or she should have good control of both his or her intellectual abilities and emotion.

l. Patience: The counsellor should be highly patient with the client during counseling encounters. He or she should exercise patience and listen attentively to what ever the client have to say not minding how they are said. Acknowledging the fact by nodding facial expressions. Postural, positions, eye contact and putting a word or two from time to time.

m. Communication ability: The ability to communicate well with client makes it possible for them to establish positive objectives toward “self”. A counsellor should be able to communicate clearly verbal or non-verbal, he / she should be able to communicate his or her feeling well without expression being audible enough without a necessary shouting and the messages not being ambiguous.

n. Social active and friendly: The counsellor should be friendly and interact freely with different categories of people-young and old, male and females rich and poor e.t.c. Through this he or she should be able to know the need of the people.

o. Flexibility: A counsellor should not hold a view and stick dogmatically to it he or she should be imaginative and have open mind, craving fore improvement in his or her relationship with others. He or she should be very abreast with change that occur around him or her and adapt to them

 Professional Qualities

These are the qualities of counsellor acquire through counsellor education. These are as follows:

a. Professional education: The counsellor should not be only trained but should be professionally educated in the course for him or her to function effectively, he or she should be knowledgeable in a wide range of areas such as psychology, counseling theories, behavours modification techniques, occupational information, understanding clinical attitude e.t.c. A counsellor should be able to have mind to study and understands the client with the aim of providing necessary help and being congruent in his or her information, word and action.

b. Confidentiality: Confidentiality is one of the ethics of counseling and should not be infringed by the counsellor who is expected to act as confident to his or her client. Therefore, the golden rule of “keeping our secret, secret” should be highly maintained by the counsellor.

Although it is an obvious fact that it is difficult for an individual counsellor to possess all these qualities, it is a deal for the counsellor to strive to possess as many of them as possible through his training and personal, determination if he or she gain the confidence of his client and succeed in the helping profession.