Invitational Counseling Skills
The counseling skills listed on this page are generally used from the beginning of the counseling relationship. With practice, counselors can use a wide range of counseling and conceptual skills simultaneously.
Self-Monitoring
Everyone has values, biases, beliefs, and sore spots. Monitoring one's cognitive, emotional, & behavioral reactions to a client is an important component of multicultural counseling, as doing so is foundational for avoiding imposing one's values onto clients.
Grounding Techniques
Counselors can also use grounding techniques, such as deep breathing, to emotionally regulate during session. Teaching clients' grounding techniques that they find effective is also a foundational microskill that is a prerequisite for more advanced counseling skills that require the client to experience anxiety, sadness, and other "negative" emotions.
Observation & Attending Skills
These microskills are foundational, as nearly all of the other skills on this page require that the counselor understand the client. This understanding is a result of observing, attending to, and verbally tracking clients.
Non-Verbal Communication
Non-verbal communication is a microskill that is important for building trust, enhancing clients' perceptions of the counselor's empathy, & facilitating the client-counselor relationship. Examples of non-verbal communication include:
- Eye contact, as long as it isn't overpowering.
- Body language, such as leaning forward & awareness of how much space the counselor takes up in the room
- Congruence between what the counselor says, the counselor's tone of voice, & the counselor's facial expression. It is important for counselors to strive to communicate in clear and congruent ways. Virginia Satir, an advocate of clear and congruent communication, coined the term "metacommunication" which is essentially the way in which people communicate (non-verbally and through tone and pace of voice) about what they are communicating (the words that that they are saying). People give double level messages when their body and voice communicate something different than what their words are communicating.
Minimal Encouragers
There are a number of ways counselors implement this microskill including: "Uh-huh", "yeah", "really?", & "tell me more...".
Normalizing
Counselors use normalizing to invite clients to share more by demonstrating that the counselor is not judging the client and providing the client with a means to understand their experience. This skill is congruent with Rosenzweig's original common factors: providing clients with a way to understand their mental health symptoms.
Examples of normalizing statements include:
- Many clients/people feel a little uncomfortable opening up to a stranger during the first few counseling sessions.
- It's typical for someone with anxiety to have racing, intrusive thoughts.
Asking Questions
Questions are one of the most widely used microskills in the counseling room. Information on two types of questions, open-ended-questions and closed-ended-questions, can be downloaded as an Adobe® Acrobat® .pdf here or in Microsoft® Word format here.
All counselors are encouraged to practice using open-ended-questions in conversations and interactions, particularly in the counseling room.
Clarifying
Clarifying involves a counselor using a question or reflection to check if their understanding of what a client is saying is accurate. Clarifying can also encourage clients to expand on ambiguous ideas or statements.
Silence
Silence is a powerful tool that counselors use to encourage clients to move deeper into an experience. It can be a bit tricky to decide if a gap in the conversation should be met with silence or with another skill, like a reflection, and it is important to be aware that some people use the "silent treatment", so silence can be quite anxiety provoking for some clients. We encourage counselors in training to practice sitting in silence with another person, since it is essential that counselors be comfortable with silence.
Timing & Pacing the Session
Timing & pacing are not considered microskills, however, they are aligned with what Ivey, Bradford Ivey, & Zalaquett (2014) call "focusing". Counselors generally seek to increase the emotional depth of the session across time, while being aware of the client's culture, needs, & response.
There are times when counselors have to interrupt clients, for example, when the session time is nearly up.
Directing & Focusing the Session
Ivey, Bradford Ivey, & Zalaquett (2014) refer to this microskill as focusing. People often like to vent, however, venting to a counselor can get really expensive! It is important to collaborate with clients to develop a shared session direction that is grounded in well articulated goals.
Some contexts, like completing intake paperwork, crisis intervention, assisting a client in identifying their emotions, or conducting a suicide assessment, call for more directive approaches to counseling.
Other contexts, like setting goals, evaluating how effective counseling has been, and terminating the counseling relationship, call for a less directive, more collaborative approach.