Applied Counselling: Examining the Role of Attending and Listening

This essay delves into the realm of applied counselling, examining how characteristics of basic counselling, such as attending, listening, and questioning, are integrated into effective counselling practices. It discusses the significance of these elements in building strong counsellor-client relationships and facilitating positive outcomes. The essay also explores various counselling theories, including psychodynamic, humanistic, and behavioral approaches, highlighting their contributions to the counselling process. Furthermore, it analyzes the strengths and limitations of key characteristics like empathy, reflecting on content and feelings, clarifying questions, and employing open-ended questions. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding and applying these characteristics to enhance the effectiveness of counselling interventions, while also acknowledging potential risks and challenges in their implementation. Desklib offers a wealth of similar resources for students and professionals in the field.

Running head: APPLIED COUNSELLING
APPLIED COUNSELLING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Effective counselling is a two way process. Both the counsellor as well as the client
need to engage in a cooperative way to meet with best results. It is essential for the counsellor
to establish good relationship with each other that allows both the people to be honest
regarding the thoughts as well as feelings (Cowie & Pecherek 2017). Effective counselling
helps the counsellor to cope with the mental health of a person such as anxiety as well as
depression or a nervous breakdown (Cowie & Pecherek 2017). The essay aims to discuss
how characteristics of basic counselling can be applied to effective counselling and what are
the strength as well as limitations of each characteristics.
Role of attending, listening skills as well as questioning are essential aspects in
effective counselling. If the attending behaviour is good then the client will feel that he is
respected and that the counsellor is making an effort to listen to him (Murray et al., 2016).
Attending acts like an encouragement where the clients are able to talk about his/her fears as
well as concerns in effective counselling. Good attending does not allow a person to speak
but shows positivity in silence (Murray et al., 2016). This is the first step to effective
counselling. Attending also means that the counsellor needs to be empathetic as well as listen
to their clients for positive results. Listening is another essential aspect within effective
counselling. If the counsellor is a good listener then it will help in establishing a relationship
of trust between the counsellor as well as the client (Meier & Davis 2019). If the counsellor is
ready to listen then the client will be able to pour their thoughts to the counsellor and will
help the latter to encourage the clients to share their emotions that will further facilitate in
building effective relationship between the two. It also helps in creating effective response for
the clients (Meier & Davis 2019).
Furthermore, questioning is another essential aspect in effective counselling.
Questioning will help the counsellor to open way for new discussions as well as ideas. It
helps in raising specific issues that might be beneficial for the client. It also helps in

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exploring the feelings, opinions, attitudes, beliefs as well as ideas of the clients. It also allows
the counsellor to understand the problems that are being faced by the clients in a better way
(Baruth & Manning 2016). In effective counselling there are certain techniques that should be
applied while asking questions. Firstly the counsellor needs to funnel all his questions in an
effective way before it is asked to clients. Secondly, the counsellor should make a list of open
and close ended questions that would also make the client comfortable (Baruth & Manning
2016). Thirdly, the counsellor needs to probe into the questions to get information from the
clients that would be beneficial for their clients (Baruth & Manning 2016). Lastly, the
questions should be rhetorical where the listener will be engaged in the questions that are
being asked (Baruth & Manning 2016). All the above three steps are essential in effective
counselling that will help in finding necessary solutions to the problems that are being faced
by the clients.
There are several theories that support the method of counselling such as-
psychodynamic theory by Freud, humanistic approach to counselling and behavioural
approach to counselling. Psychodynamic counselling believes that true knowledge as well as
problems of people is possible if the counsellor understands the areas of conscious,
subconscious and unconscious mind (Fall, Holden & Marquis 2017). Psychoanalysis helps
the person to recall his past and divulge the negative things that took place at that time that
will help the counsellor to deal with the present problems of the clients. This counselling is
used when people suffer from acute problems that cannot be resolved by other methods (Fall,
Holden & Marquis 2017). On the other hand humanistic approach to counselling emphasizes
on the uniqueness of every individual. According to these counsellors they feel that problems
arise because of the lack of experience (Reiter & Chenail 2017). Humanistic counsellors
encourage the clients to explore their personal feelings as well as thoughts that will help them
to solve their individual problems. It also involves client-centred counselling where the client

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has the sole responsibility to come out of his problems and that the counsellor will show the
client the necessary empathy, warmth and genuineness that will help the client to overcome
their problem and become independent (Reiter & Chenail 2017). Lastly, behavioural
approach to counselling focuses on the aspect that it is the environment that determines the
behaviour of an individual (Shabanpour et al., 2017). Therefore the counsellor according to
this theory focuses on the unwanted behaviour of the person and tries to modify those
behaviours into a behaviour that is acceptable by the society. In this counselling approach the
clients are taught to manage their behaviour in an effective manner (Shabanpour et al., 2017).
The above theories therefore helps in the counselling approach of the individuals that would
be beneficial for the latter as well as for the society as a whole.
Effective counselling also applies the characteristics of basic counselling such as
empathy, reflecting on the content and feelings, clarifying and lastly asking open ended
questions. It is essential for the counsellor to be empathetic towards their clients. If the
counsellor is empathetic then it will encourage the client to list his problems as he will be
sure that the counsellor is listening as well as interested to deal with his problems (Jeffrey &
Downie 2016). Empathy means that the client will be confident that the counsellor is able to
understand his situation and can imagine his situation. Being empathetic will mean that the
client will take the counsellor for granted and on the other hand it will also affect the
counsellor as he will involve himself personally with the client (Jeffrey & Downie 2016).
Reflecting on content is another aspect of basic counselling that has now been integrated into
effective counselling as well. In reflecting the content the counsellors do not repeat what the
client has already said but put the essential information at first and then put it in their words
for the client (Donati, 2016). This shows that reflecting on the content enables to reflect on
the emotions of the client. One of the limitations of reflection is that the client might not

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always be honest while delivering the problems that they are facing therefore, the counsellor
might interpret the problem differently that increases the risk of wrong advice (Donati, 2016).
Counsellors also need to reflect the feelings of the clients through behaviour as well
as verbal language where the clients feel a sense of belongingness (Odaci, Değerli & Bolat
2017). While reflecting feelings it is necessary for the counsellor to pay attention to verbal
and non-verbal clues to confirm their accuracy of refection. However, it has certain risks such
as the counsellor may portray the wrong feelings of the clients that may have a negative
effect on them (Odaci, Değerli & Bolat 2017). Clarifying question is essential aspect in
effective as well as basic counselling as it gives the counsellor an opportunity to get a
detailed insight into the issues that are being faced by the employees (Schulenberg, 2016).
While clarifying the client can make sure whether the counsellor is going in the right
direction. However, it has its limitation that the client while clarification may have second
thoughts whether to divulge the issues and therefore does not make correct clarifications
(Schulenberg, 2016). This results in risk where the counsellor may come up with all the
wrong advices. Lastly the open ended questions allows the counsellor to get necessary
information about the client. It also gives an opportunity to the counsellor to share their
personal experiences that may motivate their clients (Arsyad, Rahman & AHMAR 2017).
One of the limitation of the above is that the client takes a lot of time to answer the questions
and the respondents may not always be expressive while telling their feelings. Risk of the
above aspect is that it may make the clients more resistant towards the counsellor if they are
less expressive (Arsyad, Rahman, & AHMAR 2017).
Therefore, to conclude it must be noted that effective counselling has become quite
essential nowadays as it has involved many characteristics of basic counselling. This has
helped in enriching the relationship between the clients as well as the counsellors. The latter
should also be aware of the basic criteria that needs to be followed while counselling to make

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the outcomes effective. It also motivates the clients to think about their problems and solve it
accordingly.

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References
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Reiter, M. D., & Chenail, R. J. (Eds.). (2017). Behavioral, humanistic-existential, and
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