Counseling Skills in the Work Place

Today I attended a one-day workshop organized by Madras Management Association on Counseling Skills. The facilitator was Ms. Vasanthi Ranganathan, a senior trainer with a formal degree in Counseling from the USA. While there were a lot of inputs on what counselors do from her, my learning also came from experienced participants like Dr. Sanjay Verma of L&T who sat at my table and gave valuable insights into the topic

Nevertheless, applying the first habit (Be Proactive), coupled with the seventh (Sharpen the Saw) I decided to document whatever I could learn about counseling today. Most of it came from co-participants. Some of it from the materials the facilitator had provided and her sessions which I give below:

What is Counseling?

“Counseling is a process where we enable the counselee to identify and deal with his or her own problems, perceived or real.”

Counseling should achieve the following results:

Counseling should help the counselee accept that they have a problem and enable them to understand the root cause of the problem that needs to be addressed.

Counseling is about creating ownership about the situation. She made a point about India and other Asian countries belonging to collectivistic cultures that shift blame for events outside of the person concerned. She compared it with her favorite country, the USA where Individualistic cultures have enabled people to take ownership of all their actions.

Counseling should create an awareness that options do exist. It should facilitate the identification of various options and help the counselee to choose the most appropriate option.

Vasanthi was very specific about allowing other people to think for themselves. We should not choose for them. She agreed Dr. Verma that using our persuasive skills to influence someone is not counseling.

I liked this comment that she made: Your job is to create people who are interdependent.

Let your people come up with various options. You will add your own, if any. Finally, we enable them to discover the most appropriate solution.

Counseling is a behavior modification therapy. It should not be seen as influencing. The intervention should happen over a longer period possibly, twice a week for 4 to 8 weeks.

Counseling is not about fact, it is about feeling. (Then, why was she so distant and aloof.)

In counseling, we help the person to understand his problem, his perception of the problem and possibly appreciate how other people would look at it. The person is helped to address the issue and understand his feelings about it.

She spoke about “traditional” counseling such as astrologers and crying to Gods in temples.

While, I do agree with her about astrologers (as an amateur palmist, I have counseled many people during a palm reading session!), I doubt if crying to Gods in Temples will qualify as “counseling.” At best, it may promote introspection and bring about catharsis. But to call it counseling would be inaccurate as counseling is essentially external.

The truly traditional counselors were the elders at home, provided they had the necessary sensitivity.

When touching upon counseling after a sexual harassment or emotional torture, she said that “counseling can prepare the victim to handle the situation.

Similarly in marital conflicts and alcoholism, the victim is co-dependent on the problem. Most of us like to be seen as the victim.

Who can be a good counselor

Anyone who possesses the skill can be a counselor. While the immediate supervisor would be a good choice, any bias due to nearness should be monitored.

An experienced peer or anyone who is acceptable within the organization can also be a good counselor.

Even younger persons can counsel. Vasanthi gave the example of Muruga the son of Lord Shiva who taught his own father the meaning of Pranava. But it’s going to take a long time before persons lower in the hierarchy can counsel seniors.

She told us that she would teach us three counseling skills which were restatement, linking and summarizing. But as we had already spent almost the whole of the day, she rushed through it with mock counseling sessions where participants truly had no clue as to what to do and the facilitator kept pointing out mistakes and finally demonstrated her version of counseling which simply allowing the person to talk, repeating what he said and turning away from him to another person and so on.