Page 5 - PartA

Counselling Skills

Core counselling skills

This section identifies the following nine core counselling skills for you to explore in
detail and assess your potential for practising them:

1. Unconditional positive regard

2. Genuineness

3. Empathetic understanding

4. Active listening

5. Questioning

6. Paraphrasing

7. Reflecting

8. Summarising

9. Challenging.

Carl Rogers identified three ‘core conditions’ for growth that are practised as skills by
counsellors. These skills are:

1. Unconditional positive regard

2. Genuineness

3. Empathetic understanding.

Gerard Egan thought that as well as possessing the core conditions, counsellors also
needed to help clients make decisions, clarify and set goals, and to support them in
implementing their actions. To this effect he developed a Three Stage Model:

• Stage 1 – Getting the story

• Stage 2 – Development of possibilities for change

• Stage 3 – Strategies for change and closing the session.

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