A good counselor must score high in the sociocentric dimension to be able to communicate genuinely care, concern, empathy, support and positive regards to her clients. The client will talk about her predicament only when she trusts the counselor completely and believes that the counselor is capable of genuinely helping her to resolve her problems.
A good counselor must have a dynamic egocentric personality. He can be assertive as well as permissive. A dynamic egocentric counselor knows when to talk and listen actively to her client. A good counselor does not talk too much. He talks with a purpose to gather more information about the client’s problems. A good counselor uses mini encourager to prompt the client to keep talking about her problems.
A good counselor must have a high complexity personality to enable her to open up the client and get him or her to talk about her problems. The skills to lead the client lie in the ability to anticipate the client’s problem and ask the right questions. Each response from the lead question is akin to a piece of puzzle. A good counselor must be able to piece the puzzles together to enable her to see a clear, comprehensive and complete picture of her client’s problem. A good counselor must be able to summarize and paraphrase to enable the client to have the correct perspectives of her problems.
Apparently, a client with psychological problems is confused. She will throw out a few problems in response to the counselor lead questions. The counselor must be a highly self-actualized individual. A high self-actualized individual is intellectually inclined with good logical skills. A high self-actualized counselor would have the skills to prioritize the problems and generate solutions to each of her problems. She would assist the client to analyze each solution and its anticipated consequences to arrive at a solution.