observation skills

The major focus areas in observation skills are verbal behavior , non-verbal behavior and discrepancies, mixed message and conflict.


There are some cultural issues and individual differences of behavior when observation skills are applying. While the counselor observe, the counselor should avoid stereotypes. 


For verbal behavior, the counselor should listen for selective attention, key words , concreteness vs abstractness and "I" and "other" statement. 

Questioning skills

Questioning skills not only important in counseling but also in life.

there is open-ended question and close questions. 

The purpose of this skill is to open and close other's talk.  It may also bring out additional specifics. 

For the open-ended questions, it require more than a minimal or one word response by client. Open ended questions bring out a new topic and pinpoint. Besides that, open ended questions may help client to elaborate stories. It helps counselor understand the client stories more and suitable for client who talk less. This type of  questions may ask by using when, how , where, could and what. 

Example, "Could you give me a specific example ?"

On the other hand, close questions focus on one particular part of client content message. If the counselor want  the client a specific information, the counselor should ask close questions. 

Close questions give more control to the interviewer who talk much. Normally close questions are answer by yes or no or just a word.

Example: "Did you finish your homework? "

-silence-

A counseling session can become frighten when there is silence between client and counselor.

The counselor may ask a question to client to prevent silence and make the client keep talking.

The answer can be ignore, it is because the question is not a good question and same goes to the answer.

The recent study of the effect of the silence during actual counseling session found that significantly higher amounts of silences were linked to greater rapport whereas the lower amounts of silence were linked to lesser rapport.

The intentional use of silence can contribute greatly to the helping in relationship and establishment of rapport between counselor and client. 

 Silence has another meaning that is important to acknowledge. Client can absorb the experiences and experiencing fully the therapeutic moment.