The Role and Job Done by Supervisors - Term Paper Example

Introduction Career counselling is a very distinguished aspect of one’s career enhancement and enlightenment. It is not only important for general masses entering into various professions, but also crucial for the new counsellors who themselves get into solving the problems of their clients at the initial stages of their lives. The counsellor supervisors play an eminent role in developing the career of new counsellors and making them professionally cognisant. This paper presents an insightful study in the role and job done by supervisors in providing guidance to the new counsellors in dealing with different clients and solving their problems. It touches upon several areas including the ethical issues that are very necessary to be taught to the trainees so as to make them beneficial for the society and the profession altogether. Counselling Psychology— Career Counselling Of Counsellors Career counsellors play an eminent role in developing their client’s orientation towards their goals and maintaining a harmony between their professional and personal lives. For counsellors to identify the needs and problems of their clients and to solve them effectively, supervision is required. It implies that for new counsellors to become successful as professionals, they need to obtain guidance from counsellor supervisors and trainers who are experienced in the field. Wheeler and King (2000, p88) illustrate this point as, “there is something very comforting as a counsellor, when working with a difficult client, to know that somewhere in the background is a supervisor with whom the difficulties can be discussed”. As a matter of fact, a client, his needs, his problems, his backgrounds and his psychological state are all distinct from that of the other clients. Counselling all the clients with respect to their individuality can turn out to be a tough task. In such a situation, effective guidance and counselling from a supervisor can be helpful in the career of a counsellor to analyse and resolve client’s problems in an efficacious fashion. Lichtenberg (1997, p234) postulates that, “relative to novice counsellors, more experienced counsellors generally have a bigger and better organised set of intervention tools and conceptual frameworks for dealing with clients”. This experience and guidance of supervisor is necessary for a new counsellor or a trainee to gain an insight into the counselling psychology. These supervisors or career counsellors train the new counsellors on the practical grounds of counselling psychology. The supervisors guide the counsellors on discerning client’s behaviour, problems and distress, psychological state, ethnicity and background. He should also gain an in-depth knowledge of the various classes, ethnic groups and other public traits operating in the society. Brammer, Shostrom and Abrego (1989) maintain that counsellors should be cognisant of the distinct population characteristics, classes and lifestyles so as to be able to help clients in a better way. This will not only make the counsellors develop an understanding of various client groups and classes, but also will be helpful in identifying behaviours, attitudes and problems associated with specific social groups. In order to prepare the counsellors to effectively help people in their personal and professional lives, the supervisors should train the counsellors on the counselling psychology. The counsellors should learn the behaviour to adopt in front of the client, the way to communicate with him and make him easy while disclosing his personal and professional issues. They should also understand the influence of counsellor attitude on the client’s behaviour. Howe (1993) also illuminate that counselling process becomes effective if the client perceives the counsellor to be warm, understanding and reliable. The counsellor should be able to foster an atmosphere of discernment so that the client could speak of all his problems unresistingly. The counsellor should communicate with the client in a manner that can foster a spirit of trust in his mind and he will be more than prepared to share his problems confidently. This helps the counsellor to understand the client’s inner feelings and examine his state of mind in order to solve his problems. The process of counselling can only be effective if client is explicitly willing to cooperate with the counsellor and is not reluctant to share the matters of his personal and inner self with him. If such an attitude is true for a client, it is good; but if it is not, such behaviour needs to be instigated by the counsellor. A new counsellor, therefore, should be trained on adopting an attitude of making the client speak with confidence in front of him. This will only happen, if he becomes able to make client have positive expectation of the results of whole counselling process. Fischer, Jome and Atkinson (1998) believe that counsellor can be more successful in helping clients by driving positive expectations of client concerning the counselling procedure and outcome. This will enhance the probability of a productive counselling result. Hence, the counsellors should also strive to instigate client consent and positive expectation into the counselling process to make it a success. Tatar and Bekerman (2002, p326) note that, “once the client has gained a better understanding of personal meanings associated with events and experiences, he or she becomes more capable of taking the ownership of personal life, and forming a clear intention toward life career betterment”. When a client comes to the counsellor who helps him get a perspective in which to see the association between his personal and career-related problems. Most of the clients that come to a counsellor, obviously, are confused and distressed about their lives. This makes it difficult for them to realise a practical solution to their problems. A counsellor should help them see their issues in different perspective and involves him choosing the right way forward. This will enlighten his approach on solving his own problem and thus, he will be more responsible for his life and decisions than ever. One of the most significant aspects of the counselling psychology rests upon the counsellor’s ability to distinguish and discover the variation in client behaviour and responses towards counselling with respect to his or her cultural or ethnic background. For example, a client may come from a culture that makes him hesitant of speaking about his personal problems with other people. In this case, it will be very difficult for a counsellor to identify the true needs, goals and problems of the client. Several other problems may also arise when counsellor has to deals with a client coming from distinct cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Hence, a counsellor needs to consider the element of culture and ethnicity as one of the important aspects that influence a client’s behaviour, so as to treat a particular client in an effective manner. The supervisors should, therefore, train the counsellors on various patterns of cultural identities prevailing in a particular society. The career of a counsellor would be at stake if he fails to realise the importance of culture in influencing the client behaviour. Unless this aspect is identified, a counsellor cannot trace the real factors operating behind client’s career problems and thus the counselling process will not lead to success. Evans and Larrabee (2002, p22) also mention that, “cultural insensitivity is detrimental to any counselling relationship, but the failure to address career issues limit the general effectiveness of counselling. For clients, personal and career concerns have become harder to separate”. Most of the personal issues arise out of client’s inability to cope with their personal and career lives simultaneously, and to maintain a pleasant balance there on. Both these facets of client’s life are associated sharply with each other and thus of critical importance to the counsellor. Therefore, the new counsellors need to be counselled to analyse a given situation in the perspective of cultural and ethnic differences between clients acting upon their approach toward their career lives. The counsellors should, however, refrain from basing his opinions on the basis of his personal knowledge of various cultures and their underlying impact upon an individual’s approach. This knowledge should be based on factual information, training and experience of supervisors in dealing with clients from different backgrounds so as to be more practical and accurate on multicultural issues. Lichtenberg (1997, p225) puts forward that if counsellors operate on the basis of biased or faulty cognitive structures, they are likely to engage in an ineffective cognitive process and ultimately produce inaccurate cognitive products”. This also implies that counsellor’s personal knowledge of different cultural and ethnic behaviours of clients should be combined with information and facts on their accuracy. Otherwise, if counsellor’s knowledge comes out to be untrue, it can lead to the failure of the whole counselling process. Hence, training and guidance on the issues of multiculturalism is very important because the world population is becoming increasingly diverse today arousing the need for counsellor’s in-depth analysis of multicultural cultural aspects. This type of training is not only important for counsellors, but also for their supervisors so as to train the novices in an effective manner. Evans and Larrabee (2002, p31) in their study of multicultural training and teaching in counselling, note that, “there is a critical need for counsellor educators and supervisors to receive multicultural training”. It is also very crucial to train the counsellors on ethical issues and rules concerning counselling practices. Stewart (1999) propounds that counsellor should follow certain ethical standards such as maintaining honest relationship with clients, informing him on counselling conditions, help them sustain their personal and occupational relationships¸ and refrain from biases of any sort. Silfverberg (1998) refers to ethical practices in counselling field as encompassing all the aspects of counsellor’s relation with his clients, colleagues and society. These ethical standards generally encompass a counsellor’s ability to help people in a way that goes in the best possible interest of clients. Being professionally and honestly interested in identifying and resolving the client’s problems tend to be the most significant ethical responsibility underlying the counselling profession. Chae, Foley and Chae (2006, p77) also suppose that, “ethical principles governing psychological practice dictate competence in working with the populations we serve… ”. This implies that it is also an ethical responsibility of the counsellors to be cognisant of the traits of people and population whom they work for. Without having proper knowledge of client demographics and characteristics, the counselling process will result in further entangling of client’s problems rather than solving them. When counsellors come into contact with their clients from different backgrounds, at the initial stages of their profession, they might end up consciously or unconsciously biasing and predetermining people’s attitude on the basis of their culture, ethnicity, social class, language etc. Evans and Larrabee (2002, p27) observe that, “counsellors-in-training may have little awareness that their attitudes and beliefs, which constitute their value systems, may be biased”. Lichtenberg (1997) propound that client’s ethnicity, social status and gender can play a role to prejudice a counsellor’s judgement. To be unbiased in his judgments on client’s behaviour and psychology is an ethical responsibility of the counselling profession and is it is also important, because if client’s behaviour is prejudiced and predetermined on insignificant factors, it can cause failure to the counselling process. Ponterotto and Benesch (1988) comments that, “by focusing on the cultural characteristics of clients, [the counsellors] may lose clients 'as people’, focusing not on their humanness but on their racial and cultural characteristics”. It is also true to some extent that in the counsellor’s quest for cultural and ethnic elements acting upon client’s behaviour, he might end up biasing his judgments. Although it is important to understand and learn these aspects of an individual’s life for effective counselling, it is also imperative to know the extent to which these factors operate. This enlightenment will lead a counsellor to judge a person on the two distinct aspects i.e., his cultural background and also individuality completely unbiased. Conclusion This essay discusses the major areas where the new counsellors require the guidance and counselling of their supervisors so as to be professionally enlightened in solving the problems of their clients. These issues that are learnt through experience for the entire professional life of the counsellor supervisors play a prominent role in shaping the career life of new counsellors. On the other hand, if these issues are ignored and counsellors are not trained on them, this can lead to ultimate distress of people as well as detrimental to the entire career of these new counsellors. References Brammer, L.M., Shostrom, E.L., and Abrego, P.J. (1989), “Therapeutic Psychology: Fundamentals Of Counselling And Psychotherapy”, (5th edition), Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall Chae, M.H, Foley, P.F., and Chae, S.Y. (2006), “Multicultural Competence and Training: An Ethical Responsibility”, Counselling and Clinical Psychology Journal, 3(2), pp. 71-80 Evans, K.M. and Larrabee, M.J. (2002), “Teaching The Multicultural Counselling Competencies And Revised Career Counselling Competencies Simultaneously”, Journal Of Multicultural Counselling And Development, 30, pp. 21-39 Fischer, A.R., Jome, L.M., and Atkinson, D.R. (1998), “Reconceptualising Multicultural Counselling: Universal Healing Conditions In A Culturally Specific Context”, The Counselling Psychologist, 25, pp. 525–588 Howe, D. (1993), “On Being A Client: Understanding The Process Of Counselling And Psychotherapy”, London: Sage Lichtenberg, J.W. (1997), “Expertise In Counselling Psychology: A Concept In Search Of Support”, Educational Psychology Review, 9(3), pp. 221-238 Ponterotto, J. G., and Benesch, K. (1988), “An Organization Framework For Understanding The Role Of Culture In Counselling”, In Chae, M.H, Foley, P.F., and Chae, S.Y. (2006), Multicultural Competence and Training: An Ethical Responsibility, Counselling and Clinical Psychology Journal, 3(2), pp. 71-80 Silfverberg, G. (1998), “Being Good or Doing Right? Educational and Vocational Guidance”, IAEVG, Bulletin 62 Stewart, J. (1999), “Ethical Issues in Career Counselling”, Guidance and Counselling, 14(2), pp. 18-21 Tatar, M. and Bekerman, Z. (2002), “The Concept Of Culture In The Contexts And Practices Of Professional Counselling: A Constructivist Perspective”, Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 15(4), pp. 375–384 Wheeler, S. and King, D. (2000), “Do Counselling Supervisors Want Or Need To Have Their Supervision Supervised? An Exploratory Study”, British Journal Of Guidance And Counselling, 28(2), pp. 279-290 Read More