Trait and Factor Counseling Approaches and Techniques
Trait and factor counseling aims to: (1) help individuals achieve the development of perfection in various aspects of human life; (2) assist individuals in …
A. Basic Concepts of Trait and Factor Counseling
1. Views on Humans.
Humans are a system of traits or factors that are interrelated with one another, such as skills, interests, attitudes, and temperament. Individual development from infancy to adulthood is strengthened by the interaction of traits and factors. Many attempts have been made to categorize individuals on the basis of trait and factor dimensions. The scientific studies that have been carried out are: (a) measuring and assessing the characteristics of a person with psychological tests, (b) defining or describing individual circumstances, (c) helping individuals to understand themselves and their environment, (d) predicting success that might be achieved in the future.
Humans try to use self-understanding and self-knowledge as a basis for developing their potential. Humans have the potential to do good or bad. The meaning of life is to seek the truth and do good and reject evil. Being fully human depends on relationships with others.
2. Main Assumptions of Trait and Factor Counseling Approach.
Because each individual is a uniquely organized pattern of skills and abilities, and because causality abilities are relatively stable after adolescence, objective tests can be used to identify individual characteristics. Personality patterns and interests correlate with certain work behaviors. Different school curricula will demand different capacities and interests and this can be determined. Individuals will learn more easily and effectively if their potential and talents match the demands of the curriculum. Both the client and the counselor should diagnose the client's potential for initiating placement in the curriculum or occupation. Each individual has the ability and desire to identify cognitively his own abilities.
3. Views on Personality.
Personality is an interdependent system with traits and factors, such as skills, interests, attitudes, and temperament. The development of human personality is determined by innate and environmental factors. Every individual has common traits and there are special traits, which are unique traits. The basic elements of the personality structure are called traits and are broad tendencies to react and form relatively fixed behaviors. Trait is a mental structure that can be observed to show constancy and accuracy in behavior.
B. Purpose of Trait and Factor Counseling
Trait and factor counseling aims to: (1) help individuals achieve the development of perfection in various aspects of human life; (2) assisting individuals in making progress in understanding and managing themselves by helping them assess their own strengths and weaknesses in activities with changes in the progress of life and career goals; (3) helping individuals to improve their deficiencies, incapacity, and limitations as well as helping the growth and integration of personality; and (4) changing subjective traits and errors in self-assessment by using the scientific method.
C. Description of the Trait and Factor Counseling Process.
The counselor's relationship with the client is a very close, personal relationship in a face-to-face relationship. The counselor not only helps the individual in whatever suits his potential, but the counselor also influences the client to develop in the direction that is best for him. The counselor does not set but gives influence to get a good way of making decisions.
D. Stages of Trait and Factor Counseling ProcessAnalysis. Is a stage of activity: collection of information and data about the client. Counselors and clients have reliable, accurate and relevant information for diagnosing traits, interests, motives, emotional balance and other traits that facilitate adjustment. Analysis can be carried out using tools such as cumulative notes, interviews, anecdotal notes, psychological tests, and case studies. In addition to collecting objective data, the counselor must also pay attention to the ideals and attitudes of the client and how to view the problem.
Synthesis. Summarize and organize the analysis results in such a way as to show the client's talents, weaknesses and strengths, as well as adaptability.
diagnosis . Is the stage to find provisions and patterns that can lead to problems, their causes, as well as the characteristics of clients that are relevant and influence the adjustment process. Diagnostic steps include: (a) problem identification; (b) determine causes; (c) prognosis
Counseling. It is a relationship of helping clients to find their own sources as well as sources outside of themselves in an effort to achieve optimal development and adjustment according to their abilities. In this regard there are five characteristics of counseling, namely: (a) guided learning towards self-understanding; (b) re-educate/teach to achieve his personality goals and adjustments to his life; (c) personal assistance so that clients understand and are skilled in applying the principles and techniques needed in everyday life; (d) Counseling which includes relationships and healing techniques; and (e) re-educating as a catharsis or channeling.
Follow Up . Provide assistance to clients in dealing with new problems by reminding them of the source of the problem so as to ensure the success of counseling. The technique used by the counselor must be adapted to the individuality of the client, bearing in mind that the individual is unique, so there is no standard technique that applies to all clients.
E. Trait and Factor Counseling Techniques
1. Atending
Attending can be understood as a coaching effort to present clients in the counseling process. The creation and development of attention starts from the counselor's efforts to show empathy, respect, fairness, and being able to know or at least anticipate the needs felt by the client. At a more operational level, reflect through the following questions:How do you know and anticipate when someone is very interested in you ?
How do you know when someone is paying attention to you ?
How do you know or know when someone listens, pays attention and lives to you ?
Through the answers to the questions above, the counselor can start coaching to invite clients into the counseling process.
Atending aspects include:Body position (including gestures and facial expressions). Sit with the body facing the client. Hands in lap or freehold or sometimes used to indicate the gesture that is being communicated verbally. Responsive by using parts of the face, for example spontaneous smiles or nodding of the head as approval or understanding and forehead wrinkles as a sign of not understanding. Body upright but not rigid, when necessary can lean towards the client to show togetherness.
Eye contact. Seeing the client especially at the time of talking. Uses spontaneous glances that show an expression of interest and a desire to listen and respond
Listen. Maintain full, client-centric attention. Listen to whatever the client says, listen to the client's entire personality (his words, feelings, and behavior). Understand the whole message
2. Invite Open Conversation
An open invitation to talk gives the client the opportunity to explore himself with the support of the interviewer. Open-ended questions give the client an opportunity to come up with ideas about feelings and directions in the interview. His response to open-ended questions is to indicate his awareness that he is being asked to tell his history or further elaborate on what has been said.
Example of an open question:
1. To help start the interview:
" What are you going to talk about today ?"
" How have you been since our last meeting ?"
2. Helping clients describe the problem:
" Try to tell me more about it !"
" How did you feel at the time it happened ?"
3. Helps bring up examples of specific behaviors:
" How did you feel when you told me about this ?"
" How did you feel then at that time ?"
Not recommended questions include:Frequent use of closed questions.
Submitting more than one question at the same time.
" Can you tell me more about that ?"
Asking the question "Why", for example: " Why don't you get along well ?"
Include an answer in the question, for example: " You didn't really understand that when you said about his father, did you ?"
3. Paraphrase
Its essence is to repeat key words or thoughts from the client in formulations using the counselor's own words. Let the client know that he or she is listening to what is being said and that the counselor wants to hear more. Clients will feel understood and prepared to process more deeply the problems they raise.
The purpose of the paraphrasing activity is:convey to the client that the counselor is with the client, and the counselor is trying to understand what the client is saying
crystallize the client's comments by shortening them further to help guide the interview
provide an opportunity to check the accuracy of the counselor's perception.
How to paraphrase:Listen to the client's key messages
Restate to the client a summary of the key messages in a simple and concise manner
Observe the signs or ask for a response from the client for help with paraphrasing.
Avoid :analysis, interpretation, or value judgments about client messages
the counselor's response is only directed to a small part of the client's message, not to the main theme
the use of technical words that the client does not understand
4. Reflection of feelings
Reflection of feelings is a counselor's skill to respond to the client's feelings about the situation at hand. This action will encourage and stimulate the client to express everything related to the problem he is facing. So, the essence of this skill is to encourage and stimulate clients to be able to express how they feel about the situation being experienced.
Aspects of feeling reflection :Observing client behavior
Listen carefully
Live the message the client communicated.
Recognize the feelings the client is communicating.
Summarize the feelings that are being experienced.
Selecting the right words to describe the client's feelings.
5. Summarizing .
Summarizing is a process for bringing together various ideas and feelings in one statement at the end of a counseling interview unit. Summarizing: trying to recapitulate, condense, and crystallize the essence of what the client has said. By using periodic summaries, counselors can check their listening accuracy. The summary also helps to end the interview on a reasonable note, and can serve as an interview guide.
General guidelines summarize: (1) Reflect or attend to a variety of themes and emotional tones when the client speaks; (2) Combine key feelings and ideas into statements that have broad basic meanings; (3) Don't add new ideas in the summary; and (4) Consider if it would be helpful to state a summary or invite the client to make a summary.
F. Limitations of the Trait and Factor Counseling Approach
His views were developed in educational situations and his clientele was restricted primarily to students who had varying degrees of self-reliance and responsibility.
His views place too much emphasis on the counselor's control and the results achieved in the client depend more on the counselor's excellence in directing and limiting the client.
Many minimize or ignore the affective aspects of the client which should be the concern of the counselor.
Too many considerations are emphasized on objective data. Excessive use and belief in this data is inappropriate because of the limited reliability, validity, and completeness of the tools and data.
A dilemma for the counselor because he has to encourage and convince the client to realize his abilities, but he has to do it without persuasion.
source:akhmad