5 Soft Skills Needed For A Career As A School Counselor
If you want to become a school counselor and are considering undertaking an online school counselor degree, the chances are you’re probably someone who wants to make a difference in student’s lives by doing meaningful work. To truly make a difference and be successful in working in a role and setting like this, there are specific skills you need to master. You might already be aware of some of the soft skills needed, but if not, we're going to break down five of the most vital soft skills needed if you're looking for a career as a counselor.
1. Empathy
Effective counseling arguably rests on empathy. This means you must understand and share the feelings of the students you’re working with. For school counselors, it's about understanding what the students are going through and what they are feeling about their certain situations.
Sure, any number of academic, social, or personal pressures can lead a student to stumble, but what is it that really makes some students trip and others stay on their paths? An empathetic school counselor might be the first to model for the student what it feels like to be understood. Counselors with this kind of know-how don't just get it, they also actively listen and, more importantly, hear what the student is saying and what the student has experienced.
2. Communication Skills
Clear and compassionate communication is essential to the role of a school counselor. This includes not only verbal cues, like your spoken words, but the non-verbal cues and body language that counselors present. Counselors must convey information clearly to students, parents, and teachers. They must also be able to project a kind and caring nature, not only through what they verbally say but also through their overall presence. Counselors need to listen to the students with whom they work. Listening non-verbally is just as important.
3. Problem-Solving
School counselors confront a host of problems and challenges each day as they deal with students with different personalities, backgrounds, and counseling requirements. So, they must approach and resolve these issues in different ways. Unlike academic problems, the resolution of which can be achieved largely through hard work and study, the problems that school counselors encounter require them to wear the proverbial thinking cap and come up with solutions that might often have to be unique to the individual case. This could be the attempt to help a student who is paralyzed with anxiety to become more academically engaged or help a student who has family issues in order to have better focus at school.
4. Interpersonal Skills
Counselors in schools must possess excellent interpersonal skills since they need to interact with so many different people throughout the day, including students, parents, teachers, and, of course, the administrators of the school. The cornerstone of any good counseling program is for the counselor to have good relationships with all of the people that they serve. This makes the counselor more accessible to students, who in turn see the counselor as a trusted adult to whom they can go if they need assistance firsthand or if they need someone to talk to on a more personal level.
5. Cultural Competence
Today, our increasingly diverse society demands that school counselors possess cultural competence, a soft skill vital in today's diverse educational settings. Cultural competence in this context means understanding and respecting the cultural backgrounds and experiences of students and their families. Counselors who possess this skill set pay attention when students share culturally relevant experiences and when families express values and beliefs that arise from their cultural backgrounds. You should also understand how powerful the influence of culture can be on a student's life, character, and decisions.
Cultivating the Skills of a Competent Counselor
To conclude, having a successful career as a school counselor requires a mixture of soft skills that amplify one's ability to support students in a meaningful way. Building trust and relationships with students is paramount, and this is why empathy nearly tops the list of skills that are essential for counselors to have. Although problem-solving abilities certainly are considered hard skills, they are essential to the role of the counselor so make sure you develop these if you're looking for a career in counseling.
Thank you Elena Stefan for contributing this article.
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