Why is Training the solution for your counselors?
Journal Article Excerpt
Skills-based training and counseling self-efficacy
by Steve Urbani , Michael Robert Smith , Cleborne D. Maddux , Marlowe H. Smaby , Edil Torres-Rivera , Judith Crews
The authors studied the effectiveness of the skilled counselor training model (SCTM). Counseling students who completed the SCTM demonstrated greater gains in skills acquisition and counseling self-efficacy than counseling students who did not receive the training. At pretest, the counseling students in both groups, doing self-appraisals, rated their performance of counseling skills significantly higher than trained raters assessed the students' performance of counseling skills. At posttest, members of the control group continued to overestimate their skills levels when compared with the ratings given by the trained raters, whereas, in comparison, students who received SCTM training underestimated their performance. Research studies in counseling have indicated that an individual counselor's personality traits may have a great impact on client outcomes (Grencavage & Norcross, 1990; Lambert, 1989; Stein & Lambert, 1995; Stevens, Dinoff, & Donnenworth, 1998). Beutler, Machado, and Neufeldt (1994) identified counseling self-efficacy as one of three stable and reliable characteristics that could be used for selecting and training counselors. The other two characteristics were counselor conceptual level and ego development.
Bandura (1991) defined self-efficacy as "people's beliefs about their capabilities to exercise control over their own level of functioning and other events in their lives" (p. 257). According to Larson and Daniels (1998), counselors-in-training with high counseling self-efficacy have been shown to experience more positive expectancies and self-evaluations and also fewer anxieties. Increasing self-efficacy about one's ability to counsel (and thus decreasing the anxiety) is important because anxiety may lead to impaired clinical judgment and performance. Larson and Daniels concluded that self-efficacy, and the accompanying reduction in anxiety, could be enhanced by the mastery of counseling skills, appropriate... 
Skills Training for Counselors, Monitors, Rehabilitation Specialists, Case Managers, Didactic Group Counselors
and all others servicing mental health care day treatment programs and human services.
