How to Coach Yourself and Others Empowering Coaching And Crisis Interventions | Page 59

This book is in B&W, not color - Print page in Grayscale for Correct view! These elaborations should make clear that empowerment is not a linear process, nor one that concludes with the achievement of a particular "empowered" state. Many clients will not be ready for or interested in the empowerment of others- in the form of interpersonal relationships or community participation - when they terminate the counselling relationship. This must not be considered a failure on the part of the client or the counsellor to "achieve" the goal of empowerment. The counsellors role is to meet clients where they are in the empowerment process and work to support increasing, enhancing, or otherwise promoting empowerment in additional ways that are consistent with the client's goals. Critical components of an empowerment model can be represented in terms of "Five Cs": Collaboration, Competence, Context, Critical Consciousness, and Community. Collaboration. "Collaboration" refers to the dynamic relationship between counsellor and client. The relationship should be characterized by collaborative definition of problematic issues, goals, and development of interventions and strategies for change or growth. These interventions and change strategies are consistent with the client's values, goals, skills, experiences, and abilities. The client is viewed a la Paulo Freire (1971) as an active member of a team rather than a passive recipient of services. Competence: All clients have existing skills, resources, and a wealth of experience to contribute to the counselling process. To overlook these resources is likely to reinforce neediness, to foster dependency, to discourage esteembuilding, and is generally contrary to the goals of empowerment and to good counselling. Counsellor recognition and authentic appreciation of client resources is essential. Honest counsellor feedback regarding skill deficits or personal weaknesses is also part of supporting client competence. The vast majority of clients understand that they have weaknesses (which they often perceive to be more serious than does the counsellor) and counsellor avoidance of constructive feedback is likely to make it hard for clients to believe positive feedback. So too with counsellors themselves: they must learn to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, grow in their understanding of how to utilize their strengths more effectively, and how to enhance areas of weakness. Counsellors are unlikely to truly appreciate the strengths of others if they are unable to appreciate their own competencies, just as they are unlikely to accept others weaknesses without accepting their own. Context. The dynamics of power and privilege shape the clients context as well as the context in which we provide counselling services. This context includes larger social forces (e.g., ageism, racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, able-bodied assumptions) and the effects of these assumptions on care providers, families, and individuals, as well as on faculty members, departments, educational institutions, and individual students. Context also includes systems such as families, social networks, neighborhoods, ethnic groups, professional and work groups, and faith communities. Integration of the context component into counselling means that we acknowledge the role of context in the clients current situation or problem, including how the context serves to maintain or exacerbate problems, while at the same time acknowledging the clients options and responsibilities related to change. The context component of empowerment is directly dependent upon the critical consciousness component That is, without critical consciousness, efforts to address context are likely to be ineffective, because understanding context requires the development of critical consciousness. For [email protected] Property of Bookemon, do NOT distribute 59