INFLUENCING SKILLS
INTRODUCTION
Influencing skills are the
capability to persuade others to
agree with you on a topic without
using force or compulsion while
respecting their viewpoints.
Influencing is a skill set where
our behaviour or approach is
used to change someone else’s
thought process.
INFLUENCING SKILLS- EARLIER
Interpretation /reframe
Logical Consequences
Self-disclosure
Feedback
Information/advice/opinion/
instruction/suggestions
Directive
INTERPERSONAL INFLUENCING SKILLS
Reflectionof Meaning and
Interpretation/Reframing:
Helping Clients Restory their Lives.
Action
Skills for Building Resilience and
Managing Stress:
Self-Disclosure, Feedback, Logical
Consequences, Directives/Instruction, and
Psycho-education
REFLECTION OF MEANING
Reflection of meaning is concerned
with helping clients find deeper
understanding of significant basic
issues, such as life vision and purpose,
underlying their thoughts, feelings,
and behavior.
In turn, finding a deeper meaning
leads to new interpretations of life.
Meanings are close to core experiencing.
Encourage clients to explore their own
meanings and values in more depth from their
own perspective, but also the perspectives of
others.
Questions eliciting meaning are often a vital first
step.
A reflection of meaning looks very much like a
paraphrase, but focuses beyond what the client
says.
Appearing often are the words meaning, values,
vision, and goals.
Eliciting and reflecting meaning involve both a
skill and a strategy.
As a skill, eliciting meaning is fairly
straightforward.
“What do you value in your life?
“What sense do you make of this heart
attack and the future?”
“What does ____ mean to you?
INTERPRETATION/REFRAMING
Provide the client with a new perspective,
frame of reference, or way of thinking about
issues.
Interpretations/reframes may come from
your observations; they may be based on
varying theoretical orientations to the helping
field; or they may link critical ideas together.
The client may find another perspective or
way of thinking about a story, issue, or
problem. This new perspective could have
been generated by a theory used by the
interviewer, from linking ideas or
information, or by simply looking at the
situation afresh.
INTERPRETATION/REFRAMING
Interpretation/reframing seeks to provide
a new way of understanding these
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and often
this also results in perspectives on making
meaning.
Interpretation often comes from a specific
theoretical perspective, such as decisional,
psychodynamic, or multicultural.
Clients generate their own meanings,
whereas reframes usually come from the
interviewer.
The words interpretation and reframe are used
interchangeably.
Interpretation reveals new perspectives and
new ways of thinking beneath what a client says
or does.
The reframe provides another frame of
reference for considering problems or issues.
And eventually the client’s story may be
reconsidered and rewritten as well.
The basic skill of interpretation/reframing may be
described as follows:
The counselor listens to the client’s story, issue,
or problem and learns how the client makes sense
of, thinks about, or interprets the story or issue.
The counselor may draw from personal
experience and/or observation of the client
(reframe) or may use a theoretical perspective,
thus providing an alternative meaning or
interpretation of the narrative.
This may include linking together information
or ideas discussed earlier that relate to each
other.
Linking is an important part of interpretation,
although it often appears in an effective reflection
of meaning as well.
In linking, two or more ideas are brought
together, providing the client with a new
insight.
The insight comes primarily from the client in
reflection of meaning.
ACTION SKILLS FOR BUILDING
RESILIENCE AND MANAGING
STRESS
Self-Disclosure, Feedback, Logical
Consequences, Directives/Instruction,
and Psycho-education
SELF-DISCLOSURE
Self-disclosure is sharing your own personal experience
related to what the client has said and often starts with an “I”
statement.
It can also be sharing your own thoughts and feelings
concerning what the client is experiencing in the immediate
moment, in the here and now.
Feedback presents clients with clear, nonjudgmental
information (and sometimes even opinions) on client thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors, either in the past or in the here and
now.
Feedback can be supportive or challenging. Supportive
feedback searches for positives and strengths, while
challenges ask clients to think more carefully about
themselves and what they are saying.
SPECIFIC SKILLS OF SELF-DISCLOSURE AND FEEDBACK
Listen first: fully empathically aware.
Be brief and concrete. Self-disclosure and feedback
need to be short and specific.
Use “I” statements. Both skills frequently use “I”
statements
Be authentic and nonjudgmental. Are your self-
disclosures and feedback real.
Use appropriate immediacy and tense. The most
beneficial self-disclosures and feedback are usually
made in the here and now, the present tense. “Right
now I feel . . . .”
Consider cultural implications and explore differences.
You cannot expect to have experienced all that
your clients bring to you.
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES
Explore with the client specific alternatives and the
logical positive and negative concrete consequence of
each decision possibility. “If you do ____ , then ____.”
This strategy of logical consequences is most often
used to help people sort systemically through issues
when a decision needs to be made. With a complex
decision, many clients find it useful to rank
alternatives.
The strategy of logical consequences was developed
first by Alfred Adler in 1924.
The interviewer or counselor facilitates awareness of
potential logical consequences of actions.
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES
Some examples include the client who is thinking
of dropping out of school, the pregnant client who
has not stopped smoking, or the client who wants
to “tell off ” a boss.
Dropping out of school has serious consequences
for now and later life.
The baby could very likely be born less healthy.
The client who talks back to the boss may lose the
job.
Clients can make better decisions when they can
envision the likely consequences of any given
action.
Note in the following examples that adding the
words “you decide” gives power to clients, thus
showing them that they can take charge rather
than letting others rule what they decide to do.
DIRECTIVES, INSTRUCTION, AND PSYCHO-
EDUCATION
Clear directions, encouraging clients to do
what you suggest, underlies instruction and
psychological education.
These offer specifics for daily life to help
change thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Providing useful instruction and referral
sources can be helpful.
Psychoeducational strategies include
systematic educational methods such as
therapeutic lifestyle changes.
With all these, a collaboration approach is
essential.
Clients will make positive progress when they
listen to and follow the directives, use the
information that you provide for them,
consider your advice, and engage in new,
more positive thinking, feeling, or behaving.
Psychoeducation can lead to major life
changes for physical and mental health
Directives, instruction, and psychoeducational
strategies are valuable in encouraging clients
move to change and action.
Basicunderlying skills of directives,
instruction, and psychoeducational strategies
are as follows:
Involve clients as co-participants. Rather than
telling clients what you want them to do, be sure
that you have heard their story and the relationship
is solid. Encourage them to respond.
Use appropriate visuals, vocal tone, verbal following,
and body language.
Be clear and concrete in your verbal
expression, and time the information to meet
client needs. Directives need to be authoritative
and clear but also stated in such a way that they are
in tune with the unique client.
Check out if you were heard and understood.
Just because you think you are clear doesn’t mean
the client understands or remembers, especially if
the ideas are complex.
