The Accidental Counsellor
In your workplace, or personal life, do you connect with people, clients or customers who are sometimes upset, distressed, sad, hurt, lonely or simply need someone to listen to them? If you’re not a trained counsellor, it can be difficult to manage these situations with confidence.
Accidental Counselling refers to situations where emotional support is given by one person to another person and where the person giving support is not a trained counsellor.
The Accidental Counsellor workshop is practical, interactive and will benefit organisations where employees are required to provide regular, or occasional, informal support and counselling. The program takes the format of a full day, face-to-face training workshop. It is also available to be delivered in a condensed, 2.5 hour online format (find out more about Linda’s “Online Video Workshops”). Content and discussion in the full-day workshop includes:
- Definition and key attributes of an Accidental Counsellor
- Empathy, body language and active listening skills
- Effective use of questions
- Solution-focused approach
- Empowering others, instead of “fixing” others
- Negative impact of giving advice that is outside the scope of your role, expertise or experience
- Supporting others within the parameters of your role
- Ending an Accidental Counselling conversation respectfully
- Referring on (when required)
- Skills practice
Maximum number of participants: 20 people
Cost: $3,000.00 plus GST
Note: The Accidental Counsellor workshop can be customised to your organisation’s requirements.
Comments from previous attendees
“This workshop provided a realistic approach to conversations that that happen everyday in my work. I haven taken away so much “gold” from this training.”
“I learnt practical techniques to support someone who is in crisis or just having a rough time in general. I no longer feel daunted by these types of conversations, as I know what to do to handle them. This is a big relief to me, and lowers my stress levels a lot! Thank you Linda.”
“It was wonderful to learn practical language and strategies to prompt the distressed person to share and brainstorm the solutions for themselves.”
“Best workshop I have ever attended.”
“I loved all the activities that supported the learning. Linda made this workshop interesting and fun, and I didn’t look at the clock once!”
“Linda is extremely knowledgeable, she really knows her stuff.”
“Linda presents well and engages the whole room. She uses her expertise and experience to present a topic that offers practical and invaluable tools to assist us in supporting other people in an empowering way.
“I now have a way to redirect our service users away from the problem and move them into solution, and all without me giving any advice!”