Tag: Characteristics

The Counselor’s Characteristics

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Hospital studies have shown that patients improved when their therapist demonstrated levels of warmth, genuineness and accurate empathic understanding. Patients grew worse when their counselors lacked these qualities. Similar findings are shown in clients who are not hospitalized.

1. Warmth: This implies caring, respecting and possessing a sincere, non-smothering concern for the client, regardless for his or her actions or attitudes. Jesus showed this for the woman at the well.

2. Genuineness: This implies that the counselor is “for real.” He would be open, sincere, and avoids phoniness or playing a superior role. It involves honesty without cruel confrontation. The person is not thinking or feeling one thing and saying another.

3. Empathy: What does the person really think? How does the person feel inside? What are the person’s values, beliefs, inner conflicts and hurts? A good counselor is sensitive to these issues, able to understand them and effective in communicating this understanding (using words or gestures) to the client. The counselor must “feel with” the client in order to move toward accurate empathic understanding. It is possible to help people even if we don’t understand, but this quality always increases the counselor’s effectiveness.

4. Others are helpful: able to get along; absence of immobilizing conflicts, hang-ups, insecurities or personal problems; compassionate, interested in people; alert to his own feelings and motives; more self-revealing than self-concealing; knowledgeable in the field of counseling. Love is NOT enough. Discipline and structure are also important factors.

Identifying Leadership Potential

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I’m on the lookout for new leaders… not that the currently leaders need to be replaced, but if King’s Grant is going to grow, we cannot do more with the same number of leaders. We need to bring new leaders on board, people who will catch the vision of what God can do in this place, and seek ways to exercise their giftedness in various areas of the congregation.

Since qualities of natural leadership are important in discussing spiritual leadership, there is value in seeking to discover leadership potential both in oneself and in others. Most people have hidden or undeveloped characteristics which, through lack of self awareness, may be simply undiscovered. Each of us needs to consider this instrument of self measurement that could result in the discovery of such qualities, (as well as the detection of various weaknesses which would make one unfit for leadership). When I taught a leadership class at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Zambia, I gathered teaching notes on the topic of leadership. Consider asking these questions:

  1. Have you ever broken yourself of a bad habit? To lead others, one must be master of self.
  2. Do you maintain control of yourself when things go wrong? The leader who loses self control in difficult circumstances forfeits respect and loses influence. He must be calm in crisis and resilient in adversity and disappointment.
  3. Do you think independently? While it is good to know the thoughts of others, the leader cannot afford to let others do his thinking or make his decisions for him.
  4. Can you handle criticism objectively and remain unmoved under it? Do you turn it in to good? The humble man can gain benefit from petty and even malicious criticism.
  5. Can you use disappointments creatively?
  6. Do you have the cooperation and win the respect and confidence of others?
  7. Do you possess the ability to discipline without having to resort to a show of authority? True leadership is an internal quality of the spirit and requires no external show of force.
  8. Have you qualified for the beatitude pronounced on the peacemaker (Matthew 5:9)? It is much easier to keep the peace than to make peace where it has been shattered. An important function in leadership is conciliation, the ability to discover common ground between opposing viewpoints and then lead both parties to accept it.
  9. Are you entrusted with the handling of difficult and delicate situations?
  10. Can you induce people to do happily some legitimate thing which they would not normally wish to do?
  11. Can you accept opposition to your viewpoint or decision without considering it a personal insult and reacting accordingly? Leaders must expect opposition and should not be offended by it.
  12. Do you find it easy to make and keep friends? Your circle of loyal friends is an sign of the quality and extent of your leadership.
  13. Are you unduly dependent on the praise or approval of others? Can you hold a steady course in the face of disapproval and even temporary loss of confidence?
  14. Are you at ease in the presence of your superiors or strangers?
  15. Do your subordinates appear at ease in your presence? A leader should give an impression of sympathetic understanding and friendliness that will put others at ease.
  16. Are you really interested in people? In people of all types and all races? Is there hidden racial prejudice? An antisocial person is unlikely to make a good leader.
  17. Do you possess tact? Can you anticipate the likely effect of a statement before you make it?
  18. Do you possess a strong and steady will? A leader will not long retain his position if he is indecisive.
  19. Do you hold on to resentments, or do you quickly forgive injuries done to you?
  20. Are you reasonably optimistic? Pessimism is no asset to a leader.
  21. Are you in the grip of a master passion like Paul who said: “This one thing I do”? Such a singleness of motive will focus all one’s energies and powers on the desired objective.
  22. Do you welcome responsibility?

R. E. Thompson, the founder of Mission Training International (serving in China in the 1920’s and 1930’s), suggests these tests of our attitudes to people as an indication of our capacity for leadership:

  1. Do other people’s failures annoy us or challenge us?
  2. Do we use people or cultivate people?
  3. Do we direct people or develop people?
  4. Do we criticize or encourage?
  5. Do we shun the problem person or seek him out?

It will not be sufficient merely to engage in this exercise in self analysis superficially, and pay no further attention to the discoveries made. Something must be done about it. Why not take some of the points of weakness and failure and, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, concentrate on strengthening or correcting them?

These desirable qualities were all present in their fullness in the character of Jesus, and each Christian should make it their constant prayer that they might more rapidly be incorporated into his or her own personality.