There are three forms or types of counselling that you can use for dealing with the emotional problems of your employees . They are:
Types
1. Directive Counselling:
Directive counselling is the process of hearing a person’s emotional problems, deciding what he should do, and then telling and motivating him to do it.
Under directive counselling, the counsellor performs all the functions of counselling except reorientation. If the directive counsellor listens to the employee’s problems carefully and makes the counseller realise that his advice is worthwhile, directive counselling can be successful.
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2. Non-Directive Counselling:
Non-directive or client-cantered counselling is the process of skillfully listening to a person and encouraging him to explain his emotional problems, understand them and determine courses of action. It focuses on the counsellee rather than the counsellor as judge and adviser and hence it is “client centred”.
Professional counsellors generally follow non-directive counselling. They facilitate the counsellee in discovering and finding a suitable course of action himself.
The counsellor not only tries to solve the immediate problem of the counsellee but also attempts to bring about an attitudinal change in him.
Besides having certain advantages, non-directive counselling has several limitations, such as, it is time consuming, it requires professional counsellors, and it is costly and so on.
3. Participative Counselling or Co-operative Counselling:
This form of counselling is worth a serious notice as this appears to be more practically applicable and more readily suitable to managerial attitudes and temperaments in Indian organisational situations than the other two.
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It is in the middle of directive and non-directive counselling. Participative counselling is a close and mental relationship between the counsellor and the counsellee that establishes a co-operative exchange of ideas, information, knowledge, values, feelings etc., to solve the problems of the counsellee.
It is not dominated by either party; on the other hand, it integrates many advantages of both directive and non-directive counselling and avoids most of their disadvantages. Usually this method uses four counselling functions of reassurance, communication, emotional release and clarified thinking.