counseling

1. P.~ychologicalReports,
1999,84, 1339-1344. O Psychological Reports 1999
THE PERSONAL CHARACTENSTICS OF EFFECTIVE
COUNSELORS: WHAT 10 EXPERTS THINK'
VERL T. POIJE
Southea.rt ~Misroz~ri
Slate Il~ziuerrit~
WILLIAM B. KLlNE
Idaho Slate Ulz~urrs~ty
Szrm~xary.-The counseljng profess~onalhas called for the use of personal charac-
teristics to be used for admissions to counseling programs as well as in the evaluation
of counseling students. 10 expert counselors ranked 22 personality characteristics of
potential students €or importance and responsiveness to training. The mosr important
include empathy, acceptance, and warmth, while the least important include resource-
fulness, sympathy and sociability.
While admission procedures to counselor-education programs differ
across programs most have used undergraduate grade point averages and
Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores. These factors have been found
to ~ r e d c t
academic success but have h i t e d effectiveness in ~ r e d i c t i n ~
the
clinical success of students in counseling programs (Markert & Monke,
1990). Some programs have used more subjective criteria such as personal
interviews, letters of recommendation, and goal statements (Stickle &
Schnacke, 1984), but these also have limited reliability (Markert & Monke,
1990).
Given the h i t e d fiscal resources and increased demands for account-
abhty, many counselor-education programs have attempted to define more
reliable methods for predicting the eventual clinical success of individuals
seeking adm~ss~on.
These methods endeavor to make the admissions process
more efficient by increasmg predictive incremental validity.
Goodyear and Bernard (1998) have suggested that ". . . counselor edu-
cation programs . . . be encouraged to develop profiles of students at the on-
set and throughout graduate training" (p. 16).They also state that counselor
educators need to have a greater understanding of students' personal charac-
teristics and how these affect and interact with training and supervision. Con-
ceptual levels, identity development, and academic and specific personality
characteristics should at least in part make up a profile of student counselor
development (Bernard & Goodyear, 1998).
The Council for Accreditation of Counsehg and Related Educational
Programs requires chat students' progress be evaluated and reviewed through
academic performance, professional development, and personal development
'Please address correspondence to Verl T. Pope, Southeast Missouri State University, One Uni-
versity Plaza, Mail Stop 5550, Cape Girardeau, MO 63701 or e-mail (vpope@semo~ni.se~iio.
edu).

2. 1340 V.T. POPE & V. B. KLINE
(Bradey & Post, 1991; CACREP, 1994).Using evaluation and appraisal tech-
niques as a foundation for admissions and retention of students and supervi-
sees is consistent with Codes of Ethics and Standards of Practice of the
American Counseling Association (ACA, 1995).
There is a growing recognition within the counsehg profession that
personal attributes, and to a greater extent, personality characteristics, play a
significant role in evaluating students for admission to and retention in train-
ing programs. However, there is less consensus as to which attributes and
personality characteristics should be used in evaluative and assessment tech-
niques
Personality Characterzstics
Various conceptualizations of personality indicate that a combination of
specific characteristics make up individual personalities (Buss & Cantor,
1989; Maddi, 1989; Melvin, 1934).While individuals can change their behav-
iors, they are much less lrkely to be successful in changing the relatively fix-
ed characteristics within their personality. By definition, personality charac-
teristics are observable, stable, consistent and predctable.
A review of the counseling literature revealed that authors (e.g., Basile,
1993; Cantwell, 1990; Okun, 1987) believe that personality characteristics in-
fluence the effectiveness of individuals as counselors. Since the late 1950s,
many studies intended to identlfy the personality characteristics of effective
counselors have been conducted (i.e., Freedman, Antenen, & Lister, 1967;
Passons & Olsen, 1969; Pietrofessa, Leonard, & Van Hoose, 1978; Russo,
Kelz, & Hudson, 1964; Sprinthall, Whitely, & Mosher, 1966).For example,
Rowe, Murphy, and DeCsipkes (1975) stated that the interest in counselors'
characteristics has continued because "certain personality variables are asso-
ciated with . . . the different degrees of counselor competence. . . ." (p. 231).
Authors have stated that the personality of students in counselor educa-
tion is the most significant factor to interpersonal effectiveness in counselmg
(Carlozzi, Campbell, & Ward, 1982).It then follows that the characteristics
of individuals' personality can either fachtate or undermine the training and
development of essential counsehg sk~Usfor students in counselor-educa-
tion programs. After dscussion with counselor educators and a review of the
counseling literature, we compiled a list of personality characteristics that
seem to be connected with counselors' effectiveness. These include warmth,
friendliness, genuineness, fairness and sincerity, open-mindedness, flexibility,
acceptance, patience, sensitivity, sympathy, interest in people, emotional sta-
b~Llty,trustworthiness, empathy, tolerance for ambiguity, sociableness, coop-
erativeness, confidence, capability, resourcefulness, and awareness of lunita-
tions.
While there is agreement in the literature that effective counselors typi-

3. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 1341
cally have certain personality characteristics, there is little agreement regard-
ing which of these characteristics are the most critical in the development of
effective counselors and whether these characteristics might be developed by
training. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess which of the
above personality characteristics would be considered as being the most im-
portant for developing counselors and each characteristics' responsiveness to
training.
METHOD
A sequential system approach combining both analytical 'uld empirical
procedures was employed in this study (Goldstein & Hersen, 1984). Ten ex-
perts in the field of counseling, consisting of counselor educators with at
least five years of teaching and supervisory experience were found through
contacts with members of the American Counsehg Association and the As-
sociation for Counselor Education and Supervision as well as through con-
tacts with other universities in the northwest region.
These experts were asked to rank in order of importance the 22 above
mentioned characteristics of effective counselors. Then they were asked to
rate how Responsive to Training each person&ty characteristic was on a 3-
point scale (3-it cannot be taught in a two-year master's program, 2-it can
be taught in a nvo-year master's program, I-it can be taught in one semester
of a master's program). The resulting ranlungs from the 10 experts were
summed to form a mean ranlung of Importance for each characteristic, and
a similar procedure was followed for mean ratings of Responsiveness to
Training for each characteristic. The means were then ranked from the least
to the most Responsive to Training.
Finally, ordinal ranlungs of Importance and Responsiveness to Training
were combined to form over-all ranlungs. The characteristics were assigned
an ordinal ranking. The characteristics considered most Important as well as
least Responsive to Training were given the highest ordinal ranlungs. The
characteristics considered least Important as well as most Responsive to
Training were given the lowest ordinal ranlungs.
RESULTS
The resulting mean Importance ranlungs of the 22 characteristics form-
ed a relatively normal plot with no significant outliers. In Table 1 is a list of
the mean rankings from most important to least important (see first col-
umn). The resulting mean Responsiveness to Training of the 22 characteris-
tics formed a relatively normal plot with no significant ouhers. Table 1 also
contains a list of the mean ranlungs from least responsive to most responsive
(column 3).
Table 1 presents the above information along with the combined rank-
ing and the ordinal combined ranking of Importance and Responsiveness to

4. 1342 V. T. POPE & W. B. KLINE
TABLE 1
EXPERTS'
COMBINED
RANKINGS
OF THE IMPORTANCE (I) A N D
RESPONSIVENES~
(R) O F PERSONAL
CHARACTERISTICS
OF COUNSELORS
Characteristics Rank Combined Ordinal
Importance Responsiveness Rank, I + R Rank. 1+ R
Acceptance 2 4 6 1
Emotional Stability 8 1 9 2
Open-mindedness 7 2 9 3
Empathy 1 9 10 4
Genuineness 4 8 12 5
Flexibility 6 9 15 6
Interest in People 12 3 15 7
Confidence 10 9 19 8
Sensitivity 5 14 19 9
Fairness 18 4 22 10
Warmth 3 20 23 11
Friendliness 15 9 24 12
Kesourcefulness 20 4 24 13
Sylnparhy 21 4 25 14
Nonthreatening 11 17 28 15
Tolerance for Ambiguity 19 9 28 16
Awareness o€Limitarions 12 17 29 17
Capability 8 21 29 18
Patience 12 19 31 19
Sincerity 17 14 31 20
Cooperative 16 21 37 21
Sociability 22 16 38 22
No!e.-For Im orcance, the lower the number the more important the characteristic. For Re-
sponsiveness, tEe lower the number the less responsive the characteristic was judged to be to
training.
Training. The characteristics with the highest ordmal r a n h g s are consid-
ered to be the most critical personahty characteristics to the development of
potentially effective counselors, according to these experts. It should there-
fore follow that students who are applying for admission to or retention
within a counselor-education program should show a high measure of these
characteristics.
DISCUSSION
Personality characteristics of effective counselors should be a founda-
tion for screening potential students and perhaps in evaluating students as
they proceed through counselor-education programs. The development of a
screening device for counselor-education programs based on these character-
istics might offer a more reliable and valid prediction of the potential suc-
cess of applicants. This research uthzed factors present in the literature and
a set of expert opinions to delineate personality characteristics typical for ef-
fective counseling and responsive to counselor education.

5. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 1343
It may be helpful for counselor educators to develop evaluative proce-
dures and perhaps psychometric instruments that assess and evaluate stu-
dents in a multr-faceted way. This research presents a potential set of practi-
cal character~sr~cs
that perhaps could be used as a foundation for such de-
velopment. These include characteristics that must be present in potential
applicants, i.e., those characteristics ranked as typical and raced as resistant
to training, and those that need to be present to fachtate the training pro-
cess, i.e., those characteristics ranked as typical and rated as susceptible to
training. Potentially, counselor-education programs can make decisions re-
gardmg how successful they can be in developing the trainable characteris-
tics and make choices about which applicants can be most successful in their
programs.
It is our belief that many counselor educators subjectively screen and
evaluate students based upon many of these characteriscics. The effectiveness
of this subiective evaluation varies in an uncontrolled manner with the abil-
ity of the educator. The successful development of a screening device based
upon these characteristics remains elusive. However, past failures should not
necessarily mean that the goal is unobtainable. Perhaps even through the
pursuit, the counseling profession will be enhanced.
Further research examining the util~tyof these characteristics as a pre-
dictive device is clearly necessary. The benefits of an inventory that reliably
predicts the success of potential students would be a welcome addition to
academic criteria for admission.
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Accepted Jr~rze7, 1999