Page 37 - Nutrition Counseling and Education Skills: A Guide for Professionals

Employees and clients respect the professional when they believe the individual is being straightforward.
After the professional plans opening remarks descriptively rather than evaluatively, one should allow for

collaborative problem solving without preplanned solutions. Creative, superior, and long-lasting solutions are
more likely to occur when each person hears out the other fully, is heard in return, and when the client
initiates the solution.

In the previous examples, the counselor’s subsequent remarks depend on how the person responds to the
directive to explain the problem. The professional needs to give the person time to think; this often means
waiting for an answer. The practitioner needs to learn the discipline of sitting through the tension of silence
supportively until the client or employee responds.

Frequently, the first explanations are those that people believe will not upset or shock the counselor. The
“real” reasons, however, may not be revealed until the client or staff member feels secure enough to risk
shocking the professional without fear of being humiliated or embarrassed. In other words, after the first
explanations are offered, professionals would do best simply to repeat in their own words or paraphrase what
they have understood. Only when the clients or employees are comfortable enough will they be able to express
their authentic reactions, questions, or answers.

Provisional Rather Than Dogmatic

When offering advice to clients or helping them to solve problems, counselors should give advice provisionally
rather than dogmatically. “Provisionally” implies the possibility of the practitioner changing the options,
provided that additional facts emerge. It keeps the door open for clients to add information. A dogmatic
prescription might be, “I know this is the way to solve your problem.” A provisional prescription might be,
“Here are several alternatives you might consider,” or “There may be other ways of handling this problem;
perhaps you have some ideas too, but here are things you might consider.”

Equal Rather Than Superior

In discussing issues, the two parties should regard each other as equals and work collaboratively. Whenever
the possibility of defensiveness exists, even between persons of equal rank, any verbal or nonverbal behavior
that the other interprets as superiority generates a defensive response.

In the relationship between professionals and clients, or managers and employees, the professional’s
tendencies to emphasize status or rank may arise unconsciously from a desire to convince the other to accept
his or her recommendations. Comments such as the following may cause the other to feel inferior or angry:
“As a consumer, you may find this difficult to understand. Just do what I recommend; I’ve been doing this for
10 years.” Certainly, there is nothing wrong with professionals letting clients know that they are educated and
competent. However, the manner in which it is done is crucial. A more effective and subtle way is to make it
clear that you don’t have all the answers and to say, “I have studied this problem and dealt with other clients
who have similar situations. I am interested, however, in incorporating your own thoughts and plans into the
solution. You must be satisfied and willing to try new eating habits.”

An employee making a recommendation to a manager that the manager had tried unsuccessfully in the past
might be told, “If I were in your shoes, I would think the same thing. Someday when you are more
experienced, you’ll know why it won’t work.” The subtle underscoring of the inferior relative status of the

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