Whatever counseling approach one uses, there is a need for basic counseling skills.

Compare this to cooking. Whatever the recipe and ingredients a cook has in mind, cooking skills are needed for preparing food, using utensils, operating a stove or oven, etc. Similarly, there are basic skills that we need keep in mind and develop in Exchanged Life counseling and coaching. (Some of these are identified in the lecture, Counseling Skills, in GFI’s Online Lecture Series course.) 

In this video lecture Fred Antonelli of Basic College Ministries presents five practical counseling principles for counseling young adults on college campuses. He briefly discusses:

1 Learn to listen

2. Be empathetic

3. Know when to triage (refer to a counselor with more training)

4. Don’t be judgmental

5. Keep Jesus the center of your counseling

Although his target audience is college ministry, these principles are basic for other contexts as well.