Counselors' Perception of their Competency Skill Components: A Qualitative Study

Community development and its day-to-day expansion, make the need to specialists of mental health realm, especially counselors, more necessary. The current study aimed to qualitatively investigate counselors’ perception about the components of their skill competencies. In this present qualitative research, phenomenological approach was used. Among the counselor of Sepah Shamim Counseling Centers in Iran, counseling in 2016, 20 counselor were chosen to participate in the study using purposeful sampling method, and then interviewed. All the interviews were tape-recorded, then transcribed line by line, and finally analyzed through interpretive analysis method of Diekelmann et al. 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted. Analyzed data from interviews led to the identification of 842 primary code, 40 subthemes and 6 main themes (communication, interpersonal, technical, diagnostic, developmental, and therapy skills). The result of this study can help counselors to develop their training programs, assess their level of competence and self-efficiency, and evaluate their level of competence in recruitment centers.