Basic Influencing Skills and Strategies

Basic Influencing Skills and Strategies equips readers with counseling skills designed to produce positive change with clients. The text features an emphasis on communication, preparing future practitioners to become effective communicators and listeners, and then take appropriate action based upon what they learn during practitioner-patient interviews. 

In Section 1, students are introduced to the microskills framework and its multicultural orientation, and the importance of listening to draw out client stories, issues, and concerns is emphasized. This part also presents two strategies to facilitate practitioners learning and analysis of client interviews: the community genogram and the client change scale. Section 2 presents the specifics of particular influencing skills, including focusing, supportive confrontation, feedback and self-disclosure, and interpretation/reframing. In Section 3, students gain an understanding of how to integrate and apply learned skillsets. They are introduced to the 5-Stage Interview, a framework that effectively applies the concepts addressed throughout the book to multiple counseling theories. 

The fourth edition includes clear behavioral skill descriptions to enable the interviewer to anticipate client responses as well as outcomes; concrete attention to multicultural practice and social justice; and introduction of the community genogram. 

Featuring foundational skillsets that are critical to the counseling practice, Basic Influencing Skills and Strategies is an ideal text for introductory courses in counseling.

Dr. Allen Ivey earned his doctorate in counseling at Harvard University and is distinguished university professor (emeritus) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a past president and fellow of the Society for Counseling Psychology of the American Psychological Association, as well as fellow of the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race and the Asian American Psychological Association.

Dr. Mary Bradford Ivey earned her doctorate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A fellow of the American Counseling Association, her elementary guidance program was named one of the top ten in the United States. She has lectured widely throughout the United States and internationally, and is the author of multiple books, chapters, and articles.

Norma Gluckstern Packard received her doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she and Mary Bradford Ivey were among the founding members of the Women’s Center. From Amherst, Norma went on to teach in the psychology department at Catholic University. She left the academic world and became the first female warden at Patuxent Correctional Facility in Maryland. While there, she developed many innovative rehabilitation programs that received national accolades, and she was featured on 60 minutes. Since then, she has moved on to writing, consulting, and teaching online.