The effect of counsellors’ personality types on interpersonal skills in counselling therapy

Abstract

Personality is a critical psychological mechanism that guides behaviour. It is a combination of genetic and environmental factors that determine human reactions to situations. For instance, some persons are quiet and passive while others are loud and aggressive. An individual’s personality is a unique combination of emotional and behavioural patterns that affects how a person reacts and interacts with other people. This study therefore examined the effect of counsellors’ personality types on their interpersonal skills in a counselling process. The research design was experimental and it was guided with one research question and a hypothesis. The population of the study consisted of all practising secondary school counsellors in Edo State. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 42 counsellors out of the 70 school counsellors in the state as at the time of the study. Odebunmi’s personality test was used to classify participants into extroversion and introversion groups. The research instrument, Counsellors Interpersonal Skill Test (CIST), was adapted and modified by the investigator from PRAXIS Educational Testing Series (ETS), (2011) and the professional counsellor by Engels, Minton and Ray (2010). It was administered on the two groups of counsellors: introverts and extroverts. The data generated from the study was analysed using descriptive statistics to ascertain the mean differences and t-test statistics to detect the effects of the independent variables. The result indicated that personality types (introvert and extrovert) do not affect counsellors’ interpersonal skill in counselling therapy. It was also concluded that counsellor personality types do not have much implication on the use of interpersonal skills. The researcher, therefore, recommended that mastering interpersonal skills should be pertinent to counsellors rather than their personality types.

Keywords: Counsellors, Introverts, extroverts, therapeutic process, interpersonal skill