If you’re considering a career in counselling, you’ve probably wondered whether you have what it takes to be effective in this demanding but rewarding profession. The question “what makes a good counsellor?” is one that aspiring counsellors, training providers, and even experienced practitioners continue to explore. The encouraging answer is that while some personal qualities provide a helpful foundation, the skills and attributes that define excellent counselling practice can largely be developed through proper training, supervision, and commitment to ongoing personal development.
This comprehensive guide explores the essential qualities and skills that make a good counsellor, examines which attributes are innate versus learnable, and shows how professional training transforms natural empathy and interest in helping others into genuine counselling competence.
Are Good Counsellors Born or Made?
Before exploring specific qualities, it’s important to address a common concern: do you need to be “naturally gifted” to become a good counsellor?
The reality is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. While certain personality traits may make the counselling journey feel more natural, the professional skills and deeper understanding required for effective counselling practice must be learned, practiced, and refined over time.
The Foundation: Natural Inclinations
Some people do seem naturally drawn to helping roles. You might be the person friends turn to when they’re struggling, or you may find yourself genuinely curious about what makes people think and behave as they do. These natural inclinations provide a helpful starting point.
The Structure: Professional Development
However, natural empathy alone doesn’t make someone a good counsellor. Professional training provides:
- Theoretical frameworks for understanding human psychology and behaviour
- Structured skill development in active listening and therapeutic techniques
- Ethical guidelines for maintaining appropriate boundaries and professional conduct
- Self-awareness practices that help you understand your own triggers and biases
- Supervised experience working with real clients under guidance
The most effective counsellors combine natural compassion with rigorously developed professional competence. If you have the interest and commitment, the skills can be learned.
Essential Personal Qualities of a Good Counsellor
Good counsellors share certain personal qualities that enable them to build effective therapeutic relationships and create safe spaces for clients to explore difficult experiences:
Empathy and Compassion
What it means: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, seeing the world from their perspective without losing your own sense of self.
Why it matters: Clients need to feel genuinely understood, not just intellectually acknowledged. Empathy creates the foundation of trust necessary for therapeutic work.
What it looks like in practice: A good counsellor can sit with a client’s pain without rushing to fix it or minimise their experience. They respond with warmth and understanding even when they don’t agree with a client’s choices or perspectives.
Can it be developed? While some people naturally tune into others’ emotions more easily, empathetic responding can be significantly enhanced through training. Counselling courses teach you to recognise emotional cues, practice perspective-taking, and respond in ways that demonstrate genuine understanding.
Non-Judgmental Attitude
What it means: The ability to accept clients as they are, without imposing your own values, beliefs, or standards onto their experiences and choices.
Why it matters: Clients often come to counselling feeling ashamed or afraid of being judged. A non-judgmental approach creates the psychological safety necessary for honest self-exploration.
What it looks like in practice: A good counsellor maintains an attitude of acceptance even when discussing behaviours or choices they personally wouldn’t make. They separate understanding someone’s perspective from endorsing their actions.
Can it be developed? Absolutely. Training helps you recognise your own biases and judgments, understand how they form, and develop techniques for bracketing them during sessions. Personal therapy, often required during training, helps you work through areas where you struggle with judgment.
Patience and Persistence
What it means: The ability to accept that therapeutic progress often happens slowly, with setbacks and obstacles along the way.
Why it matters: Clients can’t be rushed through their healing journey. Impatience from a counsellor can create pressure that actually slows progress or damages the therapeutic relationship.
What it looks like in practice: A good counsellor remains committed and hopeful even when clients struggle to make changes or repeatedly return to problematic patterns. They trust the process and understand that apparent “backward” steps are often part of genuine progress.
Can it be developed? Training helps you understand the nature of therapeutic change and manage your own expectations. Supervision provides support when you feel frustrated, helping you maintain perspective and patience.
Emotional Resilience and Self-Care
What it means: The capacity to manage your own emotional responses to difficult client material and maintain your wellbeing despite exposure to others’ trauma and distress.
Why it matters: Counsellors who don’t care for themselves burn out, become less effective, or even harm clients by imposing their own emotional needs onto the therapeutic relationship.
What it looks like in practice: A good counsellor recognises their own emotional limits, takes steps to process their responses to difficult sessions, and maintains healthy boundaries between their professional and personal lives.
Can it be developed? Yes, through learning and practicing specific self-care strategies, understanding your own warning signs of burnout, and developing support systems including supervision and personal therapy.
Genuine Curiosity About People
What it means: An authentic interest in understanding why people think, feel, and behave as they do, and a fascination with the complexity of human experience.
Why it matters: This curiosity fuels your engagement with clients and helps you stay genuinely interested even during challenging or repetitive sessions.
What it looks like in practice: A good counsellor approaches each client as a unique individual with their own story, avoiding assumptions or premature conclusions. They remain engaged and interested throughout the therapeutic relationship.
Can it be developed? While natural curiosity helps, training deepens your fascination with human psychology by introducing you to theories and frameworks that explain behaviour, making even familiar patterns interesting to explore.
Self-Awareness
What it means: Understanding your own emotions, triggers, biases, values, and how your personal history shapes your responses to others.
Why it matters: Without self-awareness, your own unresolved issues can interfere with your ability to help clients. You might unconsciously project your experiences onto theirs or react to their material based on your own triggers.
What it looks like in practice: A good counsellor recognises when client material touches on their own experiences and can separate their personal reactions from the client’s needs. They know their limitations and when to seek additional support or supervision.
Can it be developed? Definitely. In fact, developing self-awareness is a central component of counselling training. Reflective practice exercises, personal therapy, and supervision all build this crucial quality.
Cultural Sensitivity and Awareness of Diversity
What it means: Recognition that clients come from diverse cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, and sexual orientation backgrounds, and that these contexts profoundly shape their experiences and worldviews.
Why it matters: Counsellors work with people from all backgrounds. Without cultural sensitivity, you risk misunderstanding clients, imposing inappropriate frameworks, or making clients feel unsafe to share their authentic experiences.
What it looks like in practice: A good counsellor actively considers how a client’s cultural context shapes their experience, asks questions to understand rather than assuming, and adapts their approach to respect diverse values and beliefs. They recognise their own cultural positioning and how it influences their perspective.
Can it be developed? Absolutely. Training includes education about diverse populations, examination of your own cultural biases, and practice in culturally sensitive approaches. However, this learning continues throughout your career as you encounter new populations and perspectives.
Trustworthiness and Integrity
What it means: Behaving in ways that inspire client confidence, maintaining confidentiality, being honest about your capabilities and limitations, and consistently acting in accordance with professional ethical guidelines.
Why it matters: Clients must trust you with their most vulnerable thoughts and feelings. Without trustworthiness, no therapeutic relationship can form or be maintained.
What it looks like in practice: A good counsellor maintains strict confidentiality, clearly explains the therapeutic process and their approach, admits when they don’t know something or need to seek guidance, and consistently follows through on commitments.
Can it be developed? While basic honesty is expected, professional trustworthiness involves learned behaviours around confidentiality, boundary management, and ethical decision-making that training explicitly teaches.
Core Professional Skills Every Good Counsellor Needs
Beyond personal qualities, good counsellors develop specific professional skills through training and practice:
Active Listening Skills
What it involves: Giving your complete attention to clients, tracking both verbal and non-verbal communication, and demonstrating your engagement through appropriate responses.
Why it’s essential: Clients need to feel genuinely heard, often for the first time. Active listening creates the space for them to explore their experiences more deeply.
Key components:
- Maintaining appropriate eye contact and open body language
- Minimising distractions and staying present
- Tracking emotional content as well as factual information
- Noticing inconsistencies or patterns across sessions
- Resisting the urge to interrupt, give advice, or share your own stories
How it’s developed: Level 2 counselling training introduces active listening techniques and provides extensive practice opportunities with feedback from tutors and peers. You learn to recognise when you’ve stopped truly listening and how to refocus your attention.
Effective Communication
What it involves: Both verbal and non-verbal communication that facilitates client exploration while maintaining appropriate therapeutic boundaries.
Why it’s essential: How you communicate shapes the entire therapeutic experience. Skilled communication helps clients feel understood, encourages deeper exploration, and models healthy interpersonal patterns.
Key components:
- Clear, jargon-free language accessible to all clients
- Tone of voice that conveys warmth and acceptance
- Appropriate use of silence to allow processing time
- Body language that signals engagement and openness
- Matching communication style appropriately to client needs
How it’s developed: Throughout counselling training, you practice various communication techniques, receive feedback on your verbal and non-verbal patterns, and learn to adapt your style to different clients and situations.
Questioning Techniques
What it involves: Asking questions that encourage client exploration without leading them toward particular conclusions or imposing your own agenda.
Why it’s essential: Good questions help clients deepen their self-understanding, while poor questions can derail therapeutic work or make clients feel interrogated.
Key components:
- Open questions that invite exploration (“How did that affect you?”)
- Avoiding “why” questions that can feel accusatory
- Following the client’s lead rather than pursuing your curiosity
- Timing questions appropriately within the therapeutic flow
- Recognising when questions help versus when silence would be more powerful
How it’s developed: Training teaches you to distinguish between helpful and unhelpful questions, practice various questioning techniques, and receive feedback on the impact of your questions during observed skills practice.
Boundary Management
What it involves: Maintaining appropriate professional limits around time, space, dual relationships, self-disclosure, and the nature of the therapeutic relationship.
Why it’s essential: Clear boundaries create safety for clients and protect both parties from harm. Boundary violations damage or destroy therapeutic relationships and can seriously harm vulnerable clients.
Key components:
- Starting and ending sessions on time
- Maintaining confidentiality appropriately
- Avoiding dual relationships that compromise the therapeutic work
- Managing self-disclosure thoughtfully when it serves the client
- Recognising and addressing boundary challenges promptly
How it’s developed: Training extensively covers boundary theory, common boundary challenges, and how to navigate difficult situations. Supervision provides ongoing support for boundary dilemmas throughout your career.
Ethical Practice and Knowledge of Regulations
What it involves: Understanding and consistently applying the ethical frameworks that govern counselling practice, including those established by professional bodies like the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy).
Why it’s essential: Ethical practice protects clients and maintains the integrity of the profession. Knowledge of regulations ensures you practice within legal and professional boundaries.
Key components:
- Understanding confidentiality and its limits
- Recognising dual relationships and conflicts of interest
- Maintaining appropriate record-keeping
- Knowing when and how to refer clients to other professionals
- Adhering to professional body standards and guidelines
How it’s developed: Training explicitly teaches ethical frameworks, legal requirements, and professional standards. You examine ethical dilemmas through case studies and learn decision-making processes for navigating complex situations.
Reflective Practice Abilities
What it involves: The capacity and habit of regularly examining your work, considering what’s effective and what isn’t, and using these insights to continually improve your practice.
Why it’s essential: No counsellor is perfect, and effectiveness grows through honest reflection on your work. Reflective practice prevents stagnation and helps you learn from both successes and challenges.
Key components:
- Keeping reflective journals about your sessions and learning
- Seeking and genuinely considering feedback from supervisors and peers
- Noticing patterns in your practice that might need attention
- Connecting theory to your practical experience
- Identifying areas for continued professional development
How it’s developed: Reflective practice is taught and required throughout counselling training. At Mindspace’s Level 2 course, students maintain reflective journals and participate in peer feedback sessions, establishing this crucial habit from the beginning.
The Difference Between Natural Ability and Professional Training
Understanding the relationship between innate qualities and professional development helps clarify what counselling training actually provides:
What Natural Ability Offers
If you’ve always been someone others turn to for support, you likely have:
- Natural empathy that helps you connect with others’ feelings
- Good intuition about emotional dynamics
- Comfort with emotional intensity that others might find overwhelming
- Genuine desire to help people work through difficulties
These qualities make counselling feel like a natural fit and can make the training journey more comfortable. However, they’re just the starting point.
What Training Adds
Professional counselling training transforms natural helping abilities into professional competence through:
Theoretical Frameworks: Understanding why people struggle and how change happens gives structure to your natural empathy. You learn about human development, psychological approaches, and therapeutic theory that explain what you might have observed intuitively.
Skill Refinement: Natural listening becomes active listening through specific techniques. Intuitive responses become deliberate, thoughtful interventions. Training turns raw ability into refined skill.
Ethical Grounding: Natural helpers often lack awareness of professional boundaries and ethical considerations. Training teaches you when and how to help appropriately versus when you’re overstepping or creating dependency.
Self-Awareness Development: You might not realise how your own experiences and biases shape your responses until training helps you examine these patterns systematically.
Quality Assurance: Through assessment, feedback, and supervision, training ensures you meet professional standards rather than relying on unexamined natural ability that might actually include problematic patterns.
Why Natural Ability Alone Isn't Enough
Many naturally empathetic people cause unintentional harm when they try to counsel others without proper training:
- They overstep boundaries by trying to “fix” problems
- They fail to recognise when issues require specialist intervention
- They lack frameworks for understanding complex psychological dynamics
- They don’t maintain the self-care necessary for sustainable helping work
- They confuse sympathy (feeling sorry for someone) with empathy (understanding their perspective)
Professional training prevents these pitfalls while preserving and enhancing your natural gifts.
How Counselling Training Develops These Qualities
Understanding how training builds counselling competence can help you appreciate the value of formal education in this field:
At Mindspace’s CPCAB Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills, you begin developing:
- Core listening skills through structured practice with feedback
- Basic self-awareness through reflective exercises and journals
- Understanding of boundaries and ethical frameworks
- Empathetic responding techniques that deepen natural compassion
- Appreciation for diversity and its impact on helping relationships
Level 2 introduces you to counselling concepts while emphasising practical skill development. You learn by doing, practicing skills in supervised settings where you receive constructive feedback. This level helps you determine if counselling is right for you while developing abilities useful in any helping context.
Progression to Level 3 builds substantially on Level 2 foundations:
- Theoretical frameworks for understanding human behaviour and change
- More sophisticated skills for working with complex emotions and resistance
- Greater self-awareness through deeper personal development work
- Enhanced ethical understanding for navigating challenging situations
- Integration of theory and practice through more complex skills exercises
Level 3 prepares you for the professional training that follows, ensuring you have both practical competence and theoretical grounding.
The Level 4 Diploma represents the minimum qualification for professional counselling practice and includes:
- Supervised client work (minimum 100 hours) where you apply skills with real clients
- Clinical supervision to support your developing practice and ensure client safety
- Personal therapy (typically 40+ hours) to deepen self-awareness and experience counselling from the client perspective
- Specialised theoretical training in specific counselling approaches
- Professional development in areas like assessment, referral, and ethical decision-making
This is where natural ability and learned skills fully integrate into professional competence under the guidance of experienced supervisors.
Ongoing Supervision and Professional Development
Even after qualifying, good counsellors continue developing through:
- Regular clinical supervision (required throughout your career) providing external perspective on your work
- Continuing Professional Development (CPD) including workshops, courses, and reading to maintain current knowledge
- Personal therapy as needed to maintain self-awareness and process challenging work
- Reflective practice examining your work for continuous improvement
- Peer consultation learning from colleagues’ experiences and perspectives
The development of a good counsellor never truly ends – it’s a career-long commitment to growth and learning.
Self-Assessment: Evaluating Your Counselling Potential
Use these questions to honestly assess your readiness for counselling training and identify areas for development:
Personal Qualities Checklist
Empathy and Understanding:
- ☐ Do people often tell you that you “really understand” them?
- ☐ Can you set aside your own opinions to genuinely understand different perspectives?
- ☐ Do you find yourself naturally tuning into others’ emotions?
Patience and Acceptance:
- ☐ Can you sit with uncertainty and avoid rushing to find solutions?
- ☐ Are you comfortable when change happens slowly?
- ☐ Can you accept people’s choices even when you disagree with them?
Self-Awareness:
- ☐ Do you regularly reflect on your own reactions and motivations?
- ☐ Can you recognise when your own issues might be influencing your responses?
- ☐ Are you comfortable examining your biases and blind spots?
Emotional Resilience:
- ☐ Can you listen to difficult experiences without becoming overwhelmed?
- ☐ Do you have effective strategies for managing your own stress?
- ☐ Can you maintain appropriate boundaries between work and personal life?
Communication Skills:
- ☐ Are you comfortable with silence in conversations?
- ☐ Can you listen without planning what you’ll say next?
- ☐ Do you naturally ask questions that help others explore their thoughts?
Interpreting Your Assessment
Mostly yes: You have a strong foundation for counselling training. Your natural qualities will be enhanced and structured through professional development.
Mixed responses: This is actually very normal and healthy. Identifying areas for development shows good self-awareness. Training specifically helps strengthen areas where you’re less naturally strong.
Mostly no: Consider whether counselling is truly right for you, or whether you need to develop these areas before beginning training. Some qualities can be built through personal development work, life experience, or personal therapy before formal counselling training.
Understanding Gaps as Development Opportunities
If you identified areas where you’re less strong, remember:
- Training specifically addresses these areas through structured skill development
- Gaps don’t disqualify you – they show you understand what counselling requires
- Self-awareness of limitations is more valuable than false confidence
- Everyone develops at different rates in different areas
The question isn’t whether you’re already perfect, but whether you’re committed to ongoing development.
When Counselling Might Not Be Right
There are some circumstances where counselling may not be appropriate, at least currently:
Active personal crisis: If you’re in the midst of significant personal difficulties, focus on your own healing before training to help others. You can return to counselling training when you’re more stable.
Rescue fantasies: If you’re primarily drawn to counselling to “save” people or be needed, explore these motivations in personal therapy before training. Good counselling empowers clients rather than creating dependency.
Difficulty with boundaries: If you struggle to maintain appropriate personal boundaries in relationships, address this before counselling training where boundary management is essential.
Unresolved trauma: If you have significant unprocessed trauma, particularly around areas you’d likely encounter in counselling work, engage in your own therapy before training to help others with similar issues.
These aren’t permanent barriers – they’re signs that personal development work would be valuable before or alongside counselling training.
Developing Your Counselling Qualities: Next Steps
If you’ve determined that counselling is a good fit for you, here’s how to begin developing the qualities and skills that make a good counsellor:
Starting with Level 2 Training
Beginning with a Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills is an excellent first step:
- Low-risk exploration: Discover if counselling truly suits you before committing to extensive professional training
- Foundation building: Develop core skills that form the basis of all later learning
- Immediate application: Use new skills right away in personal and professional contexts
- Community connection: Meet others on similar journeys for mutual support and learning
- Clear progression: Understand the pathway ahead if you decide to continue
At Mindspace, the CPCAB Level 2 Certificate provides this foundation through 24 structured sessions, available in evening time slots (5:45pm to 9:30pm) both online and at their Basingstoke location. The course structure accommodates working adults, allowing you to begin developing counselling qualities while maintaining your current commitments.
Practicing Skills in Current Roles
While training, apply developing skills in everyday contexts:
- At work: Use active listening with colleagues, practice non-judgment with difficult customers, apply empathetic responding with team members
- In relationships: Strengthen personal connections through better listening, more thoughtful questioning, and reduced advice-giving
- In volunteer roles: Seek opportunities in helping contexts where you can practice skills under less pressure than professional counselling
This real-world practice accelerates your development while demonstrating the broad value of counselling skills.
Engaging in Personal Development
Parallel your skills training with personal growth work:
- Personal therapy: Experience counselling from the client perspective while working on your own development areas
- Reading and reflection: Explore books on self-awareness, empathy, and communication
- Mindfulness practices: Develop the present-moment awareness essential for good counselling
- Seeking feedback: Ask trusted people how you come across in helping conversations
Finding the Right Training Provider
Choose training that will genuinely develop your counselling potential:
- Accreditation: Look for CPCAB, BACP-accredited, or other recognised qualifications
- Experienced tutors: Ensure instructors are qualified, practicing counsellors
- Skills practice emphasis: Good training includes extensive practice with feedback, not just theory
- Support systems: Check what academic and pastoral support is available
- Clear progression: Understand pathways to further qualifications if you decide to continue
Mindspace's Approach to Developing Good Counsellors
At Mindspace, the development of counselling qualities is approached through:
- Skills-focused learning: Extensive practice opportunities with peer and tutor feedback
- Reflective practice: Regular journaling and reflection to build self-awareness
- Supportive environment: Small groups and experienced tutors who understand adult learning
- Flexible options: Evening sessions and online alternatives to accommodate diverse needs
- Clear pathways: Direct progression from Level 2 through Level 3 and understanding of further steps
The emphasis is on developing genuine competence rather than simply completing assessments, ensuring graduates have both the knowledge and the practical abilities that define good counselling.
Good Counsellors Are Developed Through Training and Commitment
The question “what makes a good counsellor?” has a complex but encouraging answer: good counsellors are created through the combination of helpful natural qualities, rigorous professional training, ongoing supervision, and career-long commitment to personal and professional development.
If you’re naturally empathetic, genuinely curious about people, and committed to doing the work of self-examination and skill development, you have the foundation to become a good counsellor. The professional competencies that distinguish effective counselling from well-meaning helping can be learned through proper training.
The journey from interested beginner to competent professional counsellor takes several years of part-time study, but it begins with a single step: starting your foundational training. Whether you ultimately practice as a professional counsellor or use these valuable skills to enhance your current work and personal relationships, developing counselling qualities enriches your life and enables you to make a genuine difference for others.
Take Your First Step Toward Becoming a Good Counsellor
Ready to begin developing the qualities and skills that make a good counsellor? Mindspace’s CPCAB Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills provides the ideal starting point. With evening sessions typically starting in September and January, you can begin your counselling journey while maintaining your current commitments.
The course covers all the foundational qualities and skills discussed in this article, providing both theoretical understanding and extensive practical experience. You’ll develop self-awareness, refine your natural empathy into professional skill, and discover whether counselling is the right path for you.
Apply now for Mindspace’s Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills and take the first step toward developing the qualities that make a good counsellor. Your journey to making a meaningful difference in others’ lives begins here.
