 Okay. Good morning everybody. Hope all of you are doing well and welcome to all the e-learning students as well. Thank you for joining in all those who are online. Hope everybody is okay. All right. I think it gets started. Let's just start with a word of prayer and hope there are a few more who will come in. Let's just start praying. Heavenly Father, we come to You, Lord, in Jesus' name. Pray God for Your grace over us. Thank You, Lord, that You work within us. Even as we move into today's class to learn other skills, we pray that You will give us every wisdom and every knowledge that we need to look into the way that we can help and work with people. We pray, God, that we will rely on You even when we need to ask some difficult questions. Lord, that You will help us keep it fruitful. Lord, for You, thank You, God, for being with each one of us. Lord, we pray that You will encourage us and embody our soul and our spirit. Thank You, Father, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. Okay. So just let's have a quick recap about what we did last week. Would anyone like to quickly go back and look at what we spoke about last week? What is the skill that we learned last week? Maybe two skills that we've already learned last week and week before that. Okay, I'll start maybe and then see if we can remember a fresher memory. We started off with attending skills that was not last week, last to last week. We had looked at how we can attend, how we attend verbally, how we attend non-verbally as well as using our body language. That's what we had spoken of in the previous class. What about last week? Anybody? Responding skills. Yeah, okay. We had done responding skills where we spoke about how we can respond to feeling, we can respond to content, can respond to meaning, right, and doing that both together. We had spoken about summative reflecting. Okay. So today we're going to look at a very important skill in counselling, which is what we call is questioning. Okay, just give me a minute. I'll just put up the screen. Sorry, just give me a minute. Okay, so we're going to look at another very important skill, which is questioning. Now, the skills in questioning may seem actually pretty simple, right? I mean, you may be wondering as to what is the big effect of a questioning to develop a skill in good questions. But your questioning in counselling is what can really change the entire counselling process or the counselling series, because the kind of questions that you ask, it's not just to gather information, but it's also to be able to help them reflect, to help them to think, to help them to problem solve, to help them to make decisions, so to even help them to make choices. So the way that you bring in questions is just not information gathering. Like sometimes when you meet a new person, you may ask a few questions. You know, what's your name, where do you stay, how old are you? Yes, that's information gathering. But when you ask questions about more deeper ones, like what do you think about such and such thing? If this was this way, how do you think you would approach it? Now, all of that brings about a lot more depth in the conversation, not depth in what a person may be going through or experiencing, right? So, questioning in itself is an extremely important skill when they're looking at counselling. So let's just look at some of the details of what is the purpose, what do we see as the purpose of counselling skills. When you look at a purpose, the basic purpose is to, one, it guides the counselling conversation. It is through your questioning that you may find a lot more answers. So what you're doing is you're adding a lot more enrichment to your counselling story. So when you effectively question, you're bringing about the, yes, Lubega, I think you've raised your hand. Ma'am, I had a question. I don't know if this is the right time to ask. Yes. When you were doing the other assignment, there is one question that had confidentiality, consent and another thing. Okay. Is it true that it had no correct answer? No, it would have had a correct answer. Probably it was not. It didn't take the correct answer. I will be looking at all of your papers manually. Okay, so it's just not going to be generated by the app, but I will be looking at it manually. So don't worry even if you have not got a correct answer or if it shows wrong and when you think it's correct, I am going to be looking at each of them manually. Okay? Thank you, Ma'am. Okay. All right. Yes. Yes. Toby Loba, I think you've raised your hand. Hello, ma'am. Yes, hello. And suddenly the assignment is here. We have some questions that you asked us to pick more than one option. But I'm unable to pick more than one option. So, and it affects my mark, so I'm unable to pick more than one option on the questions when I'm attending the assignment. Okay. Is that, is everyone else facing that? Because I, there was one question that was there. Yes, ma'am. There was one question. Is it the same with you? Yeah. Don't worry. I'll review that. Okay. So sometimes some of the settings, you know, once you set it, if you're doing so many and it doesn't get saved than the setting. So I will look into that. And if there is a discrepancy like that, you will get the marks that is, that is given. Okay. So nobody saw that. I, I'm yet to look at it. I was, I wasn't keeping well last week, but I will look at it the following week. Okay. All right. Okay. Yeah, I think that's no more. Yeah. So we were looking at questioning and we were just looking at why questioning is necessary. What I'd like to do is I'd like any two volunteers from your group, anyone, one over here, one person acts as the questioner and the other is role-playing, just answering. Okay. Because I'd like, and you don't have to bring about anything private. We're not doing a counseling session. Let's support. Let's say you're going to, you want to understand about what happened in, in the day, in a day, like yesterday, what happened yesterday or today for those of you who's still going through, maybe you'll are in the night of the yesterday for us in India. Just to understand how the day was. Okay. So I'd like two volunteers, one person who can just question and find out about how, you know, your partner's day went. It's just to bring about certain understanding of sometimes how we bring about questions. And how we can actually enrich our questioning. Okay. So any two volunteers, any volunteer, someone who will question and someone who will answer. Okay. Jeffine has one. Who's the other volunteer? I need one more volunteer. One more volunteer, please. Rosalind, would you like to be the other volunteer? Someone raise their hand. Rosalind. Okay. Rosalind. Yeah. So Rosalind. Okay. Good. All right. So which of you would like to be the questioner? Let Jeffine do the question. Okay. So Jeffine. Okay. We will switch it. We'll switch it. I have Jeffine sitting right in front of you. Okay. So Jeffine is going to question and Rosalind, you're going to be giving the answer. So Jeffine, what you need to do is just find out about how Rosalind's day was. Okay. Find out certain details about what her day was. So it's a very open event. It's up to you how you'd like to take that. Yeah. Go ahead. Ma'am, are we friends or like? You're like classmates. You're like classmates. Classmates. Okay ma'am. Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. Hi Rosalind. Hi Jeffine. Hi. Hi. How are you doing? Not so good. Not so good. What's the reason? Yeah. I had a bad day yesterday. Oh, your yesterday was bad. Sorry to hear that. Is there anything that you would like to share with me? It's my sister's problem. She has, she's facing a very teenage problem. Not exactly teenage, but then some issues with her daughter. Okay. Okay. I understand it must be very hard. How is your sister doing now? Like I said, not good. Okay. What else? How is everything? I don't know how. Yeah. Good you called me. Actually I did want you to share it with someone, but like I was clueless like whom to approach. I was also thinking about your, you know, to, you know, to, you know, to, you know, to pick counseling on this matter with someone like whom I can trust. Yeah. That's, that's a very good thought. I, even I'm so happy that I can be here for you. If you would like to share anything, I'm always there to listen. It's like, you know, my, my niece, she wants to move out of the house. Okay. Yeah. So it's quite serious. So I don't know how to handle those now. Like as family. Okay. I understand. I'm still not very happy with her decision. Can we please end this? I'm sorry about this so much. Okay. That's a good job. Good job. Thanks, Rosalind. Okay. What Rosalind, would you like to be the, the person who questions and maybe success you can answer? It's the same thing. Just to ask about your deal. Okay. Success. You're the, you're the one who's going to be giving Rosalind answers to her questions. Okay. All right, man. Let's try. Go ahead. Go ahead, Rosalind. Hi, success. How are you? I'm fine. Good morning. Very good morning. So how was your day? My day was so hectic yesterday. I beg your pardon? My day was so hectic. Mixed my flight and I wasn't happy about it because I had to pay extra charges, which is, I find difficult. Oh. I have to pay. Like what went wrong? Were you like sleeping extra? Like what? Traffic. The traffic was so I didn't need it often. So the traffic was so, so much so I couldn't meet up. Oh, yeah. Traffic something which is like beyond our control, but you could have left an hour before. Yes, I, I actually, I tried all my best but worked much on me. The whole thing was so, so much so. I was so confused at point. But how? Yeah, it happened success. Never mind. Glad you reached. Yes, I thank God. But it wasn't funny because I got through the next destination about 12 p.m. 12 a.m. rather. So I was sleeping at the airport. So you must be quite tired then? So, so tired. So tired. So I wasn't happy at all because I wouldn't be able to meet up my apartment this morning because we are, I'm, I'm still going for an hour journey. Before getting to my destination. So I'm so, I'm so sad. I don't know why I'm so, I'm, I'm, I'm happy. The whole thing just makes me tired. You're sad at the same time you're happy is that what you're saying? I'm, I'm all happy. I'm, I'm happy. I'm happy. Okay, okay. Anyway, just forget what happened and don't ruin the, the day for it. You know, forget what happened and start fresh. Thank you so much. I'm so glad. Not a fresh anymore. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so let me ask the two people who were, who were on the other side of the questions. That's Rosalind and success. And you all were asked questions. How, how much were you able to share? What were your, how much did the questions help you share? Rosalind success. How much did the questions that were asked to you help you share or not share? If it's a friend. No, like Jeffy knows, Jeffy knows questions. We're just looking at that scenario. Yeah. Questions. Yeah. So how much were you able to share with the question she asked? Yeah. Of course I was able to share like almost what I wanted to share and yeah, it helped. Okay. All right. What about you? Yeah. Come here with question please. What, how much were you able to share with the questions that were asked to you? Almost all the questions. Almost all the questions. Okay. So, so thank you. I think that was a, that was a good, I know I put you all in the spot, but nevertheless, just to help you all, you know, I think of both points of time. Both of you all did really well, Jeffy and Rosalind as you all started the conversation. After some time, you all must have noticed that you all got stuck. You all didn't know what else to ask. Okay. Or how else to proceed. Now that often can happen even when we're counseling and that's not mainly a reflection on your, on your counseling that they're not able to proceed. It may be a reflection on us as a counselor because we may not be asking and directing the right kind of questions for them to share or to bring up a certain understanding or a reflection. Okay. And that's why the, the skill is extremely important to know how do we use it in a, in a form, in a way that, that can completely help the counseling, not just give you information, but give you something a lot more deeper than, than information. Okay. So let's move on. So the, the point of the, of, of these skills, when is, is this used or when do we ensure that we, we employ these skills. So it's not just important in the information gathering. It's useful there because you are, you get a lot of data, but it is, it's something that you can even use throughout the entire counseling process. And there are certain counseling approaches. Okay. Like even as we're looking at the model, remember we looked at an ABCDE model before we started. That's one of the basic models that are there. Similarly, there are different models or different approaches. There is an approach called as the solution focused therapy that just focuses on the counseling, giving questions. It does, it, and of course there is a reflection of feeling all the skills are used, but there isn't too much of suggestions or, or brainstorming. Any of that is not given. The entire process of counseling takes place just by questions. So the questions are so deep. The questions are so vast. The questions are so intricate and well thought of that just by the questions, the counseling is able to bring about ideas and thoughts and how they can change their situation. That's a very interesting approach. And it takes a lot of work for a counselor to be able to listen carefully and ask the right questions so that the counseling can come to a place of resolution of their situation. Okay. So if you are interested, there is a lot of reading about solution focused where a lot of things come by just questions like, for example, one of the biggest questions that they ask in, while beginning a counseling session is, what are, what, what do you see as the best outcome for our conversation today? That's how generally they begin it. And so the counseling actually think it's okay. And I haven't asked the right question. Actually the question really means what do you want from this counseling session? Okay. And, but then the way that it is asked, it helps them see, it makes it more personalized for them. It says, okay, through this, I want to know how to cope with this kind of an issue, or I want to become stronger. And so just by that question, you get to understand the basic goal of what a person is looking at when they come in for a counseling session. So these questions are very, very important. And it's a skill. It's just, like I said, it's just not information gathering, but it is to help you through the entire process of counseling. Okay. So what do you think, what does counseling do? When you're looking at counseling, the first and foremost thing it does is it assists to clarify information that may seem ambiguous to the counselor. So questions during the counseling session helps to open up new areas of discussion. So they can assist to pinpoint at a certain issue. They can assist to clarify information that may be ambiguous. Questions also invite the counseling to think or recall information that can help in the counseling's journey of self-exploration. Okay. So it can do many things. One, it opens new areas of discussion. The second, it pinpoints an issue that can help you to clarify something that may not be very clear to the counselor, to the counselor. And it also helps the counseling to think or recall information that can help them in their journey of self-exploration. Like for example, when you ask a question like, what do you think about your upbringing? Like you're asking them about their upbringing, maybe how their parents and what kind of relationship that they share. So as they are sharing that information, you will see that the counseling themselves are exploring something about that situation or that phase that may give them some clues or some ideas about what is going on in their lives right now. Okay. So as a counselor, it is important to come about all of this. So some of the examples that we can look at is, there are some examples of how you could do this is like, for example, when you want to clarify information, you can say, I'm sorry, I didn't understand. Would you please repeat that? Okay. Or here, what do you think about what I just said? Or what do you think about, like I said, how do you sense that your upbringing was? Or would you give me an example of what you meant by conflicts in the home or bickering in the home? So some of the words or some of the phrases that your counselor uses can be taken about in order to have a better understanding about the situation that they are doing. So this is one thing that Questing does. Excuse me. It also aids in self exploration. And if you remember the first and foremost thing that we look at when we are looking at a counseling process is exploration. Right. So it helps to understand a lot more about your counseling's life. So here are some questions that are there. Just give me a moment, please. Some questions that you can think about is what further thoughts do you have about this person your parents want you to marry? So it's actually going deeper into what the person thinks about maybe marriage or about whatever the situation is. Right. It's not just what they have told you, but a lot into what they may be thinking about. The next question that can often be asked. Okay. I need to just get something to clear my throat. Give me a second. So sorry. Okay. So some other questions that another example of a question is maybe this counseling has spoken about how the father makes the counseling feel important. So there's a little bit of clarification and understanding about what the counseling said. So he said you mentioned that your father always made you feel important. What did you mean? Okay. Or what are you feeling as we are talking about this? So it's a lot more deeper than what's been actually asked. So the counseling gets to explore a lot more within about what they may be feeling or what their thoughts are or what may be within that they have not been able to express otherwise. Okay. It also encourages the client to talk. It's an invitation for the client to talk about maybe a certain situation. All right. The example given here is you said something about your sister a little while ago. Are you interested in telling me about her now? So the example of Jafina and Rosalind, she was talking about her knees and it's actually an invitation to ask her to talk about it because Rosalind seemed to be quite forthcoming with the information that there was something wrong with her knees and to maybe just add a question as it seems to have bothered you so much. Would you like to talk about it? Would you like to share? Thank you. Thanks so much. Excuse me. So it's just to ask her if she would be interested in talking about now. So even when somebody is stuck and you are getting the idea that someone wants to talk, someone wants to share something and I think Jafina said that. She said, do you like I'm here to listen to you if you'd like to share about it now. So it encourages them to bring about that kind of a conversation. Okay. Or it helps to open new areas of discussion. So maybe your councillor is talking about some, some, some situation at some area and you want to explore something else in another in a new area. So it's like this. You're very disappointed at the way you're treated at office. How do you feel at home? So what are you trying to do here is to see whether the relationships that they have at the office and at home are different or how they, how they experience these, these different relationships. So that's, that's what you're also doing. So when you open up new areas, it opens up new, new spheres on new areas of discussion. Okay. Now, I'd like to take some time just to help us see that productive questions are, is, is a positive form of counseling. What do productive questions do? It creates and produces interactions that have real abundant payoffs. You know, there's a huge benefit for the counselling as well as the councillor as against unproductive questioning. Now unproductive questioning is something that we will, we will, we will look at later, but unproductive questioning, it gives you information, maybe give you some information, but it gives you very limited responses. Okay. So here are some types of productive questioning. So the productive, one of the types of productive questioning is when a questioning energizes a thought. Many times people think something about a situation. Like for example, I may tell you a fact. I may say my marriage in the last 10 years has been very plain. My husband and I don't talk too much. We, we, you know, we just, we just talk about the important things of the functional things, how to buy groceries, where to send the kids. So that's an information I'm giving you, but an energizing thought helps you to, when you give a question like that, it helps the counselling to really have an understanding of what they think. So maybe a question like what, what have you seen has happened to your marriage in the last 10 years? They have not given you, they've given you only some data, but what you're hoping to get from them is their understanding of the situation. Right. So what you're doing is to help them. You're helping them to make a connection between the data they've given you as well as the thoughts that they're thinking about it. Okay. So if you look at the other questions, that is what is happening in your mind right now, or what are you thinking about right now, or how do you explain somebody's behavior, you are getting a lot of understanding about how they are processing that information. Okay. The next is productive questioning helps to get them to express feelings. Ma'am, you're on mute. I've been on mute for a long time. No, no, just two, maybe two, three seconds. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. So when they are talking about a data, you are, you would like them, like to understand where they, what they're feeling. So that's where you ask these questions of what makes you feel this way. How do you feel about this? What do you sense is happening between you and your husband right now? How long have you been feeling like this? So productive questions adds in more. It gives you a lot more of understanding about what's going on within, what's going on internally in the person's mind. Okay. So that's, it's an energizing thought. And it also helps express feeling. The third one, it helps to link certain comments. We'll just look at the example here and I'll explain that a little bit more. Here, let's say the client says, my mother constantly calls me dumb, I guess maybe. Okay. I'd like you to just read that while I just have a quick off. So let's just read it together. Client says my mother constantly calls me dumb. I guess maybe I don't work hard enough. But the work is too hard for me. Counselor, I hear something in what you are saying. I wonder if you seem to agree with your mother. Okay. Thank you so much. So what, what is happening here is the client feels that from what her mother has called her, her mother has labeled her something and she, you know, she's struggling with some work. All right. And the fact that the counseling has bought these two statements together, the counselor is making an assumption of the two statements and bringing about linking certain comments and bringing about the question. Okay. So she's saying, I wonder if you seem to agree with your mother because that's what she, she's attempting to, to say. And that's exactly what the counselor is bringing up. So sometimes that's what you can do when your counselor is saying something and giving you two different information or two different understanding or has said a certain information and giving you a thought process or giving you a feeling. You know, you can like, like for example, the earlier example I gave you, right? I've given you information about how my marriage is and maybe your next question is how do you feel about it? And I may say, you know, I feel, I feel very disappointed. I feel there's nothing left in this. Okay. So you can, there are certain things that you begin to link. So you can see you feel hopeless because, because that doesn't seem to be any progress in your marriage. And I wonder if you believe that very deeply within, you know, so when you're doing that, what you're doing is you've made an assumption and you've asked a question to help to see how they process that understanding that you have got. Okay. So, so productive question helps to link different kinds of comments in the counseling, in the counseling's remarks. Okay. Sorry, ma'am. You're on mute again. Okay. I'm sorry. I think it's a, yeah. So redirecting is where you, you are helping to refocus redirect on a focus. Maybe your counseling is making like, um, your counselor counseling is talking about in this case, she's maybe talking about the focus is a lot about maybe a child. Okay. Um, maybe the counselor has told you that my marriage between me and my husband over the last 10 years have not been very fruitful and then quickly goes on to tell you that, you know, my son is not, is bringing up a lot of issues, right? It's bringing up, she's bringing up something about the family marriage. She's bringing something about the son. She's probably bringing up about other things. But what you are seeing is that you need to have focus on maybe one issue at a time. So that's what a productive questioning can do. Is it possible you focus on your son more to avoid what is happening between you and your husband? So when you're actually bringing about a question, it gets them to think to see whether they are actually, uh, there's a lot of focus on one area of their lives when actually it should be on the other area. So you're, you're helping to redirect the, the, the session also towards maybe a core problem that needs to be discussed a lot more rather than having the counseling discuss something that may not be of some importance. So that's what productive questioning does to help to bring a lot of things in place so that you can really explore and get your counseling to understand. Okay. Next, we will also look into what are some of those unproductive questioning. And if we're looking into unproductive questioning, a lot of these questions in unproductive, um, the unproductive tie is actually quite unnecessary. Okay. And if you look at these examples, the first one is when you're picking on the client or you're picking on the counseling, it's saying, you know, what's the matter with that or why do you always say that? Why don't you ever listen to what I say is when you're actually picking on the person and that doesn't help in the counseling session at all. When you're, in other words, when you're getting annoyed with them and you are bringing up questions that, you know, may be very judgmental about them or any kind of questions that helps, that makes them see that they aren't in the right place or they aren't thinking properly, all of that becomes to be unproductive questioning. The second kind of unproductive questioning is what we call as a world gatherer. That is, you know, you are asking questions that do not pertain to the issue but have, but you're trying to find all details outside of it like this, you know, do you have to share a room with your brother? Do you have a TV? Do you have a fridge? All of this is not important to the, to the, you know, to the, to the session and it's like, how do you travel from here to there? How many buses do you have to take? Those are not necessary for your, for your sessions or do you think that the session is supportive for you? Even there, it's, it's actually trying to pick up a lot of, you know, you're gathering things that are really not necessary for your, for, for, for the, for the counselling. Okay. So let's just look at some characteristics of good questioning and after that we will, you know, we look at types of questions, maybe certain examples of questions and find out what are the best kind of uses, best questions that can be used in a counselling session. Okay. Often it may seem that a counselling session consists of bombarding the client with questions but the counse, the counsellor who is judicious about the way they use questions can really actually attain a lot of things. Okay. So first and foremost, questions should be used as instruments to open channels of communication and it is not just only to interrogate, that is to find out or to, to be curious. It's actually to, to connect. It should be in a way to build a rapport and your question should not seem very technical or it should not seem very mechanical without having any sense of an information or, or any sense of a heart to it. Like I'm sure some of us would have experienced this when you go to a doctor, a doctor who just doesn't have time. So, you know, you can, you can make out the difference between a warm doctor or a cold person who's warm or a person who's cold. So a person who's cold will say yes, what do you want? Okay. Four symptoms. This is this, this is this, this is that. That's it, right? But let's say a person who's a warm person, say what's your name, how did you come here? You know, did you have your breakfast today? Right? Maybe these kind of questions seem very, very simple, but nevertheless they connect, right? Okay. What brought you here today? How can I help you? What, what would you like me to do for you? So all of these actually base, it, it opens up that channel of communication. Okay. It's important to, when you're asking questions to interspersed with listening, so it's just not waiting for the specific answer to your question, but being willing to listen to more than what they have to say. Okay. And that's where a lot of times even your silence comes in, like when your counselling is answering something and like, maybe you're asking how was your day? My day was good. And if you could actually wait for some silence, you know, wait with some silence, you may get a little bit more of things. Yeah, except for the morning where I had some such and such things. So it is important to use those attention, attentive skills that we learned, even with your questions. Because when you interspersed with that, you're actually helping a lot more for the counselling to share with you. Okay. Then questions should follow on from a previous response and must encourage them to build upon their last response. So when you're saying, how's everybody at home? So I may say, hey, I'm my dad and my mom, they're okay, but yesterday my dog was not ready. Okay. How's office? Okay. My office is okay. I got fired yesterday. Oh, all right. I'm sorry about that. How's Judge? You know, so you know what's happening here? It should, you should be able to build upon a response that's been there earlier. And because it helps to complete a certain issue that you, that you're trying to get to understand from your counselling. Okay. Like, maybe this is a little bit more deeper. You're asking your counselling, how did you feel about your child talking to you like that yesterday? I felt, I felt extremely upset about it. Okay. Now my next question could be, I could ask, what did your husband say about it? You've kept to the topic, but your counselling has given you a big clue that she's been upset with what happened with her and her son. So the point is to encourage them to build upon their last response. So if I were to say, I was extremely upset with what my son did yesterday. So, and that's when your user reflective feelings said, yeah, I can, I can imagine that must have been really hard on me. What were you thinking at that time when you felt like that? You know, so I've actually built in a little bit more deeper into getting to understand the thoughts of my counselling. So she may say something like, I was just wondering whether my son really loves me or not, or whether you know, what's happened to these kids these days? Why do they, why is there so much of disrespect? So, you know, you're getting ideas, you're getting attitudes, you're getting deeper thoughts into what's happened. So a question should encourage them to build upon something. So if you sense, remember the way that you can understand that is if you feel uncomfortable. If you're beginning to feel uncomfortable about what to say next, okay, that's when you sometimes jump from one to another, from one response into another. So be careful to encourage them to build upon the earlier question, okay? And lastly, at the end of questioning, to clarify a problem situation, you use it to clarify a problem situation, you clarify generally by summarizing something. So that's what you could do at the end of your questioning, you know, you're saying, okay, so what I heard you're saying is that right? Is this how you wanted me to see this? So that's again a use of question that you can have there. Okay. Let's take a break of 10 minutes and we will come back. It's 10.51 on my clock. We will come back by 10 minutes, 10.50. Sorry, 11.01.