TEACHING EMPLOYEE COUNSELING SKILLS TO MANAGEMENT STUDENTS: A SIMULATION


Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 14, 1987 

 188

TEACHING EMPLOYEE COUNSELING SKILLS TO MANAGEMENT STUDENTS: A SIMULATION 
 

Ronald R. Sims, School of Business Administration 
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23185 

(804) 253-4868 
 

ABSTRACT 
 
This paper presents a simulation which has the goal of 
improving management student’s skills in employee 
counseling. The assumption is that management students 
properly taught or trained to counsel employees will know 
the importance of good communication which is essential 
for a satisfactory management-employee relationship. 
 

INTRODUCTION 
 
Personal problems--alcohol or drug abuse, marital problems, 
mental illness, and so on--experienced by employees often 
lead or contribute to low morale and reduced productivity 
thereby effecting an entire organization. It is estimated, for 
example, that about 10% of the U.S. workforce suffers from 
drinking problems--more than 10 million employees 
nationwide [7]. Therefore, it is often advisable that 
management “help” its employees through their difficulties. 
In addition to the personal problems experienced by 
employees, managers must also deal with work-related 
problems--absenteeism and poor work performance, some of 
which may indeed ensue from personal problems. Many 
managers, who have the responsibility of counseling, have 
not received specific training in this skill [1]. Consequently, 
these managers may feel inadequate, and this may in turn 
result in “shying away” from counseling or avoiding it due 
to fears of losing control over the situation. Also they may 
fear alienating themselves from co-workers, whom they 
have disciplined, or of their inability to handle personal 
hardships, although they contribute to low morale and 
reduced productivity. This paper will present a simulation 
which has the goal of improving management student’s 
skills in employee counseling. The assumption is that 
management students properly taught or trained to counsel 
employees will know the importance of good 
communication which is essential for a satisfactory 
management-employee relationship. The goal of employee 
counseling is improvement in an individual’s attitude and 
work performance. Students are taught that those involved in 
a true employee counseling session are involved in a helping 
relationship This relationship is sometimes an emotional 
burden. It is a relationship which requires confidentiality and 
being approachable. 
 
The objectives of this simulation are: 
1) Teach students employee counseling skills 
2) Accustom students to looking objectively at their own 

behavior with other students 
3) Accustom students to sharing their feelings and video-

taped records of their behavior during simulated 
employee and manager (counselor) role play 

4) Increase student awareness of the diversity of feelings 
and behaviors which an employee may elicit 

 
There are two aspects to this teaching framework. One 
aspect is presented during a one hour lecture and open class 
discussion with the students. The lecture focuses on the 
counseling relationship which takes the technological and 
organizational culture into consideration. The second aspect 
requires the students to role play both the part of a troubled 
employee and a manager! counselor. The author has found 
that a class of 20 or fewer students works best with this 
simulation. This allows for active discussion and ensures 
that all students are able to experience both roles. The 

simulation requires at least five or six hours (two three-hour 
sessions or three two-hour sessions) of class time. The 
author received support from school administrators and the 
curriculum committee in the original design of this 
simulation. 
 
Preliminary Steps 
 
Prior to conducting the one hour orientation and open class 
discussion on the counseling relationship, management 
students take the following steps (for our purposes we will 
specifically focus on counseling employees on work 
performance): 
 
The first step involves students communicating job 
expectations and performance standards to fellow students 
(twenty minutes should be allocated for this step). This step 
requires students to practice explaining what is required of 
another person in completing a given task (i.e., becoming 
more proficient in running a word processing machine). The 
importance of this step is illustrated in the following 
example: If someone blindfolded you and asked that you hit 
a target, in all probability your efforts would fail. As 
ludicrous as that may sound, many employees find 
themselves in similar situations. They may be given sketchy 
and incomplete job descriptions and little else and told to do 
a good job. Their performance may fall short of the mark 
because the performance expectations have not been clearly 
defined. Students are asked to respond to the following 
questions: "Did I make it clear what exactly was expected of 
them?” “Have I communicated clearly my performance 
standards?" 
 
The second preliminary step (one hour) is self-assessment. It 
is explained to the students that this self- assessment is 
important because our attitudes have a tremendous affect on 
the attitude and behavior of others. If we have high 
expectations of our employees, there is a strong possibility 
that high performance will be the result. Conversely, low 
expectations often produce low performance. Therefore, it is 
important for them as future managers to evaluate what they 
expect of their subordinates. 
 
Some of the questions that help in this self-assessment are: 
“How do I perceive the person (subordinates) to whom I 
communicated the job expectations and performance 
standards?” Have I communicated to them in such a manner 
that success (or failure) is supported? 
 
Once these two preliminary steps are completed, the one 
hour lecture orientation on the counseling relationship 
(which takes the technological and organizational culture 
into consideration is presented. A condensed form of the 
lecture is presented below: 
 
Row Organizational Culture Structures Communication (1 
Hour Lecture) 
 
Culture is the first and most pervasive factor of an 
individual’s life. At the same time, it is the last frontier to be 
recognized and explored [31. One of the most salient aspects 
of culture is the development, refinement, and organization 
of verbal and written communication among people [2]. 
Managers have been carefully trained to plan, organize, 
direct, mo- 



Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 14, 1987 

 189

tivate and control various parts of the organization. Effective 
employee counseling is very often ignored, however, in 
management education--instead education is concentrated on 
the technical processes of the organization. Managers need 
an entirely different set of skills to empathically respond and 
communicate with employees than they receive through 
“technical” education. More specifically, students must learn 
the vocabulary, syntax and skills needed to clearly 
communicate their ideas to their employees. They must also 
be capable of expressing a full range of responses to their 
employees’ concerns. 
 
Any simulation designed to sharpen students’ employee 
counseling skills must take into consideration the cultural 
constraints of organizational life. This consideration might 
be facilitated by having students visualize a continuum of 
communication (Figure 1) with conversation at one end and 
counseling at the other. Other regions on the continuum 
would include interviewing and advising. As such the 
continuum moves progressively from content to process of 
communication. Students facility in moving effectively from 
one place to another along the continuum is sought as a final 
objective. A brief discussion of each of the points on the 
continuum are then presented to the students as follows (10 
minutes). 
 
Conversation is the friendly verbal exchange among people 
that is not necessarily imbued with purpose. The content of 
conversation is culturally normed; what a person may say, 
and what responses are acceptable are prescribed according 
to the situation. And, the appropriate degree of affect or 
emotion displayed by the speaker, physical location of the 
speaker relative to others, and appropriate voice levels are 
all prescribed according to the social situation [6, p. 100]. 
Such cultural conventions facilitate communication among 

strangers and regulate the conduct of normed behavior [4]. 
These conventions, however, may inhibit communication at 
every juncture where behavior that is not culturally normed 
needs to be exposed, explored, and analyzed. 
 
Interviewing is a form of conversation which has a specific 
purpose. It can be thought of as an exchange of intellectual 
information. It is important to note the distinction between 
questioning an employee about his or her attitudes, values, 
goals, or motivational needs during an interview and seeking 

that same information during a counseling session. 
 
Advising, another region on the continuum, consists of 
advocating or recommending a particular course of action. In 
such a situation there are implicit as well as explicit 
definitions of expert and non- expert. Such communication 
tends to create dependency and tends to be role specific. 
 
Thus far in the discussion on the continuum of 
communication, the process of transactions has remained in 
the background. The element of ritual has directed in most 
cases the respective roles of manager and employee. 
However, as progression is made toward the counseling end 
of the continuum, rituals and prescribed roles are moved into 
the background and the immediate process of 
communication is given increased attention. Posture, 
gesticulation, inflection, organizational setting, behaviors, 
and themes now become the focus of the manager - 
employee transactions. 
 
Counseling is the last region on the communication 
continuum. The goal of counseling is to influence specific 
attitudes and behaviors. Therefore counseling must be a 
cooperative effort, a shared responsibility of both the 
manager and the employee. It often involves choosing a 
specific course of acting for a particular situation at a given 
time. Effective employee counseling depends very much on 
saying the right thing in the right manner to the employee. 
Saying the wrong thing will do little to motivate the 
employee to overcome the problem and could indeed make 
matters worse. Counseling skills include listening, 
understanding, initiating communication, effective 
communication, and evaluating solutions. Although 
employee counseling relies on the exchange of information 
through the region of conversation, interviewing, and 

advising, it differs from these regions in that it is not always 
content centered. According to Schlesinger [8, p. 183], the 
metaphor that most clearly depicts this change in focus from 
content to process is: counseling focuses not only on the 
words of the song but on the melody of the music. 
 
Simulated Employee Counseling Role Play (4 hours) 
 
Before actually gathering for the actual role play sessions, 
each student receives an introduction to the



Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 14, 1987 

 190

session in the form of a handout on employee counseling 
skills. The skills are concisely defined and explained through 
examples. To facilitate effective employee counseling the 
following format has been designed which, although 
comprehensive, does not favor any one of the variety of 
counseling approaches. 
 
Employee Counseling Skills Format 
 
The employee counseling format consists of the 
experientially-based learning of specifically enumerated 
counseling skills 
I. Skills of Interviewing 

A. Attending behavior (paying attention to what is 
going on in the interview) 

B. Creating an atmosphere for talking (open 
invitation for participation) 

C. Encouraging discussion and dialogue (minimal 
encouragement to talk) 

II. Listening Skills 
A. Reflection of feeling (carefully think about the 

feelings that develop) 
B. Paraphrasing (restate or paraphrase what the 

person has said) 
C. Summarization of feeling 
D. Summarization of content 
E. Learning employees’ attitude toward performance 

evaluation 
III. Skill of Self-Expression 

A. Expression of feeling 
B. Sharing behavior 
C. Direct, mutual communication 

IV. Interpretation 
A. Empathy (the ability to see the world from another 

person’s viewpoint; to try to experience the world 
with the same emotions, attitudes, and reasoning 
as that person) 

B. Positive regard (a demonstration of respect and 
acceptance) 

C. Concreteness (directness and accuracy in 
communication) 

D. Genuineness (honesty and consistency in one’s 
ability to communicate valid statements of one’s 
feeling) 

E. Diagnosing the causes of poor worker 
performance 

F. Identifying employees with problems 
 
The first session, which lasts fifteen minutes, opens with an 
individual review of the first three skills which is followed 
by a discussion of the students’ comprehension and feelings 
about the skills. 
 
Next, a simulated manager-employee role play involving 
one student as an employee and another student as a 
manager takes place. The student (manager) is expected to 
ask questions to assist the student (employee) in solving a 
particular work problem. Three students are asked to 
volunteer for the counselor role. Two of the volunteer 
counselors leave the room before the first interview is 
begun. Each counselor then enters the role play naively. (See 
Figure 2 for a presentation of the physical format in which 
the employee counseling exercises are conducted). 
 
Each interview is videotaped for five minutes and then 
interrupted. A faculty member uses a zoom lens camera to 
videotape the eyes, arms, hands, legs, and feet as well as the 
entire body of the student manager! counselor and the 
student employee. This allows the entire continuum of 
communication to be addressed, while bringing posture, 
gesticulation, inflection, and setting into the foreground. 
Before the first interview is discussed, the second student 

manager enters the room and is videotaped interviewing the 
employee. This process is repeated for the third student 
manager, and then all three interviews are played back and 

analyzed individually. 
 
One of the role plays the students may be assigned in dude 
the following: Nancy, the supervisor of a large group of 
accounting personnel, suspects that John, a tax auditor. is 
suffering from alcoholism. At one time, John was an 
excellent employee, but he has recently begun to perform 
erratically and demonstrate behavioral problems. For 
example, John made errors in auditing a clients taxes and has 
also experienced several interpersonal problems with Nancy 
and other coworkers. Nancy has just begun to talk to John in 
her office. All of Nancy’s statements are poor and represent 
the use of improper counseling techniques. Your job in the 
role of Nancy is not to make the same mistakes. 
 
The first student manager and employee are asked to 
describe their feelings during the interview. The employee is 
asked to describe how the student manager had been 
particularly effective and, at other times, less helpful. The 
videotape of their interview is then replayed once without 
interruption. The tape is rewound and played a second time. 
It is then stopped frequently to allow the group to comment 
on their perception of the interview and the extent to which 
the student manager/counselor has been able to incorporate 
the skills reviewed prior to the role play. 
 
Observers are also asked to discuss their possible responses 
to a particular employee statement and the student manager 
is given the opportunity to respond differently. Each 
observer has a form (See Figure 3) which identifies 
particular statements made by the student manager (Nancy). 
The observers are expected to decide what Nancy should 
have said if they disagree with her responses and questions 
to the employee. The student manager may be asked what he 
or she is experiencing during a particular transaction. In this 
respect the tape review session resembles Norman Kagan’s 
Interpersonal Process Recall (IRP) technique [5]. When the 
next set of employee counseling skills is introduced, new 
volunteers are selected to assume the simulated employee 
role and the manager roles. The above procedure is followed 
until all the students 



Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 14, 1987 

 191

have played the role of the counselor or employee and all the 
employee counseling skills have been simulated and 
discussed. The instructor and students assign a pass or fail 
grade to each student at the end of the simulation. This grade 
is based on each students completion of all of the employee 
counseling skills. 
 
During the simulation many questions arise. Some are 

directly related to the material, and some relate to the 
employee problems the student managers are confronting, or 
have confronted. Traditional teachings on how to relate to 
employees are often challenged and discussed. Thus, the 
employee counseling format provides an ideal way for 
introducing employee counseling skills and also for handling 
a very broad spectrum of questions relating generally to the 
whole area of the manager - employee relationship. It should 
be noted that the procedure outlined above has proven most 
useful in sensitizing students to their accustomed styles of 
employee counseling and to possible improvements in style. 
 
During the simulation, a trusting and close working 
relationship develops among the students and faculty which 
has been found to be essential to fostering open and honest 
communication among the participants. Participants must 
know that everyone involved i5 equally committed and 
vulnerable, and shares a common set of critical standards for 
reviewing and analyzing their performance. 
 
Discussion 
 
Students who have gone through the fifteen employee 
counseling simulations thus far, report increased sensitivity 
toward others which serves to facilitate communication. 
When learning is directed away from simply identifying and 
labeling the etiology of employee problems, management 
students are more immediately aware of the process of 
communication. Students are then in a position to intervene 
when appropriate and serve as supportive models for the 
new style of interaction. 
 
The author has found that the simulation works best when 
there are at least two faculty members available to facilitate 

class discussion, videotape the role plays and share 
responsibility for planning and coordinating the simulation. 
Others planning to use the simulation should allow at least 
two weeks time for preparation. Preparation usually entails 
securing the necessary rooms, video equipment, preparing 
lecture material, allowing sufficient time for student self-
assessment and time to setup the room and test the 
equipment the day(s) of the simulation. 
 
The employee counseling simulation presented in this paper 
provides a structure in which any or several styles of 
employee counseling can be presented, practiced, and 
consistently reinforced in teaching management students. 
Likewise, it provides a systematic means of reviewing 
protocols for managing particular employee problems. The 
author believes this simulation has been successful in 
helping students learn employee counseling skills. Teaching 
employee counseling skills accustoms students to looking 
objectively at their own behavior with other students and to 
sharing their feelings and videotaped records of their 
behavior during the simulated role play. Such experiences 
stimulate not only introspection but also an awareness of the 
diversity of feelings and behaviors which an employee may 
elicit. There is no singularly correct style of reflection. There 
are only reflections that more precisely convey how one 
person perceives and responds to another. Such a perspective 
honors the uniqueness of individual relationships and truly 
underscores the art of employee counseling. 
 

REFERENCES 
 
[1] Brown, M. Counseling Skills. Advanced Management 

Journal, 51, 1, pp. 32-35, 1986. 
 
[2] Carroll, J. B. (ed): Language, Thought and Reality: 

Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, 
Mass: The MIT Press, 1964. 

 
[3] Hall, E. T. The Silent Language, Garden City, NY. 

Doubleday-Anchor, 1973. 
 
[4] Johnson, A. H. Teaching Attitudes and Skills in 

Microcounseling. The Journal of Family Practice, 9,2, 
pp. 255-263, 1979. 

 
[5] Kagan, N. Influencing Human Interaction. East 

Lansing, Mich., Michigan State University, 1972. 
 
[6] Krauss, R. M. and Glicksberg, S. Social and nonsocial 

speech. Scientific American, 236, 2, p. 100, 1977. 
 
[7] Kuzmits, F. E. Experiential Exercises in Personnel. 

Columbus, Ohio: Merrill Publishing Co., 1986. 
 
[8] Schlesinger, J. S. Nonverbal Communication: 

Information and application for counselors. Personnel 
and Guidance Journal, 57, 4, p. 183, 1978. 


	Table of Contents
	Volume 14, 1987
	Simulation Gaming as An Experimental Context for the Study of Multicriteria Decision Making
	How to Multiply Your Management Game
	Grading the Personnel In-Basket Exercise
	Simulation: The Players™ Perspective
	The Acute Susceptibility of Nominal Grouping to Negativity
	The Relative Value of the National ABSEL Meetings: An Analysis of Perceptions by Faculty and Deans
	A Survey of Behavioral Labs Used by American Business Schools
	A Structured Framework for Applying Conceptual Models to Problem Analysis: Hardening Up
	An Expert System Approach for Teaching Marketing Case Analysis
	From Theory to Practice: A Model for Teaching Beginning Advertising
	The Use of a Simple Forecasting Technique During an Interactive Computerized Business Game
	An Investigation of the Relationship Between Formal Planning and Simulation Team Performance and Satisfaction
	The Exponential Logarithm as an Algorithm for Business Simulations
	Learning macroeconomic Theory and Policy Analysis Via Microcomputer Simulation
	Laptop: A Principles of Marketing Simulation
	Teaching About Sampling in a Marketing Research Class
	Integrating Decision Support Systems and Business Games
	Demand Generation in a Service Industry Simulation: An Algorithmic Paradox
	ABSEL - At a Crossroads?
	Research on Predicting Performance in the Simulation
	An Expert System for Financial Planners
	"Developing Various Student Learning Abilities Via Writing, the Stock market Game, and Modified Marketplace Game in Beginning Macroeconomics"
	Professional Activity Reports: Getting back to Basics ΠA Preliminary Investigation
	"A Comparison of Performance, Attitudes, and behaviors of MBA and BBA Students in a Simulation Environment: A Preliminary Investigation"
	Decision Styles and Student Simulation Performance: A Replication
	Personal Power Strategies: An Experiential Exercise
	LTL I: A Trucking Simulation Game
	Total Enterprise Business Games: An Evaluation
	Can the Skill of Management be Taught?
	Developing Critical Thinking and Effective Communication
	Meaningful Notebooks and Enhanced Learning Using a Totally Menu-Driven Data base and Decision Support (DSS) Program
	Using a Computerized Menu-Driven Data Entry and fiWhat-Iffl Program as a Pedagogical Enhancement for Management Simulation
	Using a Joint Project Involving MBA Marketing Management and Undergraduate Marketing Research Students to Teach Marketing Research
	Testing the PAGE Technique: Results and Further Developments
	A Comparison of Student Perceptions with Accepted Expectations for Business Simulations
	"Conflict Management in Action: Verbal Strategies, Nonverbal behaviors and Conflict Styles"
	Dramatic Monologues as Surrogates for Experiential Learning
	Influencing One™s Superior: An Assessment and Exercise
	Personality Traits and Organizational Cultures: Two One-Hour Experiential Learning Exercises
	Computype: A Strategic Marketing Game
	Open System Simulations and Simulation Based Research
	"Teaching Forecasting to the Masses: Little Decision Support Training, But a lot of Answers"
	Goal Setting and Performance Evaluation with Different Starting Positions ΠThe Modeling Dilemma
	The Gamesmanship of Pricing: Building Pricing Strategy Skills Through Spreadsheet Modeling
	Teaching MPR Experientially Through the Use of Lotus 1-2-3
	Business Simulation Through Activities of a Manufacturing Company
	Simulated Stock Broker
	Teaching Employee Counseling Skills to Management Students: A Simulation
	Airline: A Strategic Management Simulation
	Developing Simulations and Experiential Exercises on the Personal Computer: Some Critical Issues
	A Powerful Tool ΠFor What?
	An Integrative Systems Approach to Simulating Free Enterprise in a Small Business Course in a Business School
	Profits: The False Prophet
	The Use of Expert Systems to Develop Strategic Scenarios: An Experiment Using a Simulated Market Environment
	An Interdisciplinary Workshop: Spreadsheet Modeling and Case Analysis Techniques for Beginning Executive MBA Students
	An Innovative Approach to an O. D. Class ΠThe Creative Interaction
	The Application of Spreadsheet Software Technology to Complete Taxpayer Elections
	Experiential Learning as the Cornerstone of an Industry Management Course
	"Identifying, Exercising and Enhancing Right Brain Skills in the Business Classroom"
	Utilizing Envisionary Technology in the Business Policy Course: An Experiential Pedagogy
	Business Simulation in the Policy Course: A Survey of American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business
	The Moving Van: Vehicle to Success of Disaster for the Two-Gender Work Force
	Oil and Gas Well Investment Analysis Using the Lotus 1-2-3 Decision Support System
	Team Cohesion Effects on Business Game Performance