Group Leadership Skills: Interpersonal Process in Group Counseling and Therapy

I got this book as required reading for my masters in Counseling. It was much cheaper on Amazon than the school book store. It is well written and has lots of great information in it.

Mental health professionals are fortunate to have this sophisticated guide that reveals in a better-impossible manner all the knowledge and skills that a group leader needs to acquire in order to start, maintain, and succeed in a group of counseling or psychotherapy.If you want to gain specialized knowledge about groups, from how to initiate them to how to navigate to all of the stages, this is your book.This book educates leaders in discovering how members’ interpersonal dynamics show in a group setting, and how group leaders can promote self-awareness among the members regarding their interpersonal dynamics. Group leaders gain knowledge about, how to address members’ interpersonal patterns when they show up in the here-and-now of each session, in such a way, that all the necessary conditions are created to offer members, who suffer from emotional pain a corrective emotional experience.If you want to make sure that this book was written by one of the best, the answer is yes. Dr. Mei-whei Chen contributes daily with the well-being of many people by training counselors in how to assist clients in achieving emotional wellness through psychotherapy. Without a doubt, she is one of the best in this field. Dr. Chen masters the science of art in psychotherapy.Therefore, if you are looking into having a high-quality material resource to prepare for your sessions, do not hesitate to choose this book as your bible for groups.I hope you enjoy and learn from this book as much as I did.

Highly RecommendedChen and Rybak’s Group Leadership Skills book is an important guide for anyone who leads or participates in group counseling. It clearly gives background for group work; describing prominent theories and making notes of their assumptions. It also creates a framework for starting a group from the ground up, making the book an essential guide for new group leaders.However, I found the most powerful sections of the book in the latter chapters where it discusses group dynamics. Understanding that relationship patterns that exist in a person’s personal life will play out in the group dynamic was so eye opening for me. The book teaches how to use that dynamic to process thoughts and emotions in the “here and now” and so create opportunities for growing. The steps of “Process Illumination” teach how to guide the group to support and challenge each other to see themselves more clearly. This technique is relational and intuitive and it is what gives group therapy so much transformative power.After reading it, I walked away with a new respect for group therapy and the power it has to heal beyond what individual therapy allows for. I highly recommend this book as a manual for all therapists.

I am in the process of getting my masters in counseling. This book was used in our group therapy class. I thought this book was excellent in how it was formatted and the way it was written. It wasn’t written in total academic manner. It was written in a way that provided real life examples in addressing certain kinds of challenges while in group therapy

The book is presented in a clear and organized matter that allows readers to follow the processes of leading group therapy. The chapters are divided into the different steps or stages of group processing. My favorite chapter to read was on Process Illumination. Chen and Rybak include passages that also speak to one's heart, so it is not all theory.The case scenarios show how the skill can be used and also how it can generate member feedback and growth. This book is a great tool that I know I will often reference as I start my career as a counselor. Great for a classroom or work setting! I highly recommend!!

This is a book that will ALWAYS have a place in my bookcase. As I continue on my journey towards becoming a licensed professional counselor, I know I will be referring back to this book often. I am truly lucky to have been trained in group counseling with this book. This book is well-organized, well written, and helps the abstract seem concrete and possible. It provides its readers with real-life examples and scenarios, which greatly helped develop my group counseling clinical skills. I highly recommend this book.

I very much appreciate the comprehensive nature of this group counseling book. The authors skillfully balance theory with practical application, providing readers with a solid theoretical foundation while offering numerous examples, case studies, and exercises to facilitate skill development. This approach allows readers to bridge the gap between theory and practice effectively.Counseling can be so elusive and amorphous, and this book has allowed me to demystify it! highly recommend it.

One of the things that I most appreciate about this book is its attention to detail. Group counseling can seem so complicated, but this book helps us understand how to use the power of group dynamics to facilitate members to respond to each other, and move members towards growth. It does a great job of piecing together processes and concepts that can be abstract and difficult to explain.