TPC-Journal-V2-Issue3

The Professional Counselor \Volume 2, Issue 3 231 Consciousness is associated with mental and emotional clarity, capacity to be empathic, ability to handle knowledge with intuitive clarity, and—over and above this—a superior understanding of the connection between all beings and elements (Chatterjee, 2007; Freire, 2005; Goleman, 2006; Heider, 2004). Synergy is the pace of sustained development; it is the cohesive integration of the parts of a system; it is the understanding and connection between the parts of a whole, making the final result of the system superior to the simple sum of the individual efforts that comprise it (Barreto, 2009, 2010). Synergy is the antithesis of entropy. In thermodynamics, entropy is the property that marks the loss of interrelation between the parts of a system (existing disorder), which eventually leads to decay and obsolescence. A leader avoids entropy for the sake of maintaining harmonic, efficient and effective growth (Barreto 2009, 2010). While synergy is the union of energies, entropy is the dissipation of energy. Synergy makes efficient and effective use of energy; entropy wastes and exhausts energy. Counseling for the Training of Leaders and the Development of Leadership At the present time, university programs in counseling are becoming more focused in developing the skills of leadership in the students (Wolf, 2011). This indicates that the competencies and abilities of leaders and counselors are becoming more similar. Therefore, leaders learn more about harnessing particular realities (e.g., culture, gender, political position, spirituality, social sphere), and counselors direct their skills toward the management of human energy. The training of counselors is not a simple task inasmuch as the professional work of counselors is based on the human processes of the person. Hence, the aspiring counselor requires a deliberate and intense personal effort in the intellectual and emotional areas, and in the performance in the task of acquiring the competencies for the ideal practice of counseling (Vera, 2003). Similarly, for the training of leaders, a coordinated and deliberate effort is indispensable in order to provoke the awakening of one’s talents and to be able to develop a versatile and heuristic leader: a MEM leader. Patterson (1999, cited in Vera, 2003) notes, for example, that empathic understanding , unconditional acceptance , and congruence must be promoted and encouraged throughout the training program because such conditions are not techniques or strategies, but attitudes that must harnessed in the person during training and not from the outside. Therefore, the training of leaders as managers, educators and motivators of human energy, can be based on the principles of constructive pedagogy of counseling that according to Vera (2003), allow counseling students to do the following: • Become a professional of excellence (independent, flexible, reflective and critical). • Assume a notion of life full of possibilities, not restricted to a single path or single way to be. • Develop attitudes of understanding, deconstruction and transformation of the status quo. • Recognize and to promote the integrated development of individual personalities framed in a sociocultural context.