A cross-cultural comparison of ideal and undesirable qualities of crisis line workers

Telephone crisis line workers in two different crisis centers (Los Angeles, USA, and Ljubljana, Yugoslavia; LA and LJ) self-assessed the most important ideal and undesirable personality traits for their work. Both LA and LJ counselors rated the most important traits as: motivated for the work and being a good listener. LA counselors rated themselves as possessing the majority of the required positive traits, while the LJ counselors thought themselves lacking in several significant qualities. In their listing of undesirable traits, the LJ workers again tended to be more critical of themselves than the LA workers but with fewer differences than on the desirable traits. The source of the differences may lie between the use of volunteers in LA and professional and semi-professional counselors in LJ. The ratings of a sample of US crisis center directors on both desirable and undesirable traits tended to parallel those of the LJ counselors more closely than those of the LA workers. Center directors were also critical of their own counselors on a number of the listed traits.