Character Strengths in Counselors: Relations With Meaningful Work and Burnout

Abstract

The primary goal of this study was to examine the relations from counselors’ character strengths to burnout via the potential mediating effect of meaningful work. We also compared mean levels of counselors’ character strengths to population means and conducted regression analyses to examine which character strengths uniquely predicted meaningful work and burnout. Counselors in our sample reported significantly higher levels on 13 of the 24 character strengths compared to a normed sample, with strengths like love of learning, perspective, and social intelligence being particularly elevated. Additionally, regression analyses revealed that prudence and hope predicted both meaningful work and burnout; love, perspective, and zest predicted meaningful work; and forgiveness, honesty, and self-regulation predicted burnout. These character strengths were included in the final structural equation model. Partially supporting hypotheses, prudence, perspective, and zest were related to meaningful work, which were, in turn, negatively related to burnout.