The person in front of you is your client because she chose to come here. She chose to get some assistance. And what will make the biggest difference for her is the new choices she will make, and the increased ability to make choices that she will get.
Whenever you can, give the client choices, at least at the rate in which she is able to make them. There are a lot of choices that a new client is not ready to make. Don't give her those. But give her the ones that she can comfortably make.
The client should not be choosing how you do your job, that would be counterproductive. But she should be choosing at least the major areas that we should be focusing on. Therefore, when a new client comes in, you ask her what she would like to work on. She always has that choice.
When the client's initial complaints have been dealt with, she should still have a choice. As a matter of fact we should now trust her with choosing what general areas we should be addressing.
One way of giving the client choice is to provide her with a menu. We show her a chart of which modules we offer and we ask her what she is interested in. The facilitator will explain what they are about, and will make suggestions. But she will make the choice. We will use the module that she picks as the basis of our processing program. How exactly we go about it and which techniques we use will be the choice of the facilitator. But the client chooses the area, the subject, the theme.
We could very well have different menus. In that way we might pre-configure a list of appropriate choices for that client. But we always give her a choice.