School Counseling Leadership Revolution! How to Build Influence and Inspire Change

Discover how to elevate your influence on campus as we explore a leadership framework for school counselors proposed by Bowers, Lemberger-Truelove, & Brigman (2017). We'll look at the leadership dispositions that can transform school counselors into agents of change, promoting an environment where both students and staff can thrive.


Reference:
Bowers, H., Lemberger-Truelove, M. E., & Brigman, G. (2017). A social-emotional leadership framework for school counselors. Professional School Counseling, 21(1b). https://doi.org/10.1177/2156759X18773004


Mentioned in this episode:
School for School Counselors Mastermind
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Transcript

Steph Johnson: 0:07

Hello school counselor, welcome back to the School for School Counselors podcast. I'm Steph Johnson, your host, glad to be back here with you for another week of School Counseling Awesomeness. I love to get together with you each and every week to, you know, talk about some things that don't usually get talked about in our corners of the world, and this week will be no exception. Our topic this week is going to be a little touchy, and the reason it's going to be touchy is that you may or may not be in a position to implement this, so I want to provide our topic this week with the caveat, and that is if you don't feel like you're up to this, don't feel like you have to do it now. File it away, put it in your back pocket, save it for a better time when you can fully implement with presence of mind. You'll see what I'm talking about as we get into this, but first, before we jump into all that, as always, I want to share our newest review for the podcast from one of our amazing listeners. This review comes from Janer's E and it is titled my number one school counselor podcast. It goes on to say the school for school counselors podcast is my go to for professional podcasts. Let me stop right there. That one sentence blew my mind. I don't know if you guys realize the extent to which that knocks my socks off. I never, ever, imagined that we would be putting out something that would get praise like that. So thank you. All ready for this review, let me go ahead and finish it, though, because I want to give it its due diligence. The school for school counselors podcast is my go to for professional podcasts. Steph Johnson and her team do an amazing job in providing school counselors all around the world with authentic research based topics that we need to know about, and some I didn't even know I needed. Thank you, team at school for school counselors, for keeping me company on my commute to and from work and inspiring me to be the best counselor I can be. Thank you so much, janer's E, for that review. You have no idea how that's impacted me and my team and just keeps us going.

Steph Johnson: 2:42

So, guys, if you haven't submitted your review for the podcast, I would love to hear your thoughts on what we're putting out into the world. All right, so back on to our topic for this week. We're going to be talking about a leadership framework for school counselors, and that's why I said that if this isn't the right time for you, don't stress about it. Don't feel like, just because you're listening to information about it, that it means you need to run out and implement this right away. Some of you are not in the position on your campuses to be able to push toward a leadership position, yet there is still misunderstanding about your role. You're probably being misutilized somewhat on your campus and you may have an administrator that's not open to these kinds of conversations or these kinds of actions. So if you're in a place like that, don't let it discourage you. Keep listening for the inspiration, be thinking about what this is going to look like when it's the right time and then implement it when it feels right. You'll know when the time is right. I promise you'll know. This framework is not mine. I did not develop it.

Steph Johnson: 4:00

It was presented in an article in the Professional School Counseling Journal in 2018. And its authors were Bowers, limburger, true Love and Brigham. They published quite a bit in the school counseling world and we're going to provide the link to this article in the show notes, as we always do. But I just kind of wanted to walk through some of the ideas in this article because I think they're worth sharing. For sure, when schools are being asked to do more and more right, we're being asked to provide more and more or handling more and more concerns and issues with students and their families, and we have more challenges that surface every day, especially post-COVID right, the needs, the resources required are just. They seem almost endless, and we're doing so much with so little, and so there is a great potential for us on campus to really be able to become a person of leadership on campus, to be able to not only serve students well but to guide our teachers and our campus staff and best ways of approaching and reaching students who are struggling, who have challenges, who need that little bit of extra support.

Steph Johnson: 5:30

However, the way that we traditionally look at leadership on campus may not be the most appropriate manner in which we can lead as school counselors. We have a unique skill set. On the surface it looks very basic and, like you know, it's kind of no big deal, and probably to us it doesn't feel that way because you know we see the world as we perceive it. We know we have these skills innately in us and so we just assume everyone else does, but friends they don't, and leading committees laying down the law, giving rubrics and evaluations. That's not the kind of leadership that we're suited for.

Steph Johnson: 6:17

In this article, the authors propose five social-emotional leadership dispositions, and through these expressions of our identity they say that we can really effectively lead campuses towards realizing greater successes for students. Usually, it's about being authentic in the way that you work, about talking the talk but walking the walk, and I love a quote that the authors included from an article that they referenced, which described an authentic leader. So listen to this definition and see if this resonates with you, because if you aren't there now, I would almost bet money that this is what you aspire to be. They say that authentic leaders are those individuals who are deeply aware of how they think and behave and are perceived by others as being aware of their own and others' values and moral perspective, knowledge and strengths, aware of the context in which they operate, and who are confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient and high on moral character. That is a tall order, isn't it man? Oh man, I know that I would aspire to be a leader like that. I don't know that I always hit the mark and all those criteria, but I try real hard and hopefully it's the same for you. But what they're telling us is that this kind of authenticity translates into greater influence as a leader on your campus. And so, since we already embody a lot of these qualities, it should be just kind of a hop-skip and a jump for us to really assert ourselves as leaders on our campus.

Steph Johnson: 8:19

So, basically, the 10,000-foot view of this social-emotional leadership framework involves several components. Number one is integrating SEL concepts into our daily work, being solidarity with those concepts, like I said, not only talking the talk but walking the walk, being a living example of the things that we're teaching to students, that we're conveying to staff and really just being on our A-game and being the best possible counseling person that we can be, encouraging and encourager on our campus, again of everyone, encouraging our students, our staff, our administrators, our parents. Being that voice of hope, that point of optimism for folks is so important because we can see their innate worth, we can look into the future a little bit and see the potential of these folks standing in front of us. That's a really important thing to have going on on campus and really reflecting that growth mindset, helping students build confidence through competence and, again, I would say for our teachers as well in modeling things like classroom management, walking them through tiered interventions, whatever the case, may be really encouraging that idea of the growth mindset. So that's first, integrating those SEL concepts into our daily work. Second, promoting a school culture where SEL is infused into every single thing that we do. This supports teachers with student relationships. It helps them build healthier, more optimistic, more solid relationships between the two of them and also helps teachers with their own stress management, and I don't know one teacher on the face of the earth right now that couldn't stand to feel a little bit better about their stress levels, right? So as we infuse SEL into our classrooms and our hallways, once this becomes the cultural norm on your campus, not only is it going to make changes, but it's going to frame you as a change maker and a leader. Thank you. What we're looking at doing is integrating these ideas into the hallways, into the cafeterias, into the classrooms, so that it's a culture on your campus.

Steph Johnson: 11:01

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the core of your work on your campus isn't your lessons, and if the bulk of your influence is coming from your lessons, you might want to reassess when the time is right, because the bulk of the change and the leadership that you're asserting on campus should be coming through your influence. This brings up an interesting conversation that we had in our School for School Counselors Mastermind consultation chat not too long ago and the point was brought up and I think it was a great one that if you could hand off your Tier 1 or Tier 2 programming to, for instance, a PE coach, a shop teacher or a history teacher and they could teach that lesson as well or as effectively as you could, are you really acting as a school counselor? Ouch, that's going to make some of you feel a little annoyed and perhaps angry, but I think it's a point worth considering. If you could hand your lessons off, if your Tier 1 and Tier 2 are the bulk of what you're doing in the day, you're going to have a really hard time making a case for advocacy. So instead, we really need to be looking toward opportunities to lean into this influence on our campus and really make some big impressions. That way, where we are shaping the culture of our campuses, we are equipping everyone we come across with the confidence and the knowledge and the skill sets to be able to achieve their goals. We know that good SEL programs improve social skills and emotional skills. We know that they catalyze positive school attitudes, positive behaviors and overall gains in academic achievement. We know that they promote a supportive environment for students when they're at school. And we know that they influence teachers' behaviors. They influence classroom climates and help to reduce professional burnout for everyone that works at your school.

Steph Johnson: 13:19

There was an interesting point brought up in this article that said, teachers who are able to regulate their emotions, either inhibiting or expressing when and how it's most appropriate, tend to exhibit stronger and more learning focused relationships with students. That's super important, right. We want our teachers to be able to modulate themselves somewhat and to be able to choose appropriate reactions at the appropriate times. If you're like me, you've seen some evidence of some not so appropriate reactions at some inappropriate times, and that is human nature, right, we're not expecting everyone to be perfect all the time. Sometimes we get frustrated, we get overwhelmed, we get angry or upset, and a lot of that is often driven by our extreme desire to see students succeed. But at the same time, the more we can promote those healthy responses for our staff, the better off everyone's going to be. So this social-emotional leadership framework that's proposed by this article leans on three criteria. I'm going to paraphrase them according to my own understanding of them, so my apologies to the authors if it doesn't sound exactly right.

Steph Johnson: 14:38

Number one is working with regulated emotions. On the surface, that one just sounds to me like well, I mean, you know, duh, of course. Of course we have to regulate our emotions. All professionals have to do that. So what's the news? But I think it is a lot harder for folks than we realize. I think, particularly in the current educational climate, it's extremely difficult for folks to work with regulated emotions, and so this is a prime opportunity for us to model that, to really be someone that others would like to emulate. With respect to that, just being able to be on top of our own thoughts, feelings and concerns and be able to express them appropriately is a really, really good stepping stone.

Steph Johnson: 15:34

Second, they recommend empathy as a rule. Again, this one to us probably feels like, well, I mean, that's a no-brainer. But think about how often you've been part of conversations in the teacher's lounge or in the hallway or, you know, right before a big meeting is supposed to start, and how many of those conversations seem like they lack empathy. They may lack empathy for the students. Often I hear conversations that lack empathy for the parent and for the home environment. We're very quick to judge, we are very quick to say they should be, they shouldn't be. Why do they do that? I don't understand. Why don't they call me back? Why don't they come up here? All of those things. If you don't hear, empathy is a rule, and so this is a great opportunity for us to assert some influence.

Steph Johnson: 16:33

And third, wise discernment and decision making. If you're familiar with the idea of the wise mind, the emotion mind and the reasonable mind, dialectical behavior therapy says we possess each of these three minds in us. The emotion mind is kind of like our child. It's led by our feelings, it's very impulsive. Our reasonable mind is like our professor. It's driven by facts and logic and objective thinking all the time, and then, somewhere in the middle, where those two come together, is our wise mind, and that's where we're able to do our best decision making. That's where we're able to really think things through and make some really logical decisions based on facts, but also based on emotion and empathy. And so, within the social-emotional leadership framework, the authors are proposing these three criteria Regulated emotions, empathy is a rule, and wise discernment and decision making.

Steph Johnson: 17:44

When we can do this, when we can express social and emotional skills, we actually increase workplace motivation for everyone around us and we exact some positive changes in our school climate. That's pretty exciting. Think about your favorite principal or favorite boss or leader in your lifetime. They probably demonstrated these types of emotional intelligence, right. Or if you've worked for someone who doesn't have that kind of emotional intelligence, oh my goodness. It makes life very difficult, doesn't it? Where you're not motivated to go to work, you don't feel like there's a positive climate, you feel like you're walking on eggshells or looking over your shoulder all the blessed time. I worked for a principal like that once and it was one of the most difficult times in my professional life. I get it, it's tough. So what we want to do is try to be the example, be the light on our campuses, to be able to convey this type of emotional intelligence, so that others can see us, model it, they can learn from us and perhaps emulate it in their classrooms. So there are five skill sets within this framework. If we can master these five skill sets, we're going to be well on our way to building our leadership potential and influence on our campus.

Steph Johnson: 19:22

Number one is self-awareness. This is our ability to self-reflect so that we can understand how we conceptualize our work and what we experience in the here and now. So we're going to have to be able to accurately identify our own emotions. We have to maintain an accurate self-perception, including where we have work to do personally, where we have room to improve. That's part of having an accurate self-perception. We have to be able to identify our personal strengths as well. We have to maintain a healthy self-confidence and self-efficacy. We've got to have strong self-awareness. Second, we have to be able to self-manage. That means we've got to be able to control our impulses, manage our stress, exercise self-discipline and maintain motivation for ourselves. That leads into our organizational skills and creating goals.

Steph Johnson: 20:31

This is kind of, to me, the action part of self-awareness. These are the things that we do within our self-awareness to be productive, to be positive and to elicit change. We can develop these and strengthen these by doing certain things throughout our day, things like self-observation. You're just taking a minute to really think critically about ourselves. What are we doing in that moment? Why are we doing it? What do we hope to achieve, what went right or what went wrong, specifying our goals, being very intentional about our days, weeks, months, semesters, using queuing strategies to move us toward our goals. We've been talking a lot about that in our School for School Counselors Mastermind. We have a data cohort that meets once a month and we're talking about the implementation and interpretation of our campus data. One of the things we're talking about a lot is how we're queuing ourselves towards being responsible with that data and for utilizing it in the correct ways.

Steph Johnson: 21:45

Alright, so we have our self-reflection, our self-management. Then we need social awareness. Social awareness is your ability to take in other people's perspectives, understand and express empathy, maintain an awareness and an appreciation of diversity and form respect for others. That comes straight from the article. Here's where I say just call me Mr Rogers. We're back to our Carl Rogers here our unconditional positive regard, empathetic understanding. You know that is the key component for therapeutic change in counseling, right? But it can also be a key component for positive change on your school campus.

Steph Johnson: 22:35

How often do we feel exasperated or we lose patience with our staff members that just seem to not get it. Have you ever been there? You feel like you've tried to explain the student's position, what their needs are, how the teacher can accommodate, maybe how to be more trauma-informed and they're just not getting it, they're not implementing it, they're not demonstrating any understanding of what you're trying to tell them at all. We get frustrated, right. Sometimes we get upset, we get annoyed, irritated, and even if we don't directly express those feelings, they're likely to come through when we communicate anyway. So unconditional positive regard for our co-workers is going to be a key component here, and I can tell you, I love everybody that works on my school campus, but I do get frustrated sometimes. This is an area that I personally probably need to pay a little bit more attention to.

Steph Johnson: 23:38

Equity is crucial in developing work environments where we can all work together. We can all come together collaboratively and constructively to work towards positive student outcomes, and so we have got to be able to have a social awareness. Relationship skills are fourth. The article says effective leaders are only as strong as the relationships between themselves and their personnel. Good news for us, because creating great relationships is what we are all about. Right, I can't tell you how many probably hundreds of Get the Job participants I've worked with over the past years that when I ask them, what brought you into school counseling, what's your passion, what do you love about this job, I always, without skipping a beat, say I love building relationships with students, and as we talk they go on to really further outline how they love building relationships on their campus as a whole. So these ideas of congruence, unconditional positive regard, empathy are going to be the cornerstone off of which everything else is built.

Steph Johnson: 24:59

And you know, I'll take a minute and say here I saw this part of our work as kind of superfluous when I got started. If I'm being completely honest, now that I'm more seasoned and experienced, I understand its importance. But back then I was really intent on the execution of things. I had been trained in national models, I knew about the different components of comprehensive school counseling programs and I knew about percentages and use of time and all those things. And so I walked in with a mindset of execute, execute, execute. And I think I neglected for a little while building these relationships. I didn't really see the potential in them as directly as I probably should have, and I regret that. But also I think that's just part of learning, isn't it? It's just part of being new and green and then getting better and better, and through the years you learn and grow and you come to understand things that you didn't understand at first.

Steph Johnson: 26:11

So we've talked through self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship skills. Our last component is responsible decision making, and you know what we're coming up to for this one, don't you? Data-driven, school counseling, a continuous process of evaluation, continuous reflection. Where is my time? Where is it gone? What kinds of effects am I getting from that? Am I seeing the payoff? Are they achieving the intended effects with students? Those are all very, very important questions to be asking ourselves continuously. And then we also need to be looking at our ethical responsibilities. Are we following our ethical guidelines? Are we really striving toward the best of the most ethical intentions? Those are important questions to be asking ourselves all the time.

Steph Johnson: 27:13

Goodness gracious, I'm here to tell you now. We have unpacked so much about this social, emotional leadership framework and we're not done. There is so much more to come. I think I might do kind of a bonus episode here, coming up just in a few days, because I really want you to get the full scope of what this leadership framework is all about. I want you to understand what can you try to do to develop this kind of leadership presence on campus.

Steph Johnson: 27:49

So far we've talked about the components of your work and your demeanor, your attitudes, your mindsets and the way that you counsel, not only in individual counseling, group counseling, but how you build that influence on campus, how you really make folks sit up and take notice of the way you're doing business and understand that there might be a better or different way that they can approach their own work with those same concepts in mind. By utilizing your skills of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making, you can position yourself in a way that allows your leadership to really take hold on campus. But there are a few more things that we need to think about as we walk toward that goal, so I'll be back in the next episode with some more specific ideas of what those things might be. All right, so keep listening. I'll be back soon with another episode, but in the meantime, I hope you have the best well, I don't know, not week best couple of days ever. Take care, and I'll be back soon.