School Counseling Leadership Revolution, Part II: How to Truly Make It Happen

Imagine a career where every interaction is an opportunity for growth, understanding, and connection. That's the vision I'm casting in this episode, as we talk through the "what-to-do's" of social emotional leadership in the world of school counseling. I'm unpacking the art of leading by example, drawing upon the wisdom of Bowers, Lemberger-Truelove, & Brigman (2017) to showcase how you can put social-emotional leadership into place through affiliative, visionary and democratic behaviors to create a DYNAMITE school counseling program.

Join me to dream and scheme toward an educational world where every school counselor is empowered to lead, inspire, and create change through the power of relationships.

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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Our goal at School for School Counselors is to help school counselors stay on fire, make huge impacts for students, and catalyze change for our roles through grassroots advocacy and collaboration. Listen to get to know more about us and our mission, feel empowered and inspired, and set yourself up for success in the wonderful world of school counseling.

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Transcript

Steph Johnson: 0:07

Hey there, school counselor, welcome back to another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. This one came out a little bit sooner than expected. We started a really great conversation in the last episode and I wanted to keep it going. I didn't want to lose a lot of steam between part one and part two, so here we go with the next installment Now, if you didn't listen to the last episode, I'm going to encourage you.

Steph Johnson: 0:33

Go back and catch episode number 81. It's the one right before this one in your podcast player. Go back and grab that one first, where we talk about the key components of a social emotional leadership framework. This is based on an article by Bowers, limburger, true Love and Brighamon 2018, titled A Social Emotional Leadership Framework for School Counselors. This is not my framework. I want to be very clear about that. But we are going to start to untangle and tease out some of the nuance in this.

Steph Johnson: 1:09

In this episode, we were talking about how the skill sets of school counselors positions us uniquely to a certain style of leadership on campus, and it's not your typical, you know, committee leader, checklist, rubric sort of leadership as much as it is leading by example. It's about being really aware of our unique skill set, some of our so-called soft skills, and really making sure that we abide by them in everything that we do to really inspire other people to take note of the way that we do business and want to emulate that as well. So we talked about the key characteristics of emotional intelligence as far as school counseling leadership is concerned. We talked about the three criteria needed for us to be successful In this endeavor. Those were being able to regulate our emotions, utilize empathy as a rule and show wise discernment in decision making. And then we outlined the five dispositions for social emotional leadership self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making. So if you missed any of those, it was a great conversation. Go back and check the previous episode to get all the nitty-gritty details on those. But today we're going to crusade on and we're going to talk about some specific things that you can do to begin to develop this kind of leadership presence on your campus. So the authors assert that there are three behaviors that can sort of act like a catalyst in changing school culture. They're going to be the best starting points we could choose for working toward our end goals. Number one is affiliative behaviors, so this is focusing on the development of personal relationships and creating a harmonious environment. We are more driven toward those goals than we are toward task completion.

Steph Johnson: 3:29

This one is kind of what I alluded to in the last episode, where, you know, as a young school counselor, I often dismissed this. I just assumed that everyone would want to get to know me, I guess because I thought I was that awesome. I'm not really sure. It's kind of embarrassing to admit now, but I think we do all come onto a campus with that idea in mind, because we're taught that when we arrive on a campus we want to provide interventions, that people are going to be very willing to accept them. They're going to be glad we're there, they're going to want to know us and unfortunately that's not always the case, right? Sometimes it's not always the case. Sometimes it takes people a little bit longer to warm up. Sometimes they want to see what you're all about and there's that whole trajectory from knowing someone to liking them, to trusting them. You have to develop those relationships.

Steph Johnson: 4:25

In our School for School Counselors, mastermind, and in our Get the Job program, we often use the phrase high visibility school counseling. And what we mean by high visibility school counseling is not just being visible, not just being the face of your school tick tock or sending out newsletters or being in the hallways or greeting parents in the mornings. We're not talking about that visibility. We're talking about really being available to people, having the time to have conversations, having the time to really actively listen when people are talking to you. Take a moment and just think really critically, really evaluate yourself in this area About how many times a day do you feel you can slow down and really actively listen to another adult on your campus? My guess is it's probably pretty rare, and I don't think that that's a reflection of your character. I think it's a reflection of your schedule. It's a reflection of the endless responsibilities that folks just keep piling on your shoulders, and when you're running 90 to nothing all day long, it's hard to stop and really key in on conversations. It's hard to show that active listening in relationships, but it's so, so important.

Steph Johnson: 5:56

As the article reminds us, active listening consists of listening to the content of what the speaker is trying to say, while also listening to the feeling or emotion behind what is being said, then communicating in turn that what is expressed is fully understood. Beyond our own opportunities for active listening, how often do you think teachers or staff on your campus get to experience that kind of listening? Probably not often, and so I think it's super important. If you want to endear yourself to your staff, this is how you do it, not with more interventions, not with more sticker charts, not with more counseling sessions or guidance lessons. This is it. You look them in the eye, you listen to them and you reflect back what they're actually saying. You actively listen and, guys, we're masters at this. We are masters at active listening. So that's the first set of behaviors toward developing a social emotional leadership presence, affiliative behaviors, creating personal relationships and active listening.

Steph Johnson: 7:23

Our second set of behaviors are visionary behaviors. This is where we identify a vision for our school campus and we show everybody at that school how they can contribute and be a part of that vision. We have to inspire others toward our goals for our campus. What do we want for our students? How do we want to see them succeed? What can we do or provide in order to guide them in that direction? How can they be a part of the solution? Those can be some super powerful conversations.

Steph Johnson: 8:08

Now, this is kind of where the article and I diverge a little bit. It's just a small matter of opinion. They lean the conversation toward vision statements, some ramp related behaviors in school programming. I don't think that's necessarily realistic for a lot of school counselors, especially those of you listening to this podcast. I don't know that a vision statement is going to get you there, but it does make me think about what we talk about all the time and advocating from the inside out that competence builds confidence and confidence builds clout.

Steph Johnson: 8:51

If you are able to explain things well to people, not with the feeling of take my word for it or I'm the expert, just listen to me, but truly explain things well so that the people you're talking to understand why it is you're asking them to do these things, it's going to make a big impression. And as you become more competent in your content, as you become more fluent in your language of helping and able to explain the things that you want to do on campus, you will become more confident. And as you become more confident and you build that trust with your staff, you're going to build clout. When you get to the clout stage, that's when people start listening. When you speak, they start paying attention. They might have been doing something else, but the minute you open your mouth, they're all ears. That's attainable To me. That's the heart of advocacy. That is the heart of showing that vision to your staff and really getting them excited about being a part of it. We have to inspire our co-workers to help us inspire our students.

Steph Johnson: 10:09

The third set of behaviors we can focus on in developing this leadership presence are democratic behaviors. This is collaborating with other people on campus, empowering members of our group to really take some leadership and ownership of their own and assisting in decision making on our campuses. Again, that's where that clout piece comes in in building fluency. Part of that could also be collaborating with teachers, collaborating with your administrators or parents about how SEL programs are delivered on your campus, to really involve stakeholders in the process, to provide a rationale for why you do what you do, or getting input on what you would like to do, and really allowing others to come into your frame of reference for those things. Who knows, you may come away with some perspectives or some ideas that you never would have come up with on your own. A win-win for everybody. The bottom line is this we have a unique ability to really infuse social-emotional learning values and practices in our schools. We are trained to be supportive, but we are also trained to be change makers. That combination is like dynamite when we use it effectively. I hope this article was some great food for thought for you in how you want to develop your leadership standing on campus. Looking at this social-emotional leadership framework through the five dispositions and also the leadership behaviors should position you to be a unique influence on your campus.

Steph Johnson: 12:08

One of the things that we talked about a couple of times here was developing competence to then breed confidence. Then, once we become confident, we can begin to develop clout on our campus. If you feel like sometimes you're having those conversations on campus people are coming to you for ideas, for advice, for guidance in some situation on campus and you're trying your darndest to explain it, but it just doesn't feel like it's coming out right. It's one of those things that you know is in the back of your mind somewhere, but you just can't quite verbalize it right in that moment. That means you've got some work to do in developing your fluency.

Steph Johnson: 12:58

Fluency is your ability to talk about social-emotional concepts at the drop of a hat. You can talk about mental health concerns, you can talk about interventions and you can talk about them in an authoritative way. It doesn't mean that you have to be a walking encyclopedia of everything known to school counselors in all of history, but it does mean that you have a firm grasp on the fundamentals, that you can speak with some authority to data-driven school counseling, how it's implemented, why it's important and what it does for your campus. To be able to talk about the essential components of tiered interventions on campus. To be able to walk a teacher through behavior interventions that they can try on their own before they involve anybody else. To be able to walk through the complexities of evaluating a student for 504 or special education services and what that might mean for them in the future. Those may not be specific tasks that are your responsibility, but it's important to be knowledgeable about them.

Steph Johnson: 14:12

The only way really to develop fluency in these situations is to have good conversations about them. Often. The problem is we don't often get opportunities on our campuses to have the same kinds of conversations over and over again. Typically, there are going to be different situations, different circumstances, different nuance. That's going to necessitate a different kind of conversation. So then, how do we build this fluency if we never get the opportunity to practice? Well, it comes in the form of consultation. My friends and you hear me talk about it all the time, but it's so, so important. If you've ever been in that situation where you're standing there thinking, um, um, I know this, I know, hang on, give me just a minute, or you have to say something like, oh, let me get back to you on that, you might want to think about developing your fluency.

Steph Johnson: 15:09

Our School for School Counselors Mastermind is a fantastic way to develop that school counseling fluency. We have modules containing videos and printables that will get you up to speed on the things that grad school forgot. But then we also have our weekly support and consultation sessions where we talk through issues on campus, where we determine the next best steps, and through those conversations either by listening or by participating, you begin to develop the fluency that you so need in order to develop clout on your campus. So I encourage you to go check it out. Schoolforschoolcounselorscom. I can't wait to welcome you in there. You're going to get in there and find out what an amazing group of super stinking smart people are in there, and they're just waiting for you to come and join in the conversation. Schoolforschoolcounselorscom.

Steph Johnson: 16:11

All right, my friend, I hope this was an enlightening series of episodes. I hope it really made you think about your leadership style. I know for myself I'm really reflecting on the empathy piece for sure, not that I don't strive to show empathy in everything that I do on campus but I do think there's some room for improvement. When I get frustrated, when I get overwhelmed or stressed, I think I need to pay particular attention to that. I think there's some room, too, to look toward that active listening piece, to really slowing down and really soaking in what other people are telling me on the surface as well as what they're trying to say, and then just remembering to take time to really develop relationships on campus, not just with your students, but with those who serve them.

Steph Johnson: 17:06

So if you ever needed proof that building relationships is part of your job, I just gave it to you. So there you go. That's my gift this week from me to you. All right, I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, I hope you have the best week. Take care.