Leadership Perspectives

Leadership

Leadership Program Transcript

NARRATOR: Leadership approaches can vary, depending upon particular situations or events. Listen as Dr. Judy Lewis describes two approaches, situational leadership and transformational leadership, and explains how they can be used within the counseling profession.

JUDY LEWIS: There are a lot of ways to look at leadership. Some of the leadership theories really emphasize the traits of a particular leader. One thing that I find particularly interesting is the idea of situational leadership, that the type of leadership that is needed at any one point depends on what the situation is, what's happening with the organization at any particular time, what kind of pressures are there from the outside.

Are you looking for stability? Or are you looking for change? The way you lead in a situation like that is going to be different based on those different issues.

Now, for example, suppose that you are leading a counselor education program. Maybe you are in a situation where for the last few years you've been working really intensively on curriculum change. You've done an intensive self-study. You've just gotten your CACREP approval for the next 10 years. That's the time for leadership that's focused on stability. You want to be able to follow through on the things that you've promised.

At other times maybe there are real pressures because you've lost enrollment, or pressures because you are not fitting well into the community at large. Sometimes there are real issues going on, and the kind of leadership you need isn't for stability. But it's leadership toward change.

I think is important to take into account when you're thinking about your own leadership style and what kinds of leadership you use what the situation is that you're trying to develop. You can't necessarily be the same type of leader in the same way throughout your professional life. It depends what the concerns are that you're trying to address.

Change, advocacy, and leadership fit together. It's like a hand in glove. You can't have change without advocacy, and you can't maintain that change without leadership. But when we're talking about how to change. Advocacy, and leadership fit together, I think what we're really talking about is transformational leadership. That's not just leadership to make some changes around the edges.

Transformational leadership brings about deeper changes in the community. What you're trying to do is change the way people see their values, change really important parts of the system, change the way the community is made up. You're talking about deep changes in transformational leadership. And no matter what

© 2016 Laureate Education, Inc. 1

Leadership

kind of issue is that you're talking about, you're talking about making important changes, not just simple ones.

Think about, for instance, the counseling profession or the other helping professions. There has been an example of a big change in one aspect of mental health counseling, and that has to do with how mental health counselors who work with addictions or substance abuse. A lot of times mental health counselors used to say, well, I don't work with addictions. I'll work with anything except addictions. Now, of course, everybody works with addiction. You just sometimes don't notice that you are.

The reality is that a lot of times mental health counselors have felt uncomfortable working with substance abuse or addictions because there was that idea out there that there's only one way to work with this, that if you're working with addictions you have to break down the people's denial. You've got to convince them with their problem is. You've got to make them see what they have to do. Now that is as different as you can get from the way mental health counselors feel like they want to work. So a lot of times people felt like if that's what it takes to work with addictions I'm not going to do it.

Now there has actually been a gradual but quite radical change in how counselors now can work with addictions. And it came from the advent of motivational interviewing. Now that really started with just a small article that was done by Dr. William Miller from New Mexico. He put out something that actually was passed from person to person. It was a mimeographed 30-page document about motivational interviewing and a different way to work with addiction.

Well, this is so funny because it went from person to person in the profession, and it was what we'd been waiting for. So little by little this transformational leadership started. It started with one person.

This is something that's been a major change. And the only way that could happen is that one person, then a small group, then a larger group, then a larger group, and finally a large enough group to bring about real change became attracted to this way of working with clients. And I think it's been a major scientific change.

And it couldn't have happened without leadership. It's a big change. And I'll tell you a lot of the people now who are working with this kind of approach are also advocates on its behalf.

Counsellor educators and supervisors have a big leadership role in the profession. There's no doubt about that. Where counselor educators go, that's where their students are going to go. And I think what's happened over the recent times has been that leadership and advocacy have become more closely aligned with professional standards than ever before. I think part of that happened

© 2016 Laureate Education, Inc. 2

Leadership

because of the multicultural competencies and the fact that those are now so deeply and broadly accepted throughout the profession. Counselor educators who have made sure that their students understood the multicultural competencies, they've had a big role in making sure that there's been real change in how counselors work with their clients.

Another thing that's happened is that counselor educators as well as counselors have been involved in things like counselor licensure, so that they have become more and more comfortable with the idea of advocacy, with the idea of leadership toward change. And the more comfortable counselors feel about their roles as leaders, the more effective we're going to be. And it's in their counselor education programs that they learn this.

Leadership Additional Content Attribution

FOOTAGE: GettyLicense_dv1221059 (Man at podium) [Digital Vision]/[Photodisc]/Getty Images

COUN6204A_Cocaine_cdc_14839 (Cocaine) CDC - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

GettyLicense_492863899 (Cocaine w/ spoon) [FotoMaximum]/[Stock / 360]/Getty Images

© 2016 Laureate Education, Inc. 3