The servant-leader is servant first, it begins with a natural feeling that one w

The servant-leader is servant first it begins with a natural feeling that one wants to serve to serve first as opposed to wanting power influence fame or wealth. – Robert K. Greenleaf The information provided in this unit will cover many best practices and attributes that enable one to be an effective leader. There are a few other basic principles to leadership to keep in mind through leadership. The first strategy is to volunteer for a leadership role that fits your passion and your availability. The second strategy is to be consistent and dependable. In other words whatever you volunteer to do be sure to complete the task. Leadership strategies can be implemented with advocacy efforts professional associations research clinical practice and supervision. In this unit you will shift your attention to developing leadership skills that can be applied within the counseling profession. There are numerous leadership strategies theories and models that you will learn about through the unit readings. For example you will examine Chi Sigma Iota ‘s principles and practices of leadership which define exemplary leadership in the field of counseling. In addition to learning how to develop leadership skills you will learn how to teach leadership skills to your students and foster leadership development among your supervisees. Reference Greenleaf R. K. (1977). Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. Paulist Press. Frick. D. M. (2004). Robert K. Greenleaf: A life of servant leadership. Berrett-Koehler. Leadership and Advocacy Panel Discussion Josh Stanley I ‘m wondering if we could focus just for a few minutes on leadership specifically. I ‘m wondering what it means to you to be a leader. How do we integrate that into our identity as counseling professionals and maybe even what does good leadership look like? Dr. Lambert would you like to start with that? Simone Lambert Sure. I ‘m happy to start with that. I have seen all kinds of leaders in my career and I think it ‘s really important to know that leadership is about showing up. It ‘s about knowing your values and your beliefs and it ‘s about speaking up when you have the voice and helping others who don ‘t have the voice get to the table so that they can share their thoughts as well. To be a good leader is really understanding that we work collaboratively that we need to be transformative leaders and look at systemic change to make the entire profession stronger to make our communities stronger to help clients be able to access services and all of those kinds of things. I think that ‘s probably why the word advocacy gets muddled sometimes because leadership can certainly take a role in advocacy but leadership can be leadership in and of itself. Leadership can be leadership and research as we look at people who serve on journal editor boards. Leadership can be about clinical work and being an administrative at an agency or within supervision we can have leadership as well. And so all of those sort of capacities allows people to find where their passion is and where they can get fulfillment and contribute to the profession. I would say just another little nugget that I have learned through the years is it ‘s really helpful to have a leadership mentor to develop into a leader and have the money kind of stretch you. For instance there might be a role that is a little bit out of one ‘s comfort zone and having somebody kind of help you get into that would be really helpful. I myself experienced imposter syndrome being ACA president. I know that sounds hard to believe but certainly there was a time period of thinking oh my gosh what in the world did I get myself into? And how did I get here? And what am I supposed to be doing? But having mentors and being able to have conversations and working with a group and a team really helped to be able to get the goals for that year accomplished. I think that ‘s something that we can extrapolate and take to different settings. Josh Stanley Thank you. I really appreciate that. I ‘m wondering what others might want to add in terms of what it means to be a leader or what good leadership looks like. Dale Wayman Well for me good leadership is one thing. It ‘s developing the next generation. If you ‘re not doing that you ‘re not leading. I mean for me that ‘s all boiled down to that one sentence. Josh Stanley Thank you. Amber Lange I think one thing that I would like to add is that as someone who is both a manager and a leader that there really is a difference there. And so when you asked the question what is good leadership I always am also asking that question to myself to faculty to doctoral learners because you can manage something and still not be a good leader. There ‘s a difference. In leadership requires the ability to take a risk. Sometimes it requires having enough ego strength to be able to tolerate no and it also requires the ability to have to make a decision. When you manage people you can shuffle things. You can give directives but there ‘s a level in order to be a good leader beyond a manager I think that you need to allow people autonomy but you also have to be able to be strong enough to make a decision when people can ‘t. In my experience that ‘s really hard. I talk about it with learners and faculty and even clients when I saw clients about having enough ego strength to be able to tolerate the discomfort that you may feel from those that will disagree and it ‘s hard. But I think when we talk about especially things like transformative leadership you can ‘t be that kind of leader without having to struggle yourself with discomfort because not everyone is going to agree and not everyone will support you. Yet you have to be able to set your sights higher than and be able to tolerate aspects of those kinds of disagreements. When you work as a professional when you work with lots of other people who have master ‘s degrees when you work with lots of people who have PhDs we ‘re opinionated. I mean we all have strong opinions. The reality is is those opinions don ‘t always meld. And so leadership is about being able to transcend that in my opinion. Theresa Kascsak If I could there was a word that I heard twice there and it was about transformation. I think that that ‘s really just so much rooted in leadership and a little bit of what Dr. Lang was talking about about the differences between managing and leading or the different types of leadership that Dr. Lambert alluded too. I think that the thing about a good leader is that transformational piece of whatever project you ‘re involved in. Maybe you ‘re a CES learner and you ‘re working on your dissertation and there ‘s some leadership that ‘s involved in that and leading that project and as what you were discussing about our leaders that are on our CSI board that they are working to construct and transform our chapter of CSI to be kind of the premier online chapter or whether it ‘s faculty doing curriculum leadership and they ‘re trying to develop and they ‘re trying to improve the educational experience of our learners. And so there ‘s like this development piece there that I think that that ‘s the transformational piece for taking something a good leader takes something from where it starts and it moves it along that sort of a continuum to a better place to clear ideas to a vision starting the beginning aspects of a plan to having faculty that maybe weren ‘t so involved but are now so much more involved and helping them develop their strengths.-