School counselors as program leaders: applying leadership contexts to school counseling

Professional School Counseling, June, 2003 by Colette T. Dollarhide

AN EXAMPLE OF THE APPLICATION OF LEADERSHIP CONTEXTS

Recently, I consulted with a graduate who had been hired to fill a relatively new middle school counselor position in a small rural district. The program she inherited emphasized duties in scheduling, testing, and discipline and, as such, did not consist of the activities of a comprehensive school counseling program. Her goal was to redefine the program to align with the National Standards for School Counseling Programs (Campbell & Dahir, 1997). In this example, all four leadership contexts facilitated the redefinition of this school counseling program.

We used the leadership contexts to strategize how she would establish leadership over the program. She decided that reducing inappropriate functions would take secondary priority to the design and leadership of a viable comprehensive school counseling program; "displacement" or "streamlining" these activities (Gysbers & Henderson, 2000) would be attempted once the new program was accepted in the school.

We began by addressing the symbolic leadership context and the human resource leadership context. The opportunity to articulate and communicate a vision ignited her creativity and inspired passion for the school counseling program, qualities that energize emerging leaders by inspiring metaphors and symbols (Gardner, 1995; Kouzes & Posner, 1995). This counselor passionately believed in the power of the school community to foster healthy, resilient, and successful learners (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 1997), and this image became a symbolic goal that she shared with administrators, parents, and teachers as she talked about how, together, they could make a difference in the lives of students. In these interactions, she was also refining her skills in the human resource leadership activities of believing in others, being visible, and empowering others.

After establishing the vision for the program, she began activities appropriate for the structural leadership context. These leadership activities include designing a viable organization, in this case, a comprehensive school counseling program for the middle school. Since the implementation phase was not possible yet, she focused on designing an ideal comprehensive middle school program, after extensive research in professional literature (e.g., Dollarhide & Saginak, 2003; Gysbers & Henderson, 2000; McWhirter, McWhirter, McWhirter, & McWhirter, 1998; Muro & Kottman, 1995), and the National Standards for School Counseling Programs (Campbell & Dahir, 1997). She sought support for the new program by talking to teachers and parents about the benefits of a comprehensive school counseling program.

The final leadership context, political leadership, was yet to be addressed, but was essential for success. She asked the principal for administrative support for a systematic process for designing a comprehensive school counseling program (Gysbers & Henderson, 2000). She proposed the establishment of an ongoing functional advisory board to assist in the design, implementation, and evaluation of the program. This advisory board would comprise the academic leaders of the school (both formal leaders and informal leaders), parents, students, and selected community leaders. The principal was willing to support this process.