Wearing Two Hats: Counselors Working as Managerial Leaders in Agencies and Schools.

Clinical supervision, a type of supervision that is focused on enhancing the treatment skills and knowledge of counselors, is an enormously important and complex topic and one that has received a great deal of attention in the counseling literature. For the many counselors who hold supervisory positions in schools and agencies (e.g., director of child and family services, head school counselor, intensive outpatient team leader, managing partner of a private practice), clinical supervision is however just one facet of the multivariate task of leading a team of employees; aside from general descriptions about the various types of nonclinical supervision, little has been written about the skills and practices needed to be an effective leader within a counseling setting. This may be because it is simply assumed that counselors already possess the skills necessary to be effective leaders of programs and personnel (Dollarhide, 2003). We contend that this is an unsound assumption and that effective leadership within schools and counseling agencies requires specific leadership knowledge and, most important, practice. Several terms have been used within the counseling literature to describe nonclinical types of supervision. These include developmental, program, and administrative supervision (Barret & Schmidt, 1986; Page, Pietrzak, & Sutton, 2001; Roberts & Borders, 1994); structural, human resource, political, and symbolic leadership (Dollarhide, 2003); leadership of volunteer organizations and associations (e.g., president of the Association for Assessment in Counseling and Education), more specifically known as "volunteer leadership" (Goodman, 2003); and professional practices (Von Steen, Vacc, & Strickland, 2002). These terms overlap to some degree, and it is highly likely that new terms describing leadership philosophy will continue to evolve and emerge. The term managerial leadership is used in this article because it bridges the gap in the management literature from which we derived many of the leadership practices described herein. The appeal of the hybrid term managerial leadership is grounded in the practical reality that while today's managers are being asked to maintain order and consistency in some areas of their responsibility (i.e., traditional management role), they are also being challenged by their supervisors to produce change and movement in other areas (i.e., leadership role). For our discussion, managerial leadership is defined as a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a goal (Northouse, 2003). Although people who engage in managerial leadership are typically referred to as "leaders" and those individuals toward whom leadership is directed are referred to as "followers" both are integrally linked in the relationship resulting from the managerial leadership process (Burns, 1978; Hollander, 1992). Three key aspects of managerial leadership are the following: (a) Managerial leadership involves influence because it is concerned with how the managerial leader affects followers, (b) managerial leadership also typically occurs in groups because groups are the context within which managerial leadership takes place, and (c) managerial leadership includes attention to goals because a key measure for managerial leadership effectiveness is goal attainment (Northouse, 2003; Yukl, 2001). As soon as someone is placed in a position of managerial leadership, staff expectations of that individual change. As much as the individual might want to continue to be a peer, that is no longer his or her role. That person has become a person of authority, a "boss." Consequently, the transition from peer to boss involves learning new behaviors. Although many counseling skills can be readily applied to effective leadership (e.g., listening skills, empathy, awareness of developmental and cultural differences, building rapport, facilitating group process, planning, goal setting, and evaluating outcomes), specific leadership practices, such as completing performance reviews, communicating compensation philosophies and practices, addressing colleagues' performance problems, and being held accountable for team camaraderie and productivity, are not taught in traditional counseling programs. …