Counseling leadership and professional counselor identity: a phenomenological study

ABSTRACT

This phenomenological study explored the perspectives and experiences of 12 counseling leaders grounding their leadership within professional counselor identity. The results of this study yielded five main themes (i.e., person as leader, culture, privilege and responsibility, counseling leadership, advocacy and impact), each with three subthemes. Implications for counseling leadership, leadership training, multicultural leadership, and research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Counseling leadership
• leadership
• phenomenology
• professional identity
• multicultural and social justice leadership

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research study was partially funded through an Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) research grant. All data was collected at Syracuse University.