Why Therapists Need to Be Leaders

Lisa Marie Bobby:

Confidently embracing a leadership role in your therapy practice isn’t just a good idea. It’s an actual game changer, both for you and your clients. On today’s show, we’re exploring why stepping up to the plate. As a leader can create a profound impact, a profound positive impact, and also ways to do this with warmth and wisdom that help you cultivate a different kind of professional identity in the process.

And welcome to the Love, happiness, and Success for therapists. I’m your host, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I’m the founder of growing self counseling and coaching, and I have been working as a therapist for a long time now. I’m a licensed psychologist, licensed marriage and family therapist. I am also a certified coach.

Um, I’ve served for many years as a clinical supervisor and a mentor, and have really devoted a. big chunk of my career in my role to devoting, um, a lot of time, energy and care to the wellbeing, the growth, the development of therapists like me and you, because This career path we’ve chosen is so hard. It requires a lot.

It has some unique, let’s say growth opportunities. It has unique challenges, but also the rewards are beyond measure. This is such a rewarding career. And there is a lot of complexity. There’s stuff for us to be thinking about and to have support on this journey is absolutely vital. In my experience, therapists like us who don’t have support, who don’t have guidance, who don’t have mentorship, who don’t have direction can easily become overwhelmed, burnt out, heartbroken, Um, to their own detriment.

And sometimes they just struggle and suffer. Other times they leave the profession for, for a variety of reasons, but that’s really why I wanted to start doing this podcast for you. For us is to be talking about the experience of therapists, really talking about what. We need to be well and have love and happiness and success, both professionally, but also personally.

So that is what I’m doing here every week. And I’m so glad you’re here with me today. So today I want to talk about something that is kind of controversial, which is this idea of experiencing ourselves as leaders when it comes to our role as therapists. And I say that this is controversial because while we all know instinctively, and I think from our own lived experiences that there is enormous amount of power in direction, in guidance, in clarity, in mentorship, in leadership, this Role this idea even can be very uncomfortable for counselors, even heretical feeling for counselors, given the way that we are socialized, as we are grown into counselors.

So. I want you to imagine just for a second to crack into this, that, you know, we in our role are, are something of a light. You know, we are shining a light in the darkness. We are coming often with our clients. We are meeting them in difficult places and frustrating places in confusing places in their lives.

And that part of our role is to, you know, flip on the lights, illuminating options, like here you are here, these different places that you could go. Let’s talk about where you want to go. We are illuminating paths forward and giving them. Um, hope, giving them direction, that clarity, right? And if we aren’t doing those things, meeting people in the darkness, turning on the lights, helping them craft some kind of path forward in a very real way, we are not doing our jobs.

And what I was just talking about flipping on the lights, helping people like make a plan, get direction, figure out where they want to go, help them get there is also the definition of leadership and of guidance. And we have typically, I know I certainly was then taught to follow our clients lead, um, to have them be totally self directed to be non directive, to be, um, to Absent and passive to the point where our clients are kind of really figuring out their own way completely.

And I think that there is a lot of really good reasons why therapists are trained to be extremely passive, because if you have Somebody like we do with a power differential with, you know, a more powerful role with a degree to come in and say, I know what’s right for you. And here’s what you should do.

And here’s what’s going to happen. Blah, blah, blah. That is completely inappropriate. We cannot do that. We cannot make decisions for our clients. We cannot tell people what to do. So that is never a good idea. That is absolutely unethical. And I also believe that with a non directive passive stance taken so far that it also deprives clinicians of their real leadership position in therapy and contributes to negative outcomes for clients many times.

So. Imagine that you go to a doctor’s office and you say, I have this terrible pain in my chest, let me tell you what’s happening. It started on Wednesday. This is what it feels like. And the doctor says, Huh? Well, what do you make of that? What do you think it could be? And then stands there blinking, doing that, like, really awkward, who’s going to talk first silence thing that therapists do, like, just waiting for you.

Anyway, um, how would you feel? You would think, dude, what the hell? You’re the professional. I’m telling you what’s going on, and I really like your help in figuring out what’s going on. And then, like, tell me what we need to do so that I’m not having this pain anymore, because that’s your job. Right?

Reasonable? We expect other health care providers to provide leadership and guidance when it comes to what’s going on and how we’re going to fix it. But for some reason, I mean, with, with therapists, um, we’re trained to not. Do that. Somebody comes in. It’s like, I feel terrible. There’s this stuff going on.

I’m thinking about these things all the time. Um, I’m having intrusive thoughts about X, Y, Z. I just, I really want to feel better. I don’t feel like myself anymore. I’m having trouble sleeping. Like what, what is it? And to have a therapist who has been culturated out of their leadership role to be like, How do you feel about that?

Right? And just totally non directive, totally passive, letting the client go to wherever they think it could be, which we need to help them explore, certainly. But, It’s also true that you are a highly qualified professional who has invested a lot of time and energy into an education, into a degree, into training experiences.

And you actually do know a lot of things. Um, that I’ve met therapists who feel actually disempowered from saying things like It sounds like you might be struggling with depression. Let me ask you some more questions just to see if any of these other things feel true for you. I’m like, go, you know, through the symptoms and, and, and help actually conduct an assessment that helps a client get clarity around.

Oh, that’s why I feel different lately. That makes a lot of sense to me because. There is a well documented treatment for depression, and this could happen in so many different ways, you know, relationship problems, career clarity, like, you know, people come in to us for a reason. They’re not having a good time.

They would like our help with something. They are here because they would like for something to be different because of working with us, unless they’re court mandated, I guess. But stop, they may even have hopes then, but this is like part of the contract. And when clinicians feel apprehensive about picking up that leadership role and saying, yeah, let me help you figure out what’s going on with that.

Let me ask you, see, we’ll get to the bottom of this together. Like they’re doing such a grave disservice for their clients, or even if clinicians who might be more comfortable with an assessment role, like they can do that. They feel very uncomfortable with suggesting a course, a path that will help a client get from here to there.

Now, this is not all therapists. Certainly, I think that some theoretical orientations, um, Culturally, or like have a vibe that is more conducive to leadership than others. But so, for example, if a client connects with somebody who has a very strong CBT orientation, you might come in and be like, okay, I see what’s going on here.

So the first thing I think we should do, let’s take a look at some of the stories that you’re telling yourself. Let’s take a look at some of those automatic thoughts to find which kind of they are like, there’s, there’s a path, there’s a system that helps clients move forward towards, uh, learning how to manage their thoughts, their feelings differently, their behavior, certainly so that they can feel better.

And that’s why there’s so much research around the fact that CBT tends to work a lot of the times. It’s a thing. In contrast, that same client connects with a non directive Rogerian therapist who would not do that, but instead, um, you know, just unpack and unpack and unpack and unpack. I’m not saying that there isn’t any benefit from doing that, but one of the implicit beliefs of that theoretical orientation.

Is that the client knows their own answers and my job is to help them arrive at their own answers and, um, that may be true also, though, if you understand that a client has major depressive disorder and that there is a treatment for that, do you not have some kind of Moral and ethical obligation to share that information with a client so that they can find relief more expediently than they could from possibly many months of peeling various onions with you while they’re kind of wandering around in the darkness.

You’re wandering around in the darkness too. I mean, you’re like probably within arm’s length, but, but in terms of your active help of getting there to somewhere else, um, I feel that that is really doing them a disservice, but many clinicians do this. And even unknowingly, because I think they are very, very uncomfortable with adopting a leadership guidance role when it comes to their therapy practice.

Um, And I think too, that this is also why coaches like civilian coaches who do not have a mental health background, um, who some would argue are really occupying a lot of the same space that therapists are. This is why coaches I think are having so much success and oftentimes eating therapists lunch when it comes to client outcomes is that.

A coach would have no problem with sharing ideas, opinions, um, have you ever considered this? Which has its own set of ethical issues. If this coach is really just talking from their life experience rather than making space for their client. If a coach is telling somebody what to do, we can’t do that. It needs to be like a collaborative, um, You know, spirit certainly, but the reality is, is that that is why our clients are coming to us.

They have a problem. They would like assistance in solving that problem. And they’ve done everything that they know what to do to fix it on their own. And so there are some pretty major self of therapist issues that come up for many clinicians related to the fact that we do need to embrace our expertise with confidence and really step in to this guidance position.

Because. You have, again, put so much into this, you actually are a subject matter expert, you are not an expert on the life of your client, you are not an expert on exactly what they should do and what major life decisions they should make, but you are Actually are an expert when it comes to human psychology or healthy relationships or career development, or, um, you know, what actually needs to happen from somebody to move from unwell to well, but it comes to their mental and emotional internal experience.

And. If that idea makes you feel uncomfortable, that is something to explore, to think about, to journal about, to discuss with a supervisor or a mentor, because once you can make that identity shift and actually make Pick up this, this thing that you have actually earned, but might not be fully owning it, things will really start to come together for you as a clinician.

And again, it’s worth exploring if this makes you feel uncomfortable. Comfortable, because it’s, I think, a powerful growth opportunity. I think many clinicians are naturally very humble people and also have received that gospel of you are not the expert. Your clients are the experts. You are. Not here to be an active participant in any of this.

You need to follow your clients. I get this and I’m glad that this gets drilled into us in counseling school because it would be worse if it wasn’t. But again, I think at a certain place in our professional developmental level, we need to find a healthy space for leadership in order to be truly effective and helpful for people.

So again, we’ve been trained to be silent facilitators, but I think that clients also need to hear our voice, hear our guidance, and then the discussion becomes, how do we strike that balance between providing that guidance and leadership and also having our clients ultimately be in charge that we need to listen and affirm that guidance.

And help them create their goals and define their outcomes while contributing in active and helpful ways to that process. That is the dance that we have to master. So. Again, I will say this just for anybody who might be having feelings about what I’m saying. It is a thousand percent unethical to tell a client what to do, advise them on major life decisions, or take the stance that you know better than they do about how they should operate their lives, what values are important, I mean, these, these big things, but again, you also know things.

You, you know, how mental and emotional wellness work and you have so much to share. So while we do not say, wow, you should divorce that guy, but you could say, uh, If you would like to have a better relationship with your husband, I have some thoughts about how you might achieve that. Would you like to hear them?

And then we offer our clients a menu. Here are some things that tend to work in situations like this. Like these, do you think any of these could potentially work for you? If so, we could dig into some of these and talk about how you might apply them to your own life. So we are helping clients understand what is possible for them.

We are illuminating a possible path forward. We are providing them with options. We are supporting their growth and helping them move in the direction that they desire. Um, and I think, I think a healthy way. However, this requires trust and it requires confidence. In yourself, and I think here is the magic of empowerment, because when we as therapists finally do this own internal growth work that allow us to step into and embrace our own leadership role, something I think really beautiful happens.

I think that our clients start to trust us more and feel more confident in the work itself. I think that. Clients come in looking for some kind of authority figure again, not not somebody to tell them what to do, but, like, for sure a guide. And I think that when we are listening and hearing them and understanding them and being responsive by saying, I hear what you.

Are seeking. Here’s what I think we could do that would move you towards that goal. What do you think about that idea? We are then taking a more active role in facilitating their growth moments and clients benefit from that. Um, when we can be strong, we are there. Creating not just emotional safety for our clients, but also very appropriate challenge for our clients, because there there has to be both of those and I think leadership does also require challenge to grow and when we’re doing that and doing it well, we’re really pushing clients into contact with their own truth and helping them connect with their own solutions.

And offering our guidance in creating a plan, teaching skills and strategies, providing information. Here’s how these things work. What would you think about experimenting with this? Obviously, they are the ones who say yes or no, but that it is a much more active process than a passive, um, um, Experience that for a lot of clients, especially therapy clients really kind of makes them feel like they are spinning their wheels.

But when we’re doing this, well, we’re not just providing guidance. I think that we are creating a very strong feeling. therapeutic alliance that says, I’m on your side. We’re in this together. I am here to support you and I care enough about you to actively work with you as you are moving towards your goals.

And I think just even energetically, that can feel a lot better. A lot different, a lot better for a client than the message that comes from. I just going to sit here passively for 45 minutes and nod and let you free associate and then let you walk out of my office wondering. What the heck you just paid me 150 for a client doesn’t understand that a client doesn’t get really how that makes sense, how it facilitates their own growth process because you’re not creating a leadership for them.

There can actually be a lot of benefit in just having time and space to talk through stuff that can help people create clarity. But the role of a leader is to say, I think it would be really beneficial if we just spent this whole session unpacking this. I feel like there’s probably some stuff under here that we need to understand.

And in order for you to get that insight, I really just like for you to tell me more. It’s going to feel like you’re just talking and talking and talking, but I bet we’ll get there still the same thing. But you have provided leadership around who you are. Why it’s beneficial and and provided that like active guidance on here’s how to get from here to there.

The function is the same. Still, it’s still just free association and talking through things. But your presence is different. So. Again, these are just a few examples, but, you know, this is really about creating a shared journey. Um, leadership in therapy is not about dictating. It is about co creating. So together, it’s you and your clients mapping out this journey.

And then also as you move forward, celebrating. Each step towards their goals. So, you know, leadership questions for therapists might include questions like, what do you feel is possible for you in this moment? You’re helping clients open new doors, new things, or, um, how would you like the situation to be different?

We’re helping them define goals, right? But taking the stance puts you in the true role of a leader, which is helping people that trust you see what is possible. possible and being a compassionate guide for their process, not your process, their process. So I think that part of being able to tap into this kind of leadership energy for yourself is connecting with your own meaning around this work.

Like how do you provide yourself with self leadership? Where are you going? What do you want as a therapist? What makes you feel engaged and excited and present and, um, happy and like you are on your own personal mission? Right? Because when you are clear about who you are and what kind of leader you want to be, that provides you with grounding.

And, um, I think confidence to be able to then support clients. On their own journey. And I know for me, a big piece of this is feeling like I have the opportunity to create positive change in the lives of others. That is true for my clients, but it is also true for you and, and all the other therapists that I work with.

I strongly believe that like, when I am helping clinicians, Become stronger and healthier and happier and more confident and more competent. Like it’s good for them. And that makes me feel good. But also clinicians like me and you, we have the opportunity to touch the lives of a lot of other people when we’re doing well, when we’re in a good place, when we’re doing good work.

I mean, that kind of energy reverberates into the lives of potentially hundreds Of other people over the course of your career and my career. And so for me, this like legacy, like ringing the bell, we are creating impact that won’t be known the side of heaven sometimes this is enormously energizing for me.

And when I can tap in to this kind of energy, that is my why that provides me with clarity and direction and enthusiasm. It’s like me getting grounded into. Okay. I know why I’m here. And I also know what my role is in the lives of other people so that I can be more confident about being a guide for them.

So that’s a small personal example of how this works, but your why is going to be different from my why your big picture is going to be unique for you, but that when you inhabit that and get that clarity around this is why I’m here in this profession. This is my why you will become a more confident and empowered.

Leader so that when we can keep our eyes on our own horizon, like, why are we here? What is this about? Then we can begin to translate that vision for our clients, right? Um, we work with people. I work with people all the time who sometimes have just gone through so much or, or by virtue of the fact of not having been.

Supported or challenged even to think this way before they might not really see what is possible for themselves and part of our role is to help them create that, um, while we always need to meet people where they are and validate their needs. Truth and, you know, also to be honest, like sometimes just hold the hope for people.

And yes, we are actually just going to sit here together in the darkness for a little while. I’ll hold this hope for you until you can pick it back up for yourself. I mean, I’ve, I’ve said those words out loud to clients before, but, but I’m still saying. To them, I can see that you have lost the hope for yourself and I understand why and I am your active partner.

So I am going to hold this hope for you. Just keep it safe. And when the time is right, I will be handing this back to you. But I understand that the time is not right, right now. But you are still in a guide role. You are still taking a leadership position. You are saying to them, I can see that what we need to do for a while is just be here together in the darkness and have that be okay.

We don’t have to go anywhere. We don’t have to do anything. Let’s just experience this. Totally valid. You’re still providing leadership around what’s happening and why. You’re doing it so we can all do this naturally if we feel like we have permission to do this and and it really requires walking this leadership path with grace and so here are some pointers that I want to leave you with for how to develop an ethical and positive leadership stance with your clients and in your professional role.

And you have a few jobs as a leader and job number one is to have a clear vision. So, for example, if you’re working with a client, do you have a case conceptualization? Do you understand what the problem is and are you, do you have a clear theoretical orientation kind of guideline in your mind that takes, okay, here’s what the problem is, and here is Some paths that that we could take forward that would help this client get what they want out of this.

So do you have that clarity for yourself? And are you talking about that out loud with your clients? You have to know what is going on and where you’re heading and your responsibility is to make sure that your clients are also aware of that. If you’re not doing those things actively, You’re not doing your job in a lot of ways.

So this is part of our responsibility as therapists and also as leaders. Another part of this responsibility is guiding, not steering, but guiding. So that means guiding. Here is the map. Here’s where we are. As you can see, there are a number of different roads. Here’s a river over here. There’s a swamp. And I think there’s dragon here.

There’d be dragons over here on this part of the map. So so it’s like, here’s here. The options. Here’s what it would take. And then we let our clients drive, say, I think I want to take the canoe past this river thing and go away from the dragon. It’s like, yes, good idea. Let’s do that. I’ll help you do that.

So, but we are the keepers of the map. Clients decide which way they want to go. So. That I think is the difference there. And then also our job is to facilitate growth, meaning that we need to be the gardener. We need to nurture people’s growth with every single session. And so our job is to Is to make sure that our clients have what they need in order to grow, that they have appropriate safety, that they also have appropriate challenge.

Part of having a successful garden is making sure that the conditions are right. There’s fertilizer. If we want to have these plants in the garden, we’re going to need to have these seeds. And so our, our job here is helping clients understand that. You know, here is the next step that will move you forward, or here are your options.

These are different things that you could consider that would help you get to where you want to go, and then helping them grow into that. So remember, you know, it’s, it’s their journey. They are the ones that have to do the work, and it is only our job to guide. I mean, we can’t take over, but. If we are not doing those things, we are not giving our clients enough for the work to be successful.

So it’s time for us all, I think to embrace our inner leaders. It’s a gift to our clients. It’s a gift to ourselves, right? And, and the work here is finding that sweet spot between supporting your client’s autonomy and self-direction, and also contributing to their growth process in a meaningful way. Um, I think it also requires celebrating our expertise and claiming the fact that we do know a couple of things we are actually subject matter experts and to start having that be okay.

It also requires us staying connected to our why that’s always going to be the compass in this journey. And then lastly, too, I think building and participating in the kind of community that supports and nurtures our growth as therapists, that challenges us to be the confident leaders that we are, and also provides checks and balances.

If we are being too much in any area that we have people who love us enough to say, That is actually not your decision to make, or it sounds like you’re overstepping there a little bit. You can walk that one back. I mean, I, it’s so amazing. I think for all of us to have people in our lives who are really devoted to our growth.

And so that’s why, you know, here at Growing Self, a lot of what we do with clinicians, Um, in addition to supporting their practice, obviously, um, we do things like consultation groups, case consultation opportunities, peer support that really, I think, um, in addition to clinical trainings, professional development trainings, where we’ve actually talked about situations just like this, uh, how to embrace leadership and feel, um, Okay, to have some agency in the process that our clients are going through that we are not, you know, disempowered passengers that are on this chaotic, you know, boat that’s going through the whitewater rafting of a river.

We’re like hanging on for dear life. No, we are actually the river guide that people are paying to help them get from. You know, this part of the river through the whitewater rapids to the other. And so we need to know what’s going on, but we also need to feel like it’s okay to know what’s going on. So I hope that hearing this message from me today has given you some food for thought, especially if these are new ideas.

If you haven’t had a supervisor or mentor, who’s been talking to you about these things before, I hope that this was helpful for you. Um, And I hope that it’s giving you some ideas about how to develop your own leadership capabilities and how to bring this into your work with your clients in an ethical, respectful and collaborative way, because.

They’re waiting for you. They really are. Um, lastly, I will also share that these ideas did not come to me through my experiences in counseling school. So probably just like you, I went through a master’s degree in counseling psychology and counselor education that prepared me to become a marriage and family therapist, which I am.

And then I completed a PhD program in counseling psychology. And then after all of that, becoming a licensed psychologist, I began exploring coaching psychology as a different modality because I started running into limits with therapy, particularly for high functioning, growth oriented people who were not coming in for And that’s where I started.

Treatment for mental health conditions. Um, they were coming in for personal growth. They were coming in for help and achieving goals and, uh, began learning and practicing coaching models, which were largely much more effective for clients who had, who desired those outcomes and in a coaching. Uh, capacity, a coaching ideology, a coaching model.

Leadership and guidance is much more part of the culture than it is in counseling. So that acculturation as a coach, I think has informed some of the way that I conduct therapy that has made me a much more effective. Therapist when, when I’m working with clients who have, who have a need for psychotherapy and because I have personally benefited so much from becoming credentialed as a coach, it actually became a goal of mine to develop a program that I Provides licensed therapists, which with a path to become credentialed as coaches.

And I’m so pleased to let you know that I have done it, I built it, I made it for you. And if you are coaching, curious or would like to, you know, learn more about coaching, what it is, what it involves, the difference between coaching and counseling. And certainly if you are looking for a evidence-based research backed.

Coach credentialing program that was developed by therapists for therapists. I would love to invite you to come and check out mine. You can come to growingself. com forward slash therapists. And on that page, you’ll find all kinds of different free resources that I put together for you, podcasts, videos, activities, but you’ll also find more information about our practice and also our coach credentialing opportunities.

So all there for you again, thank you so much for spending this time with me and I’ll be back in touch next week with another episode of love, happiness and success for therapists. Bye.