Читать книгу Counseling Leaders and Advocates - Группа авторов - Страница 13

Our plan for creating this book began serendipitously with a series of informal conversations that we enjoyed during breaks at the meetings of a national counseling organization in which we both held leadership positions at the time. We found that we shared a keen interest in leadership and advocacy and were excited to see how the counseling profession’s attention to these topics has grown in recent years. We talked about how much we had enjoyed Leaders and Legacies: Contributions to the Profession of Counseling (West et al., 2003), and as we talked, we realized that this was the most recent book that profiled leaders in our field—and nearly two decades had gone by since it was published. Some of the leaders profiled then are still active in the counseling profession and continue to make significant new contributions, others are no longer living, and some new leaders have emerged in recent times. With consultation and the inspiration of a decades’ long counseling leader, we recognized the need for a text that holistically integrated leadership and advocacy insights from current counseling leaders. It was time for a new work!

As we discussed our ideas about how to organize this book, an outline emerged for a book with three parts. These parts would capture the phenomena of counseling leadership and advocacy in counseling, the stories of individuals who have advanced our profession as leaders and advocates, and the “common threads” that unify the contributions they have made. Furthermore, it was imperative for us to emphasize practical guidance for counselors, counselor educators, and counseling students who aspire to be leaders and advocates.