June 30, 2025
Inside the Mind of an Undeniable School Counselor
You’ve got the heart. You’ve got the training. So why does it still feel like no one’s listening? This episode is about the invisible skill no one taught you, but everyone responds to. The one that separates the school counselors who get looped in… from the ones who get left out. It’s not confidence. It’s not charisma. And it’s definitely not another credential. We’re talking about the kind of presence that shifts the energy in a room. The kind of clarity that builds trust when things get te...
You’ve got the heart. You’ve got the training.
So why does it still feel like no one’s listening?
This episode is about the invisible skill no one taught you, but everyone responds to.
The one that separates the school counselors who get looped in…
from the ones who get left out.
It’s not confidence.
It’s not charisma.
And it’s definitely not another credential.
We’re talking about the kind of presence that shifts the energy in a room.
The kind of clarity that builds trust when things get tense.
The kind of leadership that doesn’t wait to be handed a title.
If you’ve ever thought, “I know what I’m doing... so why don’t they see it?”
You’re closer than you think to the answer.
Press play, and let’s talk about what makes a school counselor undeniable.
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⭐️ Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’re doing that every day in the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Come join us! ⭐️
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Our goal at School for School Counselors is to help school counselors stay on fire, make huge impacts for students, and catalyze change for our roles through grassroots advocacy and collaboration. Listen to get to know more about us and our mission, feel empowered and inspired, and set yourself up for success in the wonderful world of school counseling.
00:00 - Fluency vs Confidence Problem
02:15 - Credentials Don't Make You Undeniable
04:22 - Relational Trust Beats Test Scores
05:57 - Real-Life School Counseling Scenarios
09:50 - Three Areas to Build Counselor Fluency
15:26 - Mastermind Community Success Stories
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Did you ever walk out of a meeting and think, man, I wish I would have said that, but I didn't know how to say it without making things worse?
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Or you just had to stand there silently while someone sort of questioned you or your role on campus, and you knew how you felt about it, but you didn't quite know what to say.
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That's not a confidence problem.
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It's actually a fluency problem, and it's the difference between being dismissed behind your back or being the go-to when things get hard.
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It's time for us to have some straight talk about what makes a school counselor absolutely undeniable.
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Hey, my friend, welcome back.
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I'm Steph Johnson, a licensed professional counselor and full-time school counselor, just like you.
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If you're tired of school counseling advice that sounds like it came from Pinterest, you're in the right place Around.
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Here we're keeping it real, we're keeping it grounded and I'm giving you tools and ideas that actually work, because you deserve more than pretty graphics and empty promises.
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So in the last episode of the podcast, we talked about something that I know a lot of school counselors are quietly wrestling with Should I get my LPC and leave school counseling altogether?
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We walked through the pros and the cons and the realities of licensure, but today we're not going to talk about what happens in life after school counseling.
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We're going to talk about what makes you powerful within it, because, whether or not you pursue clinical licensure, there is one thing that we need to have absolutely crystal clear Undeniable counselors don't get there through credentials.
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They can help, but what really makes you undeniable is fluency, and today we're going to talk about what that really means and what it looks like in action, because we've all felt it that moment in a meeting where every other person at the table is being treated like a professional and you're the one being voluntold to do the things that nobody else wants to do.
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So it makes sense that in our line of work, we start looking for credibility boosters.
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Credibility boosters, maybe if I had my LPC, maybe if I attained RAMP status, maybe if I earned this other certificate.
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But y'all, I know a school counselor who earned RAMP, celebrated it with her school district team and a week later that same school district announced that they were cutting school counselor positions.
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No joke, she didn't even know if she was going to be in the same place the next year or if her co-counselors were even going to have a job.
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So no, respect does not come from those kinds of credibility boosters or plaques.
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It comes from how you operate in the room, how others experience you, and it also comes from fluency.
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In research on school improvement, breik and Schneider found that relational trust was a better predictor of campus success than test scores or credentials.
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Let me say that again that is huge and it is not something that you normally hear within the educational rhetoric.
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More than test scores or credentials, the better predictor of campus success is relational trust, my friend.
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That kind of trust is built through personal regard, demonstrated competence, respect for everyone's roles and integrity over time, and I hope that those feel familiar, because they should.
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Those are the things that fluency also creates.
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We're not leaning on scripts or frameworks, but we're building an ability to see what really matters in real time, to be able to say those things clearly and to lead, especially in difficult situations, with calm confidence.
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Fluency builds trust and trust builds access, and that's what makes you undeniable as a school counselor.
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Being respected is not just about what you've earned on paper.
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It's more about what you bring and how consistently you bring it.
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It's like counseling itself.
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You know that theories matter.
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It's like counseling itself.
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You know that theories matter, but they only work when they bring yourself into the room.
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The strength of that relationship will outweigh the technique any day of the week, and the same thing applies when you're building professional influence as a school counselor.
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So let's try something different.
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Let's picture this You're in your real-life school building, the bell is ringing, your email alerts are dinging, you're halfway through your coffee and you're already behind.
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And then your administrator shows up.
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They say discipline concerns are up in seventh grade.
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We need to do something fast.
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Can you put together a small group for these students?
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Ask yourself in this moment do you know how to assess if a small group is even the right response?
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What would you need to know to determine that, and would you be able to confidently suggest an alternative?
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Or would you be able to say yes, with conditions that protect your time and outcome?
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Those are some tough questions, aren't they?
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Let's imagine you're in that same school counseling office on that same campus.
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Imagine yourself there about to run off to the next fire that needs to be put out, and a teacher pulls you to the side and says I've told you about this student's behavior three times and nothing has changed, and I don't know what else I'm supposed to do Ask yourself would you be able to address that issue in the moment without sounding dismissive or overwhelmed?
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Because that's an art, my friends for sure.
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I'm continually trying to master it.
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I'm not sure I'm there yet, but could you do it?
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And then could you guide that teacher with clarity in the moment and still walk away with your boundaries intact and not having created any more work for yourself.
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Those are tough, right, this is fun.
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Let's look at another one.
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What if you open your inbox and you see a parent emailing you and they're saying we haven't seen any improvement with our child.
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What exactly are you doing to help?
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I bet you've gotten one of those a time or two in your career.
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In that moment, ask yourself do you have a go-to way to respond that's professional and self-protective, or can you explain your role at your school in a way that builds trust with that parent instead of friction, without giving them the opportunity to say well, I emailed the school counselor and they just didn't even care.
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Again, this is the art part of school counseling, right?
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It's nuance and mastery.
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Let's do one more.
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Let's imagine this.
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This is like the interview questions that you often get for school counseling.
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There's a kid sobbing in the hallway, a teacher is calling for support with the classroom situation and a parent is waiting for you in your office.
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What do you do?
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Do you have a triage process in your mind that you could immediately go to and trust?
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Can you prioritize in real time without panicking?
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This is fluency in school counseling.
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If any of those scenarios made your stomach drop a little bit, it's okay.
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Of those scenarios made your stomach drop a little bit, it's okay.
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We all should have felt a little moment of oh, I'm not sure.
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Within those scenarios, it just means you're ready to grow.
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There are three places that you need to build fluency if you want to be seen as a trusted, essential and authoritative presence on your campus.
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The first place that you need to develop fluency, surprisingly, is not in your school counseling approaches or your curriculums or your small group plans.
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It's with regard to your administrator's goals and fears, because a lot of the times we feel like our principals might be ignoring us and really they may just not understand how to best utilize you.
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So if you show up to advocate and it sounds like well, that's really not a school counselor appropriate responsibility, or I need more time for tier one on this campus it's probably falling flat.
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Fluency means that you understand your administrator's pressure points test scores, classroom hours, pr optics and all the other things that are weighing on their shoulders on their shoulders and you start to explain your work through those lenses.
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That doesn't mean that you abandon the expectations of your role, but it also doesn't mean that you keep quoting national models that they don't understand.
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You've got to lead with relevance to your administrator, with relevance to your administrator.
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Secondly, you need to build fluency with teacher needs and struggles.
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Teachers are flippin' overwhelmed and they don't need more to-dos, they don't need more platitudes.
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They need somebody that gets it.
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They need somebody that gets it.
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Let's say a teacher walks up to you and says this student is a disaster every day, all afternoon.
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It starts after recess and it never stops.
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What could you do?
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You could take the student and do a quick calm down routine.
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Right, might help in the moment.
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You could ask for more context before offering support.
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You could offer to come in and watch for patterns or do check-ins and say you know, we'll follow up and build a plan.
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Or, better yet, you can say man, that looks hard, that looks super frustrating.
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Let's figure out how we can work together on this and then you have ideas and insights to back that up in real time, on the fly.
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That's fluency.
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Speaking of real time, this is the kind of fluency you don't often hear people talk about in school counseling.
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When you're in that scenario where kids are breaking down and teachers are asking for plans and parents want meetings, now what you can't say is okay, hold on, let me go check my binder and my curriculums.
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You have to be able to lead in real time, and that sounds tongue in cheek, but, my goodness, how many school counselors do you see that are perfectly content to sit within this tier one SEL teacher role and completely rely on frameworks and scripted curriculums?
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Too many Ask school counselors.
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If we want to build clout on our campuses, we must be able to lead in real time, to not be reactive, to not toss out responses recklessly, but be discerning.
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That's what we work on in our School for School Counselors Mastermind every week.
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Fluency isn't something that you learn in grad school.
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It's something that you practice when you have real cases and you can get real feedback with real support.
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That's what our community is designed to offer.
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Our members have said things like this Before.
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I was feeling lost as a new school counselor, I didn't know where to start, but after joining the Mastermind I feel ready and prepared.
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I have wonderful suggestions from others, tips that are great for a first-year counselor and I'm ready to begin.
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Or this one Before joining the Mastermind, I was reluctant to speak up in conferences or with administration, but after I trust my professional knowledge and instincts more and I'm increasing my counseling fluency.
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Or this one, get a load of this one.
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Before joining the mastermind, I was constantly looking to others for the quote-unquote right way to do things and thinking there were certain standards I had to follow to prove I belonged in this profession.
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I've learned to trust my own judgment and experience to meet the needs of my students in ways that are responsive and meaningful.
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Y'all those are powerful.
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That is what we are doing week after week in our School for School Counselors Mastermind, but to the point.
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You do not need another credential to be respected on your campus.
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You need clarity.
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You need relationships that are rooted in trust, and all of that comes through fluency, because school counselors who lead with fluency change their campuses and really our whole profession from the inside out.
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If you are ready to sharpen your skills and show up with clarity this fall.
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I have something great for you.
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You should join me in Best Year Ever.
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It's our annual free multi-night event that helps you step into the school year with a plan that actually works.
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This isn't a veiled sales pitch or a bunch of random resources you're probably never going to look for again.
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We are going to guide you through, step by step, the things you need to know to grow and how to get your school year started off on the very best footing.
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Go to schoolforschoolcounselorscom and get your free ticket right now.
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And then, if today's episode stirred something in you, I want you to wait until next week, because I'm going to be starting something new on the podcast.
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I'm going to be starting a special podcast series called Graded, where I'm going to take the most common school counseling tools, beliefs and practices and put them to the test.
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I'm going to be asking things like does it actually work, where did this stuff come from and what's the grade that it deserves within our profession?
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It's going to be a lot of fun.
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It's going to start in the next episode, but until then, remember you do not have to wait or grab more credentials to be undeniable.
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You just have to start showing up like the awesome school counselor you already are.
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Take care, my friend.
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