Creating Conscious Influence & Impact
Support Client Change Without Assuming Responsibility for Their Choices
Live Virtual Continuing Education Workshop for Counselors and Social Workers
Helping professionals influence clients through the questions they ask, the information they provide, the concerns they raise, the behavior they model, and the relationships they build.
Influence is inevitable. Control is not.
Counselors and social workers are often expected to encourage change, address risk, support difficult decisions, and help clients consider the possible consequences of their choices. Yet the desire to help can unintentionally shift into advising, persuading, rescuing, nudging, or taking too much responsibility for the client’s outcome.
Creating Conscious Influence & Impact explores how helping professionals can use their influence responsibly while preserving client autonomy, dignity, and self-determination.
Can We Know What Is Best for Someone Else?
Professional education and experience provide valuable knowledge and perspective. They do not allow us to know with certainty what another person should choose.
Each client brings different:
Needs
Values
Priorities
Experiences
Relationships
Support systems
Cultural influences
Goals
Tolerances for risk
Ideas about who they want to become
What worked for the professional may not work for the client. What appears to be the right decision from the outside may not align with the client’s values, circumstances, needs, or desired identity.
What Is the Helping Professional’s Responsibility?
Using Mental Freedom® Principle 1, Responsibility vs. Response-ability, participants will examine:
What belongs to the helping professional
What remains the client’s responsibility
When safety, legal, ethical, or capacity concerns may require intervention
When the client retains the right to make a decision the professional would not make
How to determine whether offering more information or support would be prudent
How to remain caring without over-functioning, rescuing, or assuming control
We will also address a familiar request: “Can’t you just tell me what to do?”
How can a professional respond without becoming dismissive, abandoning the client, or taking ownership of a decision that is not theirs to make?
Influence Happens Through Relationship
People receive information differently when it comes from someone they know cares about and respects them.
Conscious influence is grounded in connection, credibility, curiosity, honesty, and respect for autonomy. It allows professionals to offer information, questions, observations, experiences, and appropriate challenge without directing the client toward a predetermined outcome.
When the Client’s Choice Does Not Work Out
Respecting autonomy does not guarantee that a client’s decision will produce a positive outcome.
When a client chooses a path the professional feared would not work and the consequences are painful, the professional may wonder:
Should I have pushed harder?
Should I have done more?
Did I fail the client?
Am I responsible for what happened?
Participants will learn to distinguish legitimate professional accountability from guilt, hindsight, and responsibility that belonged to the client.
What Participants Will Learn
This Workshop Is Designed For:
Licensed clinical professional counselors
Licensed professional counselors
Licensed clinical social workers
Licensed social workers
Marriage and family therapists
Behavioral health and human-service professionals
Conscious influence versus control, coercion, manipulation, persuasion, and directive nudging
Professional responsibility, client responsibility, and response-ability
Required intervention versus respect for client agency
Providing information without steering the decision
Exploring advantages, disadvantages, risks, and consequences without building a case for one preferred choice
Using language that supports autonomy and responsibility
Responding when a client asks to be told what to do
Releasing inappropriate responsibility when a client’s choice has painful consequences
Learning Objectives
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
Differentiate conscious influence from control, coercion, manipulation, and directive persuasion.
Distinguish professional responsibility, client responsibility, and response-ability.
Evaluate when intervention may be required and when decision-making agency belongs to the client.
Use relationship-centered questions and information in ways that preserve client autonomy.
Respond constructively when a client asks the professional to make the decision.
Differentiate appropriate professional accountability from inappropriate responsibility for client choices and outcomes.
Workshop Details
Date: July 29, 2026
Time: 4:00–7:00 PM Central Time
Location: Live on Zoom
Regular registration: $79
Introductory registration: $69
Continuing Education
Three Illinois continuing education hours are available for Illinois LCSW, LSW, LCPC, and LPC licensees who attend the full workshop and complete all CE requirements.
Professionals licensed outside Illinois should confirm with their licensing board whether continuing education issued by an Illinois-approved provider will be accepted.
Instructor
Kim Olver, LCPC, NCC, BCC
Kim Olver is an author, speaker, licensed clinical professional counselor, board-certified coach, and internationally recognized educator in Choice Theory® and Reality Therapy. She is the creator of Mental Freedom®, a practical framework that helps people reduce unnecessary psychological suffering, strengthen relationships, and respond more intentionally when life does not go as planned.
Kim brings decades of counseling, coaching, leadership, teaching, and professional development experience to this practical and thought-provoking workshop.
Care Deeply Without Taking Over
You do not need to know the right answer for another person to be helpful.
You can listen, question, inform, model, challenge, and remain present while respecting that the client’s life belongs to them.