E-leadership in Higher Education: Implications for Counseling Department leaders transitioning programs online due to the Pandemic

 E-leadership is a term that continues to emerge despite being around since the late 1990s (Garcia, 2020). With the pandemic, programs in higher education have been confronted with transitioning from a traditional format to online. Counseling programs, notably high touch in skills development are no different in mediating this transition at a distance. There can be an added complexity of having many specializations of counseling to mediate. While the logistics of this can be challenging for faculty and students to transition to e-learning in highly interactive subjects like counseling, often overlooked are the vital considerations for counseling leaders trying to develop virtual teams with efficacy.  According to Kupa (2020) the key characteristics of virtual teams from a leadership standpoint draw attention to two primary functions: performance management and team development. This paper's focus is how has E-leadership evolved and what do Counselor Educator's embarking on E- leadership benefit from knowing in mediating this role with efficacy?  This paper seeks to explore the intersection of e-leadership in higher education, specifically counseling programs, with a focus on implications for best practices for establishing a culture of wellness, high performance, and efficacy of departmental teams newly working at a distance.