In this article we will be exploring. what coaching supervision is and why you might want to engage with it as a coach?
What do we mean when we talk about supervision and coaching?
Coaching supervision is a bit like coaching in that it’s a protected and formal time where thought is given to the practise of coaching. A coach will sit down with their supervisor to reflect on their coaching.
The origins of supervision in a coaching context comes from therapy. If you are a therapist, you are dealing with very emotional and potentially traumatic content all the time. In coaching, depending on the type of coaching you do, the emotional aspect may or may not be there.
There will typically be three elements to supervision: formative, normative, and restorative elements:
- Formative is the focus on your development as a coach, on your skills and how you move yourself forward as a coach.
- Normative is around the ethical issues, the guidelines, the way that we are supposed to coach.
- Restorative is making sure that we’re okay in our coaching and that any emotional impact of the coaching is dealt with, and we understand how to look after ourselves.
For some people, emotions and the deeper side of coaching might not come up at all, so they might have less need for supervision in that respect. There would, however, still be the space within coaching supervision for exploring how you’re performing as a coach and what the framework for your coaching is.
What Might Coaching Supervision Be Useful For?
Here we will briefly explore:
- Ethical Dilemmas
- Ensuring Quality of Coaching
- Reflection
- Accountability (?)
- Perspective-Taking
- Client Interactions
Ethical Dilemmas:
As well as questions around your coaching development, or how you might handle a situation in the coaching room, any ethical dilemmas that come up can, and should be taken to your supervisor.
The word supervisor could have a connotation of a bit of a policing role, that we’re overseeing how it’s all done and whether you’re making mistakes. It’s not that at all. It is a very supportive role. It is a confidential space in the same way that coaching is. You’re talking through any issues that you’re uncertain about, with someone who would normally be more experienced, have more knowledge, and have an awareness of the ethical boundaries of coaching.
Ensuring Quality of Coaching
Organisations that support supervision would say that it ensures the quality of the coaching. But this may not necessarily be the case. Most supervisors don’t observe you coaching and therefore cannot give specific feedback or areas of improvement. A coach would be self-reporting to their supervisor about their skills and abilities.
The ICF require accredited coaches to have a coach mentor, and they would be expected to observe someone coaching through recordings of their coaching sessions. You would then sit together and discuss what went on in the coaching room. But traditionally within supervision, it’s just a reflective space, so it allows the coach to come along and talk about what’s going on for them.
We believe that there is a value in supervisors watching the coach practicing coaching. It has become much easier to do this than in the past as more people are coaching online, and it doesn’t take much to hit record on Zoom. It’s possible that, in the same way that we would ask permission for someone to have their session recorded so we could submit it for evaluation for a training programme or for accreditation, we could ask permission to do this for a review with our supervisor, always ensuring and expressing confidentiality within that triad of course. Someone might say they didn’t want that, which would be fine, but you could ask.
Reflection
As well as getting feedback from the supervisor, time to discuss and reflect on it yourself and with your supervisor would be of great value.
Even without that recording, the chance to reflect on coaching as a whole and those interactions that are going on within the coaching space, and perhaps on an intervention that was used or could have been used, is extremely beneficial to us as coaches.
For example, if you coach within organisations, there’s a system that your coachee, and perhaps you, sit within. It’s possible that you could feel a little bit uneasy about the dynamics within that system. That’s something that is useful to reflect on in supervision.
It also useful to reflect on the relationships that are present within coaching, for example, the relationship between the coach and the coachee, the relationship between the coach and the supervisor, but it also looks at the wider context. If you are coaching within an organisation, and a lot of doctors will be coaching within the NHS, even if they’re not thinking of it as formal or NHS coaching, there’s a system at play that everyone’s engaged in. All of those dynamics and the ripple effect of coaching can be useful to give some thought to.
We often don’t give this a lot of thought, because we’re very much focused on the person in front of us. If you’re coaching someone how to interact with someone else, that’s going to change their relationship dynamic, and that might have ripple effects further down the line. Even coaching someone around building their confidence, if that changes how they interact with other people and their perception of them, how they manage themselves in that workspace and how they navigate situations differently, there’s going to be a ripple effect there.
You might find this useful to bring to the supervision space to think through and reflect on.
What part does accountability play in supervision?
With some supervisors, accountability might play a part in the supervisor-coach relationship, but it is mostly a supportive role rather than one of accountability.
If there was something of an ethical nature that came to light that the supervisor felt that you needed to address, then I think I think they may well follow that up on that at a future session, but for the most part, it’s not the supervisor’s role to hold someone to account.
If there are actions someone wants to take, perhaps within their business, or within their coaching development, then it might be that what they need is coaching around that. But supervision is a space where you can talk about future plans for your coaching and your business.
Perspective Taking
That thinking space that, much like coaching, supervision provides, could help with perspective-taking. Different supervisors will come at supervision in different ways. They might well use approaches that we’ve talked about using in coaching, such as cognitive behavioural, Gestalt, or transactional analysis. And therefore, they might use interventions from those disciplines within supervision to allow someone to look at a situation from a different perspective, perhaps the Gestalt ‘empty chair exercise’.
Client Interactions
This could be issues around how to handle the actual topic that a coachee is bringing. Maybe someone’s got a problem with a difficult relationship or a difficult conversation they’ve got to have, and maybe you don’t feel experienced enough to explore that with them. You could talk with your supervisor about the interventions you could use, or how you could develop your skills around this topic in the future.
Alternatively, it could be that you want to explore the relationship with your coachee and how that is impacting on you and how it’s impacting on the coaching. Maybe your coachee triggers in you some reaction and you’re not quite sure why that’s happening. Perhaps they remind you of someone you have a tricky relationship with and that’s bringing things up about yourself in your own mind. Perhaps you over-empathise because you understand the system they work in so well (this may happen if you are or have been working in the NHS, as is your client) or because you have been through a similar situation. Any strange, or unusual dynamic in the coaching room, or anything that comes up for you as the coach can be talked through.
The coaching dynamic is a professional dynamic and it’s important that we maintain that professional stance and don’t get drawn into a situation where our clients think of us as their friend, perhaps something more.
As people go through coaching, over a period of time, for both parties, letting go of that relationship can be tricky, or if there’s any kind of dependence forming, this can all be taken to supervision.
Hopefully, supervisors will be well-trained and will have experience of that dynamic and be able to hold that space for the coachee and give some guidance around it as well.
What Would You Want From Supervision?
There are definitely different ways that we can approach supervision. And the process and experience is also going to depend on what the coach wants from the supervision. It’s worth thinking about what you want from it, do you want to focus on:
- business development,
- development as a coach,
- client interactions
- or all of these?
As supervisors, we will always contract with the coach as to what they want from the supervision. It’s going to be led by them. They might not be involved in business, they might be an internal coach where they want to talk through the coaching skills they want to develop as well as what’s going on in the coaching room and maybe struggles they have with individual coachees.
To recap, the benefits that come out of the supervision process are:
- Contributes to the overall effectiveness and professionalism of our coaching practise,
- Enhanced self-awareness,
- Improved ethical practise,
- Skill enhancement,
- Emotional and professional support,
- Professional development
- Time to reflect
What Are The Barriers To Supervision?
- Not all coaches have supervision, and that might simply be because there is no requirement to have it, but there are other possible reasons:
- There’s possibly a reluctance on the part of new coaches because they don’t want to feel unskilled or inexperienced in talking to a supervisor. Maybe they feel like they’re going to be judged. Which, of course, they’re not.
- If you’re not making money from coaching, and are in the early stages, perhaps doing free coaching to get yourself started, spending money on supervision seems like an unnecessary expense.
- More experienced coaches may feel they don’t need it. And it’s almost the same issue as for very new coaches, that they don’t want to be found out, or for it to be suggested that they’re not as good a coach as they think, so they don’t engage with it.
What About Peer Supervision?
Groups os coaches may get together and feel that they don’t need a supervisor, that they can do it themselves and support each other. And while there is a place for that support and connection, it’s not the same. Firstly, it’s a different dynamic. If you get together with someone at the same level and talk about your coaching, it could be a good conversation, but it could just end up being a chat and just a cosy club where everyone agrees with each other. And If you’re all at the same level, let’s say you all met on your coach training, where’s the extra experience? Some may have done more coaching hours than others. Maybe someone’s even done an additional piece of training. But if you’re all seeing each other as the same level because you all did your coaching together, that’s a tricky space to navigate.
People may well do this to avoid the cost of supervision.
How Much is Supervision?
Expect to pay a similar amount as you would for coaching, and possibly more. There is a school of thought that a supervisor should charge a supervisee 10% more than that supervisee would charge as a coach.
This is designed to acknowledge that there is more involved, that more training, experience, and knowledge is required of a supervisor. There’s a little bit more training involved.
What Should I Consider When Looking for A Supervisor?
Firstly, you will want to consider the pricing of the supervision.
But perhaps more important is finding someone that you get along with it. The coach-supervisor relationship tends to be a longer term relationship and is likely to last a number of years.
In addition to these points, consider the requirement of any organisation that you are a member of, or are seeking accreditation through.
What is The Supervision Requirement For Accreditation?
With the Association for Coaching, for accreditation at ‘Foundation Coach’, whether it is executive or not, you will need to have had three sessions between the end of your training and your application for accreditation. At higher levels, it’s six sessions in the previous twelve months. (This information is correct at time of posting this article)
They don’t stipulate the length of time but it would usually be an hour to an hour and a half.
In summary, we think supervision is a vital part of the professionalism of coaching. It keeps you safe and balanced and provides support psychologically, professionally, and potentially, emotionally. And as anyone can call themselves a coach, anything you can do to differentiate yourself from other coaches is a positive, so do let your clients know that you engage in it.
For those going through our Transformational Coaching Diploma Programmes, we provide ongoing supervision throughout your training. We are also able to offer supervision to any coaches, whether you have trained with us or somewhere else. If you would like to know more, do get in touch.
To find out more about our Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma click through here
