SUPERVISION

I know the branding is decidedly not great! The practice of Supervision is derived from therapy and social work, where there is more of an understandable safeguarding approach.

But in coaching, the word 'supervision' does little justice to the nature of the work that actually takes place.

In my experience, coaching supervision - particularly in a small group - helped me to serve my apprenticeship as a coach. The impacts have been incalculably positive.

While my coach training provided incredibly helpful tools, concepts, and approaches, and client work provided the real-world experience of supporting actual humans, that was when I found something was missing.

I needed a different kind of learning space that helped me make sense of everything:

Where I could reflect on my relationship with very specific, three-dimensional, paying clients (not theoretical avatars or other trainee coaches).

Where I could feel supported and frankly, less lonely in this work (it's super tricky when we work from the kitchen table or the spare room!)

I also needed other resources and choices for supporting clients more effectively (because I didn't know what I didn't know).

Over a decade later, I honestly don't know how any coach does this work without some kind of supervision.

Coaching Supervision provides a private, specific space for you to explore your coaching work with clients - supporting you to think about your effectiveness, your well-being, your choices as well as the experience of your clients, and the wider context of each of your clients' lives.

You'll be able to make sense of the clients you feel a bit stuck with, or those situations where you feel entangled or emotional about clients, as well as bounce around ideas, methods, and approaches to expand your toolbox!

The 'official' three functions of supervision are known as:

- Formative (supporting you as a coach): helping you to explore and grow from your client's work. Exploring fresh perspectives, approaches, and solutions and broadening your toolbox. As you develop, it's likely that your coaching is less 'tools' focussed, and more of an organic conversation that invites us into a deepened presence, the courage to say what is unsaid, and an awareness of what is happening between us and for each of us.

- Normative (supporting your scope of practice): exploring wider systemic contexts, the limits of coaching, boundary choices, and ethical dilemmas that arise with clients. This also includes helping you understand how your own perceptions may influence how you’re approaching a situation.

 - Restorative (supporting you as a human): focuses on your well-being: restoring, re-energizing, and rejuvenating your energy, with space to share your frustrations and talk about awkward or difficult situations. Because our client work inevitably activates our emotions, supervision helps reduce the likelihood of having your ‘stuff’ come into sessions.

(Inskipp and Proctor (2001), De Haan (2012))

I believe if you are working with other humans, you do need a reflective practice.

Coaching is relational - we support our clients, often through challenging periods of transition and growth, and we are always impacted, often subtly, by the dynamics of the relationship we have with each client.

These psychological undercurrents inevitably create entanglements - where emotions, needs and expectations of one person are redirected to another person.

Supervision provides a space for us to become more aware of these dynamics, and learn how to work with them.

Most coaches who have regular supervision can’t imagine not having it.

Ideally, you find both of these in a supervision relationship.

On one hand, what most coaches struggle with is figuring out the mechanics of running a coaching business, ESPECIALLY their marketing and sales activities - i.e. how to find clients, and how to set our fees properly.

On the other hand, what we often struggle with is not only what to do, but why we don't do the things that would help our businesses!

We need to learn how to lead and motivate ourselves, make decisions, take responsibility, and experiment (with no guarantees of the outcome) by sharing how we do this again and again. We need to get comfortable with receiving and managing money, letting go of control, making our peace with rejection and failure, and being more visible than the average bear.

These are all topics you are so welcome to bring to your Coaching Supervision.

I am deeply experienced in supporting coaches like you to navigate through self-doubt. You'll be in good hands.

I believe our relationship with every client is a potential source of our own growth, and worthy of reflection.

And the research suggests new coaches can exponentially benefit from Supervision because you build that reflective muscle early on!

We all feel out of our depth at times and - especially at the beginning of our client work - can feel pressure to ‘get things right.’ Having a dedicated space to explore your concerns and learning can be a source of great comfort.

You'll have access to support that is tailored and specific for you - wherever you are in your coaching career.

When I first started I couldn't conceive of working with a client long-term. I mean, wouldn't we run out of coaching tools?

Six sessions over 3 months was a kind of accepted universal standard. However, as I gained more experience, clients wanted to work with me for longer, and our coaching became richer and more transformative.

Much of mainstream coaching is aimed at 'fast' results. I imagine this has something to do with the cult of productivity that capitalism fetishizes and rewards. And I suspect valuing speed might be in the hope that we'll whizz through any discomfort.

What I have found is that deep, rich, longer-term relationships are my favorite. Especially with this kind of work.

We need time for trust and safety to develop between us, for learnings to compost and seed, for your mastery to emerge, and for you to feel grounded in your self-belief.

Valuing spaciousness means we get to experience each other in a range of personal seasons; we allow ourselves to be known.

My hope is that this approach offers you a way to explore different ways of working with your own clients.

Of course, you might just prefer something more infrequent or ad hoc!

There is no right answer or right way to do this, please seek out the supervision approach that works for you.

You can have as many supervision sessions as you need. My recommendation is to have a (flexible) schedule, ie. twice a month, or once a week, plus any time needed. 

My suggestion is to see this as an ongoing development process. And you can terminate it any month.

Get all the information via  MEANING COUNSELOR TRAINING

Please get in touch, and we take it from there